L&D: A Roadmap to Closing the Skills Gap

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MIND THE GAP: SKILLS SHORTAGES AND HOW TO FILL THEM

The workforce landscape is shifting beneath our feet. While 44% of workers' core skills will change in the next five years, something even more concerning is emerging: the disconnect between the skills organizations think they need and the talents their workforce already possesses.

Here's the reality: 60% of businesses worldwide cite skills gaps as their top concern, but 58% of workers believe they have valuable skills that remain hidden from their employers.

This misalignment isn't just a statistic—it's an opportunity...

This week, we dive deep into:

• The three essential types of skills your organization needs to thrive

• A practical framework for uncovering hidden talent

• Success stories from Mercado Libre, IBM, and Wasserman

• Your roadmap to building a skills-first culture

• Plus: Free Guide - "The Future of L&D in Healthcare"

🗞️ In case you missed it: Major shifts in L&D budgets, breakthrough findings in VR training effectiveness, and surprising revelations about how Gen Z really wants to learn and develop.

SPREAD FOR YOU
📢  YOUR ROADMAP TO CLOSING THE SKILLS GAP

Your workforce needs a skills overhaul!

44% of worker’s core skills will change in the next five years (at least!). Skills that were must-haves for decades might quickly face irrelevancy. 

For 60% of businesses worldwide, skills gaps and talent availability are the top concerns, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). 

But the skills you need in your workforce don’t just appear out of nowhere. So, how can organizations design an L&D strategy to future-proof their workforce for roles and skills that don’t even exist yet? 

Rethinking skills and reassessing how they recruit, develop talent, and match people’s skills with roles provides organizations with an incredible opportunity to:

• Broaden talent pools

• Tackle talent shortages

• Improve workforce planning

• Close skills gaps

• Boost business growth

The time to rethink your skills strategy isn't in five years—it's now. And the opportunities for organizations that act decisively are enormous.

Embracing a Skills-First Culture

To adapt to the reality of new skills, organizations must reimagine how they identify, develop, and nurture talent. 

Below are 5 steps you can start taking today to shift your company to a skills-first culture poised to grow its skills base:

• Focus on whether someone has the right skills and competencies for a particular role, rather than how the skills have been acquired (which means rethinking academic requirements). 

• Prioritize skills over personal networks for a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace. The pathways to workforce participation and mobility are based on “what you know,” and “how you can contribute” rather than “who you know.”

• Cultivate a culture of continuous learning, where skill-building is seen as a dynamic process inherent to the business strategy.

• Pursue culture and process change through leadership and human resources sponsorship.

• Use data to iterate processes and change based on feedback, as well as key performance indicators to foster accountability.

These steps chart the course to a skills-first culture. But your journey begins with establishing a common language around skills across your organization.

A Shared Understanding of Skills

Before you begin – however – it’s vital to develop a shared understanding of skills within your organization and hiring practices. A skills framework needs to consider an organization’s future and not just define people relative to their past experience, but enable them for future development. 

When considering skills, there are three essential aspects to integrate:

• Define what skills are needed for success. 

• Measure the workforce against those skills. 

• Develop the skills necessary for a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) future, through skills-based training, access to learning opportunities, and career pathways for development and redeployment.

By integrating these three aspects—define, measure, develop—organizations can build a foundation for sustainable skills development.

The 3 Types of Skills Your Org Needs

Understanding the skills landscape is crucial for future-proofing your workforce. Below we break down the three fundamental skill categories that every organization needs to thrive:

1. Technical Skills (constantly evolving): These are specific, learned competencies related to tools, systems, and methodologies. Examples include coding in Python, creating macros in Excel, or interpreting financial statements. These skills evolve constantly, requiring frequent updates to stay relevant.

2. Cognitive Skills (stable): These are core thinking abilities that underpin how individuals process information and solve problems. Examples include numerical reasoning, critical thinking, and logical analysis. These skills are relatively stable and form the foundation of effective decision-making.

3. Behavioral Skills (highly transferable and durable): These vital skills reflect how individuals interact, adapt, and lead in different contexts. Examples include collaboration, resilience, strategic awareness, and empathy. Behavioral skills are highly transferable, making them indispensable in dynamic work environments. These are positive individual traits that become strengths when both performance and motivation are aligned.

While all three skill types play vital roles, it's the combination and balance of these skills that creates a truly adaptable workforce. Organizations that nurture this mix are better positioned for the future.

Now that we've identified the critical skill types, let's dive into how to create a framework that nurtures and measures them effectively...

FRAMEWORKS
DESIGNING A SKILLS-FIRST FRAMEWORK

Today’s challenges demand greater adaptability. A skills-first approach focuses on equipping individuals with specific, role-relevant capabilities, making it more aligned with the fast-changing nature of work.

This requires a framework that prioritizes flexibility, personalization, and real-time skill acquisition, ensuring organizations stay ahead in a world where new roles and technologies continuously emerge.

With a skills-first framework, organizations can meet today’s demands while preparing for tomorrow’s possibilities.

When designing a skills framework, it’s essential to:

• Have a shared understanding of what skills are.

• Focus on Longevity and Flexibility: The framework must be flexible to evolve with changing needs and requirements.

• Emphasize Diversity and Inclusion: It must support broader talent pools and inclusive hiring practices.

