What skills do we lack?

The question every HR manager gets asked, and how to answer it with evidence

It usually arrives at the end of a hard quarter. Sales are down, complaints are up, or an audit has flagged a gap. A director turns to HR and asks: what skills do we lack?

Most HR teams answer from instinct. They know which courses ran last year, which managers complain loudest and which topics are in fashion. The training plan that follows looks reasonable on paper. But it rarely changes much on the shop floor, and the budget gets harder to defend the next year.

Why instinct isn't enough

A skills gap looks different depending on who you ask.

• Directors see it in the numbers: lost sales, rework, incidents, staff who leave.

• Line managers see it in their teams: who can handle a difficult customer, who needs supervising, who is ready to step up.

• Employees know it in themselves: what they were never trained on, and what they would learn if they had the chance.

A Training Needs Analysis (TNA) asks all three, in the same structure, and compares the answers. Where something matters to the business and the team is weak at it, you have a real gap. Everything else can wait.

What a good TNA gives HR

1. A ranked list of gaps, by department, backed by data instead of opinion.

2. A training plan with a budget your directors can approve, because each line traces back to a business need.

3. A baseline you can measure against when you run the survey again in six months.

4. Something staff notice. When people are asked what they need and then see training that answers it, they take it seriously.

Introducing the Proworx Skills Gap Check

We built the Skills Gap Check to answer that director's question in three weeks:

• Three short forms, one each for leadership, line managers and employees.

• Built for phones, so front-line and shift staff can take part.

• Available in English and Kiswahili.

• A clear report, with a costed training plan at the end.

  
  

The fee for the Skills Gap Check becomes a credit towards the training it recommends. You pay to find the gap, and that payment goes towards closing it.

Start with the toolkit

Join the Proworx HR Community and get our free Training Needs Analysis Toolkit: the question bank, a training-plan template and a mini Skills Gap Check you can run with one team.