What You Get

1) Employee Profile Data

This includes demographics, education, experience and other similar variables which are useful for submissions to your SETA.

2) Current Skills Gaps

Identify which technical or soft skills are both important and are not being applied effectively. This alone provides huge opportunity for using your training budget effectively and strategically by targeting areas that can have a tangible effect on your business operations.

3) Common Skills Gaps

Some skills gaps are unique to individuals where others are shared by a number of employees across business. Focusing on and developing these skills will have the biggest impact on your business.

4) Non-training Needs

Sometimes there are performance issues where the ideal response is not training related. Identifying these needs is critical because investing in training to address these issues may not have the desired effect. A conversation between employee and supervisor may be all that is required. Having this knowledge can help you save your training budget for more strategic areas.

5) Talent Management Insights

It is not enough to only understand what your current skills gaps are from an operational perspective. You also need to consider what skills your employees will need in the next five to ten years to effectively grow their careers and your business.

6) Employee Perceptions

The skills audit also provides a ‘dipstick test’ as to how employees view training and development in your business. While this does not replace an employee engagement programme, it is a very useful tool to understand the sentiment in your business.

What You Need To Do

1) Workshop Requirement 

Discuss your skills requirements with all key stakeholders

• It is important to unpack everything that you hope to achieve through this process.
• This is also an opportunity to discuss your B-BBEE requirements.

2) Communication to your Organisation

Manage employee expectations and set the tone.

• Employees are engaged and made aware of the skills audit.
• Emphasis is placed on the purpose of the skills audit as a tool for development and not performance management.

3) Administration of the Skills Audit Tool

Give your employees access to the skills audit tool.

• Line managers and employees each receive relevant instruction and a deadline for completion.

4) Completion by Employees

Prompt your employees to complete their assessments.

• Buy-in from leadership will be essential in driving this process.
• This task runs in parallel to the review by the supervisor.

5) Review by Supervisor

Prompt each supervisor to review their employees’ assessments.

• After each assessment is completed, a supervisor will be required to review and validate the assessment.
• The purpose of this is to identify any areas where the employee and supervisor differ in opinion, in relation to an employee’s skills.
• This task runs in parallel to the completion by the employee.

6) Analysis and Reporting

Receive access to reports.

• A composite assessment report is created thereafter.

7) Stakeholder Engagement 

Receive a verbal explanation.

• The composite assessment report and strategic skills development plan are discussed with key stakeholders.

8) Feedback and PDP's 

Share what is uncovered.

• Feedback is provided to employees on their individual assessment reports.
• At the same time PDPs, including learning and development and career growth plans, can be conducted.

Affect Other Change

Completing a skills audit produces valuable information that can be used in other HRD processes.

Personal Development Plans (PDPs)

The skills audit outcomes can feed into a PDP process. Often PDPs represent a wishlist without being tied to operational needs. Running a PDP process through the lens of a skills audit findings is very useful for focussing training spend.

Succession Planning 

Understanding the supply of skills in an organisation is required to effectively plan for growth into key positions.

SETA Submissions

The data from the skills audit is stored in a manner that makes the completion of mandatory grant submissions significantly easier.

Data Analysis

Custom analysis can be performed on the data produced by the skills audit. This can help inform important strategic decisions.