• Ensure Accurate Measurement: Use tools and methods to measure skills reliably and objectively, ensuring they align with organizational goals.

Cappfinity has found that for a skills framework and talent architecture to be sustainable in the long term, behavioral skills should be at the core, supplemented by technical or cognitive skills as needed.

When organizations focus too much on technical skills, they shrink their talent pool. Behavioral skills can be found in all parts of the population—across gender, age, ethnic background, neurodiversity, and disability.

Building a Skills Framework with behavioral skills gives organizations diversity of talent and skills inclusion by design.

When measuring skills, ask yourself:

• Are we assessing the skills that truly matter for future success?

• Are we measuring both performance and motivation?

• Are we leveraging validated data on behavioral, cognitive, and technical skills?

• Can we analyze and aggregate skills data across key demographics for a holistic view of our talent?

Building a Behavioral Skills Taxonomy 

Have you considered how a structured behavioral skills taxonomy could transform your organization? 

Download "The Scientific Origins of Skills & Strengths" whitepaper to learn how the behavioral skills in the Cappfinity 80 Skills Set allow for the specificity of measurement together with the practical application of skills clusters into responsibilities, roles, job families, and organizational frameworks.

→ Download the Whitepaper 📥

Understanding what skills you need is crucial—but the real challenge is in uncovering the hidden talents already within your organization. Continue reading to learn how leading companies are doing this...

USEFUL TOOLS
DISCOVERING YOUR WORKFORCE’S SKILLS

Skills discovery is an assessment that helps people understand who they are, what skills they are good at and enjoy (their strengths), the skills they are good at but didn’t know they had (unrealized strengths), the ones they are good at but don't enjoy so much (learned behaviors), and their weaknesses (skills they are not good at nor enjoy).

How does it work?

Any individual in an organization - from junior individual contributors to the most senior leader - can take an individual discovery assessment to think about their skills, identifying their strengths, unrealized strengths, learned behaviors, and weaknesses.

What are the outcomes of embarking on skills discovery?

• For all individuals: After completing the skills discovery process, employees reflect on their strengths, unrealized strengths, learned behaviors, and weaknesses, using this insight to plan their development. They are encouraged to work with a "strengths buddy" to stay accountable, review their current projects, and align tasks with their strengths. Employees can unlock their potential while maintaining well-being and balance by setting clear goals, managing energy, and using strengths in decision-making.

• For leaders: Leaders understand their own strengths and those of their team members, which helps them cultivate positive relationships and enable growth. They can more easily integrate strengths into leadership development, use personalized insights to coach their teams and have more meaningful career conversations. 

• For teams: Teams are encouraged to use strengths, which boost engagement, creativity, and productivity. When each team member leverages their unique skills, collaboration grows stronger. Leaders can help teams by aligning their strengths with project goals, creating a shared language of strengths, and celebrating successes regularly. 

• For culture: A skills-based approach is nourished through self-awareness and cultivates a culture of support, inclusivity, and continuous growth: strengths are openly discussed, celebrated, and used to overcome challenges, ensuring all team members thrive. 

Learn More About Skills Discovery Assessment

Now that you know how to identify hidden skills, let's see how major organizations like IBM and Mercado Libre put these principles into action to achieve dramatic results...

SUCCESS STORIES
HOW SMBs AND LARGE ORGANIZATIONS ARE UPSKILLING

Mercado Libre: Unlocking Potential Through Lifelong Learning

Mercado Libre implemented a lifelong learning model emphasizing critical thinking, problem-solving, and leadership. Partnering with educational institutions, they provided accessible learning opportunities, resulting in a 25% increase in employee engagement and strengthened leadership pipelines. Read more →

IBM: Data-Driven Workforce Transformation

IBM deployed AI and analytics to create personalized upskilling programs and predict future skill needs. By focusing on employee growth and career mobility, IBM improved workforce agility and achieved a 20% increase in employee satisfaction. Read more →

Wasserman: Shifting to a Smart Upskilling Marketplace 

Wasserman, a global leader in sports and entertainment, switched to an upskilling marketplace using a pay-per-use model (to only pay for actual learning, not access to learning) that offers employees flexible, personalized, AI-powered learning pathways. They saw employee engagement increase to 96% in just six months, getting real-time insights into training impact. Read more →

These success stories are impressive, but how can you implement similar strategies in healthcare? Our comprehensive guide (below) breaks it down step by step...

FREE DOWNLOAD
A GUIDE TO L&D IN HEALTHCARE

HR and Learning and Development teams working in the healthcare sector face a colossal challenge. They must continuously update their upskilling programs while also leveraging technologies and tools that allow scaling L&D systems to meet the demands of a multigenerational, diverse, distributed, and often understaffed workforce. 

This guide, co-created by Hacking HR and Workleap, provides healthcare HR leaders and L&D professionals with actionable strategies and tools to address these challenges and success stories to inspire them. The guide includes several handy resources:

✅ A Comprehensive Training Module Template

✅ Training Module Plan Example: Compliance & Regulatory Training

✅ A Guide to structuring online courses

✅ Free webinar: "How to Cultivate Continuous Learning and Development."

📥 Download the guide now and start building the future of healthcare L&D

Ready to take your L&D strategy to the next level? Don't miss our latest industry updates that could reshape your approach...

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