How to Find Workforce Gaps with a Capability Gap Analysis Report (Using Capabilities)

Getting visibility of workforce gaps is crucial to understanding your workforce and strategic development. But we’ve actually seen a lot of organizations that don’t know how to find them.

We strove to make that process easier for organizations with our own platform, Capabilities. Without further ado, we’ll explain how Capabilities enables visibility of workforce gaps with a capability gap analysis report.

What is a capability gap analysis report? 

A capability gap analysis report is a structured process that identifies the difference between an organization’s existing capabilities and the capabilities it needs to achieve its strategic goals. (Capabilities being the skills, knowledge, behaviors, tools, and processes that deliver desired outcomes.) A capability gap analysis report helps in strategically aligning workforce capabilities to business goals and identifying development needs for career progression and succession planning.

Why workforce gap analysis matters 

We see it with a lot of organizations: a lack of workforce visibility, an ad hoc approach to identifying and filling workforce gaps, and no workforce fluidity.

That mightn’t be an issue for small businesses. But as organizations grow, so too do the number of roles (and the scope of functions they sit within). It can get big, fast. Then you have all those roles, teams, and projects to juggle at once, and if you don’t have clear visibility of what your workforce has or is doing, then you can’t be proactive at addressing gaps.

What is “visibility”, you ask? Let us explain. It’s knowing what the capabilities within your workforce are. This is important to know because capabilities support your business strategy, and (in our version of heaven) every role and team within your organization has capabilities mapped to them. Every role contributes to desired outcomes in some way, whether they actively driving strategic outcomes or doing something more subtle.

Unfortunately, most companies haven’t reached that heaven yet. We’ve talked to a lot of organizations that still use spreadsheets to keep track of their capabilities, if they use capabilities at all. The problem with that is there is no bird’s-eye view of capabilities. At best, you can only see what capabilities you’ve got assigned to each role, and perhaps what level of proficiency each capability is performed at. You can’t see what your business has as a whole, or what your business needs but doesn’t currently have. Those are capability gaps, and if you can’t see them, you can’t address them, whether that’s by recruiting new talent or providing learning and development programs.

Gaps within your organization can range from underdeveloped employees to a complete lack of mission-critical capabilities. An employee should be performing their capabilities at a proficient level for their current role, but they’re actually performing at a foundational level? That’s a gap. You need someone to be working closely with clients and partners to create strong partner relationships but don’t have one? That’s a gap. A key employee is going to be retiring soon but you haven’t got a suitable candidate lined up for the role? That’s a gap waiting to happen.

We use Capabilities to provide that high-level visibility across the workforce and analyze where our gaps and potential gaps lie. The point of a capability gap analysis is to help you make data-backed decisions for the workforce. Like where you should provide development plans as part of employee development or succession planning, or what new roles you should be hiring for (and which new roles you should prioritize hiring for). Capabilities lets you run a capability gap analysis to reveal those areas of interest.

How to generate a capability gap analysis report

To generate a gap analysis report using our platform, you’ll first need:

• The Capabilities module switched on
• A connected LMS, not necessarily Acorn
• A capability framework, your own or pulled from our Capability Library.

The ability to generate reports is limited to administrators, supervisors, and reporting officers.

1.   Initiating a new gap analysis report

Navigate to your Reporting page and select “New Report” from the New Report tab. If you’re using Acorn’s learning platform, the Reporting page opens automatically to the Dashboard tab. If you’re only using our Capabilities platform, Reporting will open to the New Report tab.

From there, find and select “Capability Assessment Gap Analysis Report” and click next.

You’ll be able to pick which capabilities you want to run the report for. These are from your capability framework, so they’re all capabilities that are present or needed in your organization. You can select just one capability or all of them at once if you wish.

Just bear in mind that the bigger the report is, the longer it will take to generate. More selected capabilities = more time, and more users across those capabilities = more time taken to generate (and a lot of data, too).

You can get more specific with your data by changing filtering settings, too. Get data on or before certain dates, or filter by settings like:

• Job title
• Organization
• Department
• Supervisor
• Cohort.

Once you’ve set your filters (if any) hit next, and the Capability Assessment Gap Analysis Report will generate itself.

2.   Analyzing the report

The report will show you information in two parts:

1. Gap analysis at the capability level, and
2. Gap analysis at the user level.

Let’s look at the capability level first. The report shows the breakdown of proficiency levels across all users assigned to that capability. That proficiency level can be above, below, or at the assigned level. We call these levels of proficiency, and each role (as specified in your capability framework) has an assigned proficiency level for each capability. Let’s say your employees with the critical thinking capability might be expected to perform said capability at the proficient level.

In the example below, 50% of users are performing the capability at the assigned level, 30% are performing above that level, and 20% are underperforming in that capability.

The report also shows you how many users haven’t been assessed in a capability. It’s a good reminder to complete capability assessments, because if you’re missing data on capability proficiency, then your data will be inaccurate. And when your data is wrong, you can’t make informed strategic decisions in talent acquisition or L&D (or any people-related decision, really).

Then there’s the section that looks at gaps at the user level. This part shows:

• How users assessed themselves
• How supervisors assessed users; and
• The gap (if any) between those two scores.

It also shows the competency level assigned to each employee, so you can see how self-assessed and supervisor-assessed scores compare to actual performance markers.

Here’s the thing: we always say to do a self-assessment and a manager assessment at the minimum. You can add in extra assessments on top of that—like subject matter expert assessments—if the role calls for it (i.e., for specialized or executive type roles). The reason we say to do two is:

1. So that you can see these gaps between how employees perceive themselves and how managers perceive their performance (this is super important for transparency in performance reviews; and
2. So that you get a more objective view on employee capabilities. Sometimes people rate themselves better, or more negatively, than they should.

3.   Driving strategic training 

The report reveals three types of gaps:

1. Self-assessments compared to supervisor assessments
2. Employee proficiency compared to assigned proficiency
3. Capability maturity compared to actual performance.

The first type of gap shows a discrepancy between how employees view their performance, and how managers view their performance. This is where a conversation needs to happen between learner and leader. Capabilities aren’t a vibes-based rating system—they’re a tangible, measurable performance scale. Each level of competency has a set definition with assigned behavioral anchors that employees have to meet. The main thing, then, is making sure your managers are ready to deliver those performance conversations in a meaningful and productive way.

The other two gap types are really a two-parter. Let’s look at the gap between employee proficiency and assigned proficiency level. Simply put: it’s a sign that employees are performing below what is needed for their job level. Capability maturity, on the other hand, indicates whether the organization itself is meeting, falling behind, or exceeding its required capabilities.

This is where training comes in. For the individual, this is targeted training tailored to their assigned capabilities so they can improve. Our Capabilities platform actually allows you to assign certain capabilities to specific learning materials, so you can easily find training and resources that will help employees develop their specific capabilities.

Developing capabilities at the business level is similar. You’re finding the the capabilities that aren’t performing at the level you need for your business and providing training to your workforce to improve them. The difference here is that with an overview of organization-level capability gaps, you can prioritize which capabilities should be addressed first. That way, your riskiest and most important capabilities are developed quickly.

Final thoughts 

A capability assessment gap analysis report reveals where your capabilities are falling short of strategic needs across the workforce, and where individual employees are performing below their assigned competencies. These gaps don’t have to be a bad thing. They’re the crucial first step to identifying development needs within your organization.

If you want to learn more about how Capabilities can help unlock strategic development in your organization, get in touch.