IT Skills Gap: The First Step Companies Should Take To Manage It

How To Close IT Skills Gap

Organizations are confronted with an unprecedented rate of technological change. But one problem persists repeatedly: the IT skills gap. This skills drift—from what your employees know now to what they will require in the future—can put digital plans at risk, undermine operational effectiveness, and compromise competitive positioning. Although numerous organizations reflexively turn to training initiatives or recruitment binges, it all begins with an anchor move that determines the success. In this article, we look at why defining business goals and aligning the IT capabilities of your workforce with those goals is the imperative first step. We’ll be taking advantage of the latest industry research, best practices from experts, and measurable facts to demonstrate how that method provides long-term results.

1. Anchor The Skills Strategy In Business Objectives

Too often, companies launch into technical assessments or training without a clear strategy. Yet, data from CompTIA shows a staggering 93% of IT leaders acknowledge a gap between current and desired workforce skills. That gap becomes unmanageable unless linked to concrete business outcomes. The first step, therefore, is to ask: What are our top strategic priorities over the next 12–36 months?

1. Are you aiming to scale an AI-driven customer support platform?
2. Planning to migrate core services to cloud infrastructure?
3. Or trying to automate routine finance workflows?

By connecting these ambitions to the technical talents needed—for instance, Machine Learning, cloud DevOps, or robotic process automation—you provide the skills strategy with a definite direction. This connection makes all the following analyses, investments, or recruitment decisions serve measurable objectives such as lowering time‑to‑market, enhancing system uptime, or streamlining operational expenses.

2. Build A Comprehensive Skills Taxonomy Tailored To Your Goals

Once objectives are defined, companies must drill down into the specific IT capabilities needed. The British Computer Society’s SFIAplus framework, for instance, helps companies structure IT competencies from technical depth to leadership and innovation skills. Adopting such a taxonomy enables organizations to:

1. Identify exact capabilities needed (e.g., Java microservices, Kubernetes management)
2. Profile proficiency levels required.
3. Maintain alignment with business ambitions.

In a survey published by MIT Sloan, researchers underline that organizations using AI-driven “skills inference” to map employee abilities to future needs are more strategic in workforce planning. Establishing a dynamic skills lexicon—like a customized SFIA model—ensures clarity across leadership, HR, and L&D teams on exactly what must be measured and developed.

3. Diagnose Current Capability Via Skills Inventory

With skills clearly defined, the next move is to objectively measure existing proficiency across your workforce. Leading organizations like AT&T have invested heavily—$1 billion on retraining over 100,000 employees—hinging on comprehensive assessments such as skills inventories and AI-enabled assessments. Here’s what this phase entails:

1. Deploy surveys, self-evaluation forms, or supervisor reviews based on your skills taxonomy.
2. Use skills-matching tools—many now leverage AI—to benchmark proficiency accurately .
3. Create heatmap visualizations to highlight critical deficits (e.g. low cloud adoption, security gaps)

Research from Seth Mattison in 2025 suggests that 87% of executives expect significant IT skills gaps in their workforce, and 44% of essential skills may be impacted by automation. A rigorously conducted skills inventory transforms vague assumptions into structured, actionable data.

4. Analyze And Prioritize Gaps By Business Impact

Not every skills lack carries equal weight. Once you know what is missing, the next step is discerning which gaps matter most. Research predicts companies lose an estimated 25 days of productivity per year due to data skills shortfalls. But some gaps—such as cybersecurity or cloud architecture expertise—may forestall entire digital transformation initiatives. Stack gaps by:

1. Criticality to revenue and innovation goals.
2. Risk of disruption (e.g., potential system outages)
3. Cost of delay.
4. Ease of remediation (internal upskilling versus costly recruitment)

This prioritization ensures focused deployment of resources to areas like automation engineering, cybersecurity, or data science, where the ROI is highest.

5. Apply A Balanced Mix Of Upskilling, Reskilling, And Hiring

After diagnosing and prioritizing, companies should choose the right mix of talent strategies:

1. Reskill internally
   Partner high-potential employees with mentors for real-world, on‑the‑job training.
2. Upskill
   Provide targeted certifications to align academic qualifications with industry needs (90% of such graduates are job-ready)
3. Hire
   When internal gaps are strategic bottlenecks, bring in qualified talent—especially people who learn quickly and demonstrate adaptability, even if they lack traditional credentials .

Amazon’s $1.2 billion investment to upskill 300,000 employees across digital and mechatronics disciplines exemplifies how to combine internal development with a strategic approach. Blending all three options creates a sustainable model of workforce readiness.

6. Embed Ongoing Monitoring And Agile Refinement

The IT landscape evolves rapidly. What’s critical today may be obsolete tomorrow. That’s why skill strategies must be adaptive:

1. Review skills mapping annually (or more often if needed)
2. Use Lean principles—such as agile learning—to iterate training programs in short sprints, based on sprint retrospectives and upskilling outcomes.
3. Track KPIs, such as internal fill rates, project cycle times, employee engagement, and customer feedback.
4. Refocus on new priorities as cloud, AI, or cybersecurity needs change next quarter.

Each skills gap represents an opportunity, not a deficiency—reinforcing a growth mindset within the organization.

Why The First Step Matters Most

Skipping the foundational first step—aligning IT skills with business strategy—can doom any upskilling initiative. Without it:

1. Training programs become unfocused and underfunded.
2. Recruitment is based on outdated requirements.
3. ROI is unclear.
4. Senior leadership loses confidence.

Conversely, companies that have shown that clear alignment—with metrics like 95% apprenticeship-to-hire conversions—delivers measurable returns.

Conclusion: Build Skills With Purpose, Guided By Strategy

The solution to an IT skills gap is intentionality. Set your strategic objectives, chart necessary skills, evaluate your workforce against those ideals, and follow a balanced reskilling, upskilling, and selective hiring approach. Keeping it going as a rolling cycle turns your workforce into an asset instead of a reactive burden.

By beginning with business purposes, organizations avoid wasted effort, guarantee measurable effects, and incorporate resilience into their talent strategy. As digital disruption speeds up, this disciplined methodology will make it known which companies adapt, and which ones are left behind.

Skills Caravan

Skills Caravan multi-product Learning Experience Platform, Content Library, Engagement platform, Credentialing and Impact reporting we automate and integrate the Learning and Development process.