How to Bridge Skills Gaps in the Workplace

According to a McKinsey study, 87 % of companies are facing a skills shortage or expect to face one in the coming years. This phenomenon is by no means theoretical. In the manufacturing sector, it results in slowed production lines due to a lack of skilled operators, compliance audits under pressure, and training programs that can no longer keep pace with technological advancements.

Closing skills gaps within a company involves more than just sending employees to training. It is a structured process that begins with a detailed assessment and continues with long-term follow-up. This guide offers an actionable methodology tailored to the realities of the industrial sector.

What is a skills gap?

A skills gap refers to the difference between the skills your employees possess and those your organization needs to achieve its goals. This difference can apply to an individual, a team, or the company as a whole.

The gap is not limited to technical skills. It can encompass three distinct dimensions.

Hard skills, soft skills, and regulatory skills

Visit hard skills include measurable technical skills: proficiency in operating a machine, knowledge of a process, and the ability to perform quality control.

Visit soft skills These include behavioral skills: communication, stress management, and the ability to work as part of a team. Although often underestimated, these skills are crucial to team performance.

In addition to these two categories, there are the regulatory authority : authorizations, certifications, and authorizations required to perform certain duties. When a certification expires without being renewed, the resulting skills gap becomes a risk of noncompliance.

The renewal of these certifications almost always involves an external training organization. Managing these certification programs—from sending out invitations to tracking the budget—is a profession in its own right, which a training management software as Training Square supports.

Why the Gaps Are Widening in the Industry

Several factors are accelerating the widening of gaps in industrial settings. The first is demographic: retirements take with them expertise that has not always been documented or passed on. When a senior operator leaves the company after 25 years, an entire body of hands-on knowledge disappears.

The second factor is technological. Automation, robotization, and the integration of artificial intelligence are transforming jobs. The skills expected of an operator in 2026 are no longer the same as those required in 2018. The pace of this transformation often outstrips companies’ ability to adapt their training plans.

Finally, employee turnover and the growing reliance on temporary workers complicate matters. Every new hire needs time to develop their skills, and when turnover is high, the company is constantly playing catch-up with its own training needs. The GPEC (now known as GEPP) It attempts to anticipate these trends, but it often remains a purely declarative exercise, disconnected from reality on the ground.

How can you identify skills gaps in your organization?

Before closing a gap, you first need to measure it. Too many companies act based on their managers’ intuition without conducting a structured assessment. The identification process consists of four steps.

Define the target competencies for each position

It all starts with a competency framework. For each position, list the expected competencies along with a target level. This framework shouldn’t be an 80-page document gathering dust on a server. It needs to be practical, updated regularly, and understood by front-line managers.

A good competency framework distinguishes between essential competencies (without which the employee cannot perform the job) and desirable competencies (which enhance performance or versatility). This distinction prevents priorities from getting lost in an overly long list.

Assess the teams' current skills

The evaluation can draw on several sources: individual interviews, field observations, peer-to-peer self-assessments validated by managers, and results from past training sessions. The most reliable approach combines several methods rather than relying on just one.

The pitfall to avoid: conducting evaluations once a year during the annual review process, then leaving them untouched for twelve months. Skills are constantly evolving, and so are needs. Quarterly follow-ups—even brief ones—provide a much more accurate picture of reality.

Visualize Gaps Using a Competency Matrix

The skills matrix is the go-to tool for visualizing gaps. It cross-references employees in rows and skills in columns, using a color code or a score to indicate each employee’s level of proficiency relative to the expected level.

In an Excel spreadsheet, this matrix works for a small team. But as soon as you’re managing dozens of operators, multiple sites, or authorizations with expiration dates, the limitations quickly become apparent: outdated data, data entry errors, and the inability to cross-reference information across sites. This is often when manufacturers switch to a dedicated tool.

