Choosing a training program before understanding the skills gap is like buying software before knowing what problem the business needs to solve.
The course may be excellent. The trainer may be experienced. The technology may be current. Yet employees can finish the program without gaining the capability the business actually needs.
This is becoming a bigger problem as technology skills change faster. Gartner reported in July 2026 that approx 50%+ of CHROs felt skill needs were changing faster than their organisations could develop support plans. The World Economic Forum also found that 63% of employers see skills gaps as a major barrier to business transformation.
A skill gap report helps answer a more useful question:
What should our employees be able to do, what can they do today, and what needs to change?
Only after answering that question should you choose the training.
Start With Business Goals, Not Course Catalogues
The first step is to identify what the business is trying to achieve.
Perhaps the company is moving workloads to the cloud. Maybe it is introducing generative AI, strengthening cybersecurity, modernising software development, or expanding its data capabilities.
Each objective creates different skill requirements.
For example, an organisation adopting AI may need prompt and tool literacy for some employees, AI engineering skills for developers, data skills for analysts, governance knowledge for risk teams, and stronger AI judgment for managers.
Starting with the business goal prevents a common mistake: choosing popular courses and then trying to find a reason for employees to take them.
Gartner’s current skills research recommends focusing development resources on the skills that matter most to core business workflows rather than attempting to create an exhaustive list of every possible skill.
Map the Roles That Matter Most
You do not need to assess every employee at the same depth on day one.
Start with roles that have the greatest connection to the business objective.
For a cloud migration, that could mean:
Cloud engineers → DevOps → Security → Architects → IT operations
For an AI initiative:
Developers → Data teams → Product teams → Business users → Managers
This creates a practical boundary for the assessment.
Then define what each role needs to do differently.
That last part matters.
Do not simply write “needs AI skills” or “needs cloud skills.”
Write the actual capability.
For example:
“Can build, test and deploy an AI enabled application using the organisation’s approved architecture.”
That is measurable.
Measure Current Capability, Not Just Employee Confidence
A self assessment is useful, but it should not be the only source of information.
Employees may rate themselves highly because they have used a tool for several months. Another employee may rate themselves conservatively despite having strong practical skills.
Use several signals where possible:
- Self assessment
- Manager assessment
- Practical assessment
- Project performance
- Certifications
- Work samples
- Technical interviews
- Assessment or lab results
The World Economic Forum found that 48% of employers expect to use skills assessments as an assessment mechanism during 2025 to 2030, while work experience remains the most common mechanism.
The lesson is simple: what employees know and what employees can actually do are not always the same thing.
Build a Simple Current vs Required Skills Matrix
Once the information is collected, put it into a matrix.
| Skill | Required Level | Current Level | Gap | Priority |
| Cloud architecture | Advanced | Intermediate | High | High |
| Cloud security | Advanced | Basic | High | High |
| Infrastructure automation | Intermediate | Intermediate | Low | Medium |
| AI literacy | Intermediate | Basic | Medium | High |
| Data analysis | Intermediate | Basic | Medium | Medium |
You do not need a complicated enterprise platform to begin.
The purpose is to make the gap visible.
More importantly, the matrix helps separate real capability gaps from assumptions.
If a team already has strong Python skills, sending everyone through a beginner programming course is unlikely to solve the business problem.
Prioritise the Gaps That Affect Real Work
Not every gap deserves immediate training.
Imagine an IT team has ten areas where proficiency is below the desired level. If only two of those skills affect a critical transformation project, those two should probably receive attention first.
A useful prioritisation model looks at:
Business impact + urgency + number of affected employees + difficulty of closing the gap
You can also ask:
- Will this gap delay an important project?
- Does it create security or compliance risk?
- Is the skill difficult to hire externally?
- Does the skill affect several teams?
- Will improving it create measurable productivity gains?
This prevents the training budget from being spread thinly across dozens of low-impact skills.
Decide Whether Training Is Actually the Answer
This is one of the most important parts of the assessment.
A performance problem is not always a training problem.
If employees know how to perform a task but lack access to the right software, training will not fix the issue.
If a proccess is badly designed, another course may simply teach employees to work around it.
If managers do not give employees time to practise a new skill, even good training may have little effect.
Before selecting a programme, ask:
Is the gap caused by knowledge, skill, tools, process, experience or management support?
Training is most useful when the underlying problem is genuinely a capability gap.
Match the Training Format to the Gap
Once the gap is clear, choose the learning format.
A short workshop may be enough when employees only need awareness or a specific new capability.
A deeper technical programme may be appropriate when employees need hands-on expertise.
Certification preparation can make sense when a role requires validated technical knowledge.
Labs and project-based learning are useful when employees need to demonstrate that they can apply concepts rather than simply remember them.
For enterprise technology teams, a blended approach can often work better than one large course. Employees may need instructor-led learning, practical labs, assessments, projects and reinforcement over time.
The format should follow the gap. Not the other way around.
Define What Success Looks Like Before Training Begins
This step is frequently skipped.
Before employees start the programme, define the outcome.
For example:
“After training, cloud engineers should be able to identify and remediate common configuration risks independently.”
That is much stronger than:
“Employees will complete cloud security training.”
The first describes capability.
The second describes attendance.
Gartner’s 2026 guidance recommends connecting learning activity to business outcomes and using a focused set of indicators to determine whether workforce development is producing results.
Possible measures include reduced incident rates, faster project delivery, improved assessment scores, fewer support escalations, higher technical proficiency or successful completion of real-world tasks.
Reassess After the Training
A skills gap assessment should not be a once-a-year spreadsheet.
Technology changes. Business priorities change. Employees gain experience. New tools change the way work is performed.
Gartner’s 2026 research describes this as an ongoing skills strategy rather than a static inventory, with organisations needing to adjust development priorities as business and technology requirements change.
That means the assessment should create a feedback loop:
Assess → Prioritise → Train → Apply → Measure → Reassess
The cycle is more valuable than the individual course.
The Best Training Decision Comes After the Skills Decision
Training programmes are easy to find.
The harder part is knowing exactly what your workforce needs.
A company may spend heavily on AI, cloud or cybersecurity training and still have the same capability problem if the programme was selected without understanding the starting point.
A good skills gap assessment changes the conversation from “Which training should we buy?” to “Which capability do we need to build, for which roles, and what evidence will show that it improved?”
That is the foundation of effective workforce upskilling.
The right training program is rarely the one with the longest course catalogue such as edforce.co is one of the best workforce upskilling provider.. It is the one that closes a clearly identified gap between the work your organisation needs and what your people can do today.