What is an HR Gap Analysis and why is it critical to your business growth?
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Most, if not all business owners commit to an annual business plan – which usually encompasses a Sales & Marketing Plan, Operational & Resource Management Plan, and a Finance Plan.
Planning revenue and capital expenditure for future growth is key to business scaling – every accountant will tell you that – but what about considering the people that you will need to create this growth through those resources acquired? Machines and software don’t make a business successful – people do.
Often business owners plan business growth without also considering the Human Resource plan to make the future business structure possible.
The HR Gap Analysis is every bit as important for your future business growth as your financial plan and your marketing strategy
This does not mean you rush out and hire new employees – it means you need a planning or strategy strand in the overall plan that brings into consideration the skills that you will need to either have developed across your current team members, or that you will need to introduce – and the timeline required to make all this happen.
When you think of building your business in bite-sized chunks of ‘what skill and which resource do I need to make this next stage happen’, it all becomes much easier. The overwhelm is reduced and a more productive planning process starts to take shape – then before you know it, your business transformation is underway – delivered by hard working people other than yourself!
The first step is conducting the skill analysis
To complete your Gap Analysis, you must first identify all skills required to grow your business to the first stage of planned growth, then look internally to see if you have those skills available to you with current employees – or if there is an obvious choice for training and development internally.
The second step, therefore, is preparing your Training and Development Plan.
Showing your employees your vision for the future, then delivering their role in that future with a concrete training and development plan is the single most valuable action a business manager can take in business planning for growth.
Upskilling an existing team member to develop and retain them in your business for longer is also an HR fundamental
The employee you know and who knows you – with mutual trust and business history is much more likely to fully commit to your vision of growth than an incoming new but higher level employee coming in cold.
The third step of the HR Strategy building process is one of establishing revised KPIs and job specification for any employee undergoing development so that your communication is absolutely crystal clear.
Follow these steps and you are on track for smooth, planned business growth with fewer speed bumps.
If you would find it useful, you are welcome to complete our Team Training Survey to take your HR Strategy to the next level. We will contact you with with survey results.