Prioritize the gaps that need to be addressed

Not all discrepancies have the same impact. A lack of a specific skill in a critical role (safety, quality, production bottleneck) warrants immediate action. A discrepancy in versatility Work on a secondary project can be planned over a longer time frame. Prioritization prevents efforts from being spread too thin and allows resources to be focused where the return on investment will be the fastest.

What strategies can be used to bridge the skills gap?

Once the gaps have been identified and prioritized, there are four strategies for reducing them. Most organizations are better off combining these strategies rather than relying on just one.

Training and skills enhancement

Training remains the primary driver. But not just any training. Generalist programs that are disconnected from the workplace have limited impact. What works in the industry is targeted training—directly linked to an identified gap—that can be immediately applied on the job.

Upskilling involves strengthening an employee’s skills in their current role. Reskilling aims to train employees for a new role, for example, when automation transforms their position. In both cases, the key is to start with a skills matrix assessment to develop personalized development paths, rather than offering identical training programs for everyone.

Mentoring and apprenticeship play complementary roles. An experienced operator passing on their know-how to a newcomer is the most effective way to preserve the hands-on skills that academic training programs do not cover.

External training follows a different approach. When an operator needs to renew a CACES certification, obtain an SST certification, or complete a training program with a certified organization, the management of that training falls outside the scope of the field tools. Specialized solutions such as Training Square handle this aspect: the list of training providers, session bookings, invitations, and budget tracking. The two approaches—in-house training and external training—naturally complement each other within the same industrial HR ecosystem.

Targeted Recruitment and Internal Mobility

When training isn’t enough, recruitment takes over. But recruiting blindly doesn’t solve anything. Recruitment must be guided by a gap analysis: What skills are missing from the organization that cannot be developed internally within a reasonable timeframe?

Before hiring from outside the company, explore internal mobility. An employee from another department or location may already have the skills you’re looking for. Internal mobility has a twofold advantage: it costs less than external hiring and helps retain employees by offering them opportunities for growth. When properly populated, the skills matrix allows you to identify these opportunities with just a few clicks.

Leveraging Technology to Manage Skills

It is possible to manage the skills of 50, 100, or 500 operators using Excel spreadsheets. But it’s also a source of errors, outdated data, and wasted time. Platforms that skills management enable you to centralize data, automate alerts (e.g., expiring authorization, underrepresented critical skill), and connect the skills matrix to the assignment schedule.

For manufacturers that have reached this milestone, the gains are measurable. Among the more than 300 industrials With support from Mercateam, feedback shows, on average, half a day saved each week on skills management and a training time reduced by a factor of four thanks to automated tracking. Companies such as Collins Aerospace, Bonduelle, and Saint-Gobain use these tools to manage their talent across multiple sites.

How can you measure the effectiveness of your actions?

Closing skills gaps is an ongoing process. Without metrics to track progress, you have no way of knowing whether your actions are producing results. Several KPIs can help guide this process.

Visit skills coverage rate measures the percentage of positions in which employees currently holding those positions actually possess the required skills. The versatility rate assesses your teams' ability to cover multiple positions, an indicator of resilience in the face of absences and unforeseen events. The Current authorization rate monitors regulatory compliance in real time. Finally, the average time to develop skills measures the time it takes for a new hire to reach the expected level of performance for their position.

These indicators are only useful if they are tracked over time. A dashboard updated once a year is of no use. Monthly or quarterly monitoring allows you to detect deviations before they become operational problems and to adjust training plans based on the observed results.

From Identification to Action

Skills gaps do not close on their own. The longer we wait, the wider they become, driven by employee turnover, technological advancements, and new regulatory requirements. The good news is that the process for closing these gaps is nothing mysterious: a structured assessment, targeted actions, and long-term monitoring.

The goal isn’t just to check an HR box. It’s to ensure that every employee assigned to a position has the skills to perform well in that role, that every team has the versatility needed to handle the unexpected, and that the company anticipates its needs rather than reacting to them.

Would you like to identify your teams' skill gaps and develop an action plan? Talk to a Mercateam expert.

This article was written in partnership with Training Square, a solution for managing external training programs for businesses.