An Employer's Guide to Closing Skills Gaps

The skills gap is more than a buzzword. It is a real, growing issue for employers across the UK. Technology is advancing, industries are shifting, and the demands on your workforce are evolving faster than ever. Whether you are in automotive, logistics, IT, or professional services, chances are your organisation is feeling the pressure.

You might be struggling to recruit skilled workers, or noticing that your current team lacks the up-to-date capabilities needed to keep pace. Either way, the result is the same: reduced productivity, increased risk, and a missed opportunity to grow.

This guide is built to help you close that gap.

Why Closing Skills Gaps Matters

A skills gap is the difference between the skills your organisation needs and the skills your workforce actually has. It can exist at every level, from entry-level roles to senior leadership. It affects business outcomes directly.

• Missed deadlines and lower productivity
• Higher recruitment and onboarding costs
• Frustrated employees who feel underprepared
• Greater risk of errors, accidents, or reputational damage

Closing the skills gap means protecting your bottom line, improving team morale, and strengthening your future competitiveness.

Step 1: Identify the Gaps

Before you act, you need a clear picture of where the problems lie. Skills gaps are often hidden in plain sight. Your team might be getting the job done, but not efficiently. Or they might be firefighting instead of innovating. Start by asking the right questions:

Conduct a Skills Audit

A proper skills audit should go beyond job titles and qualifications. You are looking for the actual capabilities your business needs, now and in the future.

• What are the core competencies required for each role?
• Where are the knowledge, behavioural or technical shortfalls?
• Are there upcoming changes that will demand new skills? (e.g. tech, regulations, client needs)

Involve line managers and team leads to ensure insights reflect real-world performance, not just assumptions.

Review Performance Data

Look at your key metrics. Are teams hitting their targets? Where are the bottlenecks? Is quality consistent? These indicators can reveal skills-related challenges, especially when combined with qualitative feedback.

Gather Employee Feedback

Sometimes, your employees know more than you do. Ask them directly:

• What parts of their job do they feel underprepared for?
• Where do they spend the most time or feel the most frustration?
• What skills do they wish they had?

This feedback can inform your audit and also highlight development priorities that align with personal growth, not just business outcomes.

Step 2: Understand Your Options

Once you know where the gaps are, you can decide how to address them. There are three primary routes:

1. Upskill Your Existing Workforce

Upskilling means training your current staff to develop new skills. This route often leads to the most sustainable, cost-effective results. It also improves morale and retention, because it shows your people that you are invested in their future.

When should you upskill?

• When the individual has potential but lacks training
• When loyalty and internal knowledge are valuable
• When recruiting externally is difficult or costly

Upskilling works best when it is structured, relevant and supported by expert trainers.

2. Reskill for New Roles

Reskilling is different from upskilling. It involves helping an employee move into a different role altogether. Think of someone in admin moving into digital marketing, or a technician transitioning to a training role.

This is particularly useful when roles are evolving or being phased out. Rather than making redundancies, you retain valuable people and fill future talent needs at the same time.

3. Hire New Talent

Sometimes the gap is too wide, or the need is too urgent. That is when hiring becomes necessary.

But recruitment alone will not solve the problem unless it is part of a broader workforce strategy. That means considering:

• The onboarding and ramp-up time for new hires
• The cost and competition of recruiting externally
• Whether new staff will face the same skills challenges in future

Many employers combine recruitment with structured development like apprenticeships, to bring in new talent and shape it from the start.

Step 3: Build a Skills Strategy

Tackling a skills gap is not about one-off training. It is about building a long-term plan for capability growth. A good skills strategy includes:

1. Role Mapping

Define each role in your business by:

• The tasks it performs
• The knowledge, skills and behaviours it requires
• The future skills that may become important

This creates a benchmark for recruitment, training, and progression.

2. Personal Development Planning

Set clear development goals for every employee. Align these with business needs and personal aspirations. Use appraisals, 1-1s, and mentoring to make development part of your everyday management.

3. Training Pathways

Your development offer should not be piecemeal. Create clear pathways based on job family, seniority, and career goals.

Include options such as:

• Apprenticeships (from Level 2 to Degree Level)
• Short courses for quick wins
• Coaching and mentoring
• Internal knowledge sharing

Work with a provider who can help design and deliver this structure.

Step 4: Decide When Apprenticeships Make Sense

Apprenticeships are often misunderstood. They are not just for school leavers or manual roles. Today’s programmes cover digital, tech, business, management, and more.

Who are apprenticeships ideal for?

• New hires who need to be shaped into a role
• Employees stepping into leadership or specialist roles
• People moving into a new field (e.g. marketing, data, HR)

What are the benefits of apprenticeships for skill gaps?

• Government funding reduces costs
• Programmes are nationally recognised
• Learners apply their knowledge on the job
• You get results without time-consuming day release

We help businesses make apprenticeships work in a way that fits their structure, goals, and timelines.

Step 5: Partner with the Right Provider

Your training partner should feel like an extension of your business. That means they need to:

• Understand your industry
• Align with your values and culture
• Deliver consistent quality and measurable results
• Adapt their delivery to suit your operations

We go beyond compliance. We work consultatively, helping you design a learning offer that improves performance, retains staff, and makes your business stronger.

We take care of the admin, help access funding, and support your learners with expert trainers, emotional wellbeing coaches, and progress reviews that keep you informed and in control.

Step 6: Measure the Impact

Closing skills gaps is an investment. Like any investment, you need to track the return.

Use Hard Metrics:

• Productivity improvements
• Speed to competence
• Quality and accuracy
• Reduction in errors or complaints
• Recruitment and retention rates

Use Soft Metrics:

• Staff confidence and engagement
• Culture and collaboration
• Readiness for change

If your training provider can’t help you demonstrate ROI, it is time to find one who can.

Step 7: Make Skills a Continuous Priority

Skills gaps are not a one-time problem. As your business evolves, new gaps will emerge. The most successful employers are the ones who treat learning as an ongoing, strategic priority.

Tips to keep the momentum:

• Build skills development into annual planning
• Link training to business goals and change programmes
• Celebrate learning progress and milestones
• Encourage line managers to take responsibility for development

When learning is part of your culture, capability grows across the board. And the gap? It gets smaller every day.

Don’t Wait Until It Hurts

Too often, employers address skills gaps only when performance drops or turnover spikes. But by then, the cost is already high.

Start early. Stay proactive. Invest in your people.

Whether you need to recruit, upskill, or completely rethink your talent strategy, Remit can help you find the right path forward.

We’re here to deliver outstanding learning experiences that improve performance, strengthen teams, and set your business up for long-term success.