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Start with the growth outcome you want, then identify the work and capabilities required to achieve it. Compare those requirements with what your team can do today, prioritize the gaps that put the outcome at risk, and decide whether to develop, hire, or reorganize. This is more reliable than choosing skills from a generic checklist because every priority is tied to actual work and a business result.
1. Define the growth outcome
Choose a specific objective before assessing skills. It might be increasing capacity, entering a new market, improving a customer journey, or introducing a product. Then identify the evidence that makes this objective worthwhile: customer requests, sales patterns, market conditions, or a competitor’s offer.
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Market research can help identify customers, while competitive analysis can show how your business might differentiate itself. The U.S. Small Business Administration lists surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, and in-depth interviews among direct research methods. See the SBA’s business-planning and market-research guidance.
2. Translate the goal into work
List the activities, decisions, and responsibilities that must happen consistently for the objective to succeed. Think through the customer’s journey as well as the work behind it: for example, attracting a new type of customer may involve researching demand, creating suitable marketing, responding to inquiries, delivering the service, and handling follow-up.
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Mark which tasks will be new, happen more often, become more complex, or depend on new technology or customer expectations. This work map keeps the assessment grounded in what the business must actually do rather than in traits that merely sound useful.
3. Identify the capabilities each activity requires
For every important activity, name the abilities needed to perform it reliably. Include technical and role-specific skills, but also consider problem-solving, teamwork, and customer handling where the work calls for them. A new sales channel might require digital marketing and data interpretation; a more complex service process might depend on customer communication and troubleshooting.
OECD’s 2024 report found that surveyed firms most often identified technical, problem-solving, and teamwork skills as areas needing improvement. Smaller firms in that evidence more often cited customer-service and problem-solving gaps, while larger firms more often cited IT and management skills. These patterns can prompt questions, but they are not a checklist for every business.
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4. Compare required skills with current capacity
Assess what employees and managers can do now, and what the business can reliably deliver—not just what people know in theory. Combine several kinds of evidence:
- Ask employees and managers where work feels difficult, slow, or dependent on one person. Include the people doing the work: employer and employee views can differ, particularly about digital skills.
- Observe key tasks and review results, customer feedback, delays, rework, and errors for recurring patterns.
- Consider changes in staffing, technology, customer expectations, and the way work is organized.
- Separate a skill gap from a skill shortage. A gap means current employees lack a capability needed in their roles; a shortage means suitable skilled workers are hard to find in the wider labor market. The first may call for development or redesigned work; the second may require a different hiring approach or a change in how the work is delivered.
OECD’s 2024 PIAAC Employer Module report found that 36% of firms on average across its five surveyed countries reported skill gaps to some extent. The country figures were 54% in the Slovak Republic, 37% in Italy, 32% in Portugal, 31% in the Netherlands, and 27% in Hungary. These are surveyed-firm results—not a universal estimate for small businesses. The initial wave covered firms with at least ten employees in those five European countries, so it does not directly establish rates for sole proprietors, microbusinesses with fewer than ten employees, or every country and industry. Read the OECD findings on how firms experience skill gaps.
5. Prioritize the gaps that matter most
Do not treat every desirable ability as an urgent need. For each potential gap, note:
- Which growth outcome and work activity it affects.
- How soon the capability is needed.
- What may happen if the gap remains unresolved.
- Whether the skill can be developed in time or must be available quickly.
This is a practical way to make trade-offs, not a validated scoring formula. A gap tied directly to a near-term customer commitment may deserve attention before a capability that would be useful only in a later phase of growth.
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Match the response to the specific capability, its deadline, and the effect of addressing it on current operations. Training, recruitment, and work-practice changes can be combined; none is automatically the right answer for every gap.
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| Response | Best fit | Trade-offs to consider |
|---|---|---|
| Targeted development | Existing staff can learn the specific capability in the time available, and there is capacity to support learning. | Builds internal capability, but takes time and may disrupt work while people learn. Training needs to be high quality and aimed at the identified skill. |
| Recruitment | The capability is needed soon, is not available internally, or requires experience the business cannot build quickly. | Can bring in needed expertise, but depends on finding a suitable candidate and does not by itself resolve other gaps in the team or workflow. |
| Change work practices | Tasks can be redistributed, simplified, supported with technology, or organized differently so the gap has less effect. | May reduce the immediate need for a capability, but requires a workable process and can shift demands elsewhere in the team. |
In OECD’s 2024 evidence, nine in ten firms reporting skill gaps used training and development, 49% used recruitment, and 39% changed work practices. Firms could use more than one response; these figures describe surveyed firms, not a ranking of what will work best for a particular business. The report also found that 73% of firms reporting a skill gap assessed skill needs, compared with 63% of firms reporting no gap. That association does not show that assessment causes gaps or their resolution. See the OECD discussion of how firms assess and address skill gaps.
Assessment paired with a next step is also reflected in Ireland’s Skills for Better Business programme, described in the OECD’s 2023 SME and Entrepreneurship Outlook as a free online assessment for SME owner-managers to identify management and business capabilities and areas to target for growth. Access, eligibility, and programme details can change; consult the OECD account of SME skills and support programmes for context and check current programme information before relying on it.
7. Reassess when the business changes
Repeat the assessment when you change your offer, market, tools, or operating model, and revisit priorities as customer needs and business conditions shift. Skills planning is most useful as part of decisions about upcoming work, rather than as a one-time inventory detached from the growth plan.
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