Closing knowledge gaps in your business is essential to ensuring that your teams are working most efficiently. Keep reading to learn how.
In an age where information is just a click away, it’s easy to assume that we know more than ever before.
Yet, even with the vast expanse of data at our fingertips, knowledge gaps—those unseen voids in our understanding—persist and often go unnoticed.
These gaps can occur in any domain, from professional skills and academic subjects to personal growth and everyday tasks.
They shape our decisions, influence our opinions, and impact our effectiveness in both personal and professional realms.
Identifying and addressing these knowledge gaps is crucial for continuous learning and development.
- What a knowledge gap is
- Why you need to close knowledge gaps
- How to identify knowledge gaps
- And how to close knowledge gaps
Let’s get started.
What is a knowledge gap?
A knowledge gap is the gap between what your team needs to know and what they actually know.
As you’d suspect, if knowledge gaps aren’t closed, this can cause some problems, from delayed project completion and inefficient processes to fragmented team comms and more.
To make decisions effectively, team members need to draw on knowledge to help them complete tasks and make decisions efficiently and consistently.
But if that knowledge isn’t there, they have to find it elsewhere, which could mean reassigning tasks to others and generally wasting time and resources.
If you want to close the knowledge gaps in your organisation, keep reading to learn exactly how you can do that.
Related: What is a skills gap?
Why you need to close knowledge gaps
In a nutshell, if you don’t close knowledge gaps, you’ll fall far behind competitors and find it tricky to catch up.
You’ll struggle to retain and attract the best employees, and your team will lose motivation. Productivity will wane, and innovation won’t play a part in your company’s future.
And no business wants to face all that. So, what’s causing these knowledge gaps in the first place?
5 key causes of knowledge gaps
There are so many things your organisation could be doing that are unknowingly causing all kinds of knowledge gaps. (But don’t worry, there is plenty of time to turn this around.)
1. Lack of training
If you’re not investing in quality training and onboarding processes, you’re setting employees up to fail.
They’ll never be able to grasp your products or services in detail, which can jeopardise all that good customer service you’ve been delivering.
Imagine customers ask a staff member a question, and they have no clue how to answer. They’ll find someone else to help, and before you know it, everyone’s working day has been disrupted unnecessarily.
2. High employee turnover
If you have high employee turnover, there’s a reason, so figuring out the root cause of these issues can not only save you in future recruitment costs, but you get to retain all that top-tier talent (and their knowledge along with them!).
Related: Employee retention statistics you need to know
Training employees can be expensive; it’s estimated to cost companies £1,530 per employee, but it’s a cost that’s worth it if you’re able to retain them.
As soon as an employee leaves and you bring on a newbie, that knowledge gap is immediately waiting to be closed. This process can be resource-intensive and costly.
3. Siloed working environment
If your departments are all siloed, you’ve got a problem.
There’s no free-flowing knowledge happening. Everyone is keeping themselves to themselves, which isn’t a strategy that promotes long-term and stable company growth.
To knowledge share, you have to remove these silos and start communicating cross-departmental.
4. Poor comms and data sharing
Poor communication hinders productivity and innovation, with 22% of employees having considered leaving their jobs because of poor communication.
If you don’t communicate goals and share wins and losses, employees will never work together toward a common goal, i.e., project completion.
5. Rapid tech advancements
You only have to look to the last few years to see how quickly tech has shaped the corporate landscape, and these changes show no signs of slowing down.
This means you need to be agile and flexible to any changes on the horizon, so embrace tech where possible and invest in training to futureproof your staff.
How to identify knowledge gaps
Now you know what can cause knowledge gaps, it’s time to identify where they’re coming from.
The best way to do this is to conduct a knowledge gap analysis, sometimes called a learning needs analysis.
This process involves defining clear learning objectives — what do you want to change in your organisation?
Perhaps you have a lacklustre onboarding process or a few concerns about compliance.
Whatever your goal, take the time to outline the overall objectives.
Next, you’ll want to assess your team’s current knowledge.
After talking to department heads and team members, you can start to identify knowledge gaps and other areas for improvement.
Once you’ve gathered a clear understanding of what knowledge your organisation does and doesn’t have onboard, you can start to close your knowledge gaps.
How to close knowledge gaps
After figuring out where your knowledge gaps have come from, it’s time to put some plans into action.
This is where you’ll start to see results.
Develop training solutions
Your training solutions might look like purchasing a LinkedIn learning subscription, allowing employees to find relevant course content and signing up for them individually or perhaps you’ll implement an internal mentoring program.
But, if you’re looking for a company-wide learning solution, consider finding a learning management platform (LMS) that can be built to accommodate your specific learning pathway needs.
💡 Pro Tip
From eCommerce to onboarding and compliance, BuildEmpire helps thousands of SMEs just like you to streamline their training and deliver development programmes that get results.
Don’t believe us? Check out our case studies.
Foster a learning culture
By fostering a learning culture, you’re encouraging every member of your team to grow, learn, and develop new skills.
This helps both the company and its employees. Employees feel valued and invested, and the company benefits from innovative thinking and a reliable skillset. It’s a win-win.
To further foster that learning culture, you can consider using knowledge-sharing platforms.
These platforms facilitate and promote productivity and efficient communication and can help improve employee engagement, too.
Measure progress and impact
A learning culture needs to be maintained, which means supporting continuous learning. To do this successfully, learning and its output need to be measured.
To measure this, find learning software that lets you track learner progress and course completion and gives you insight into engagement metrics so you can monitor user adoption.
Don’t forget to ask employees for regular feedback. You won’t know their true thoughts if you don’t ask them.
Related: How to give feedback in the workplace
You can do this in 1-2-1 catch-ups or through anonymous surveys. However you do it, make sure you do it regularly.
If you don’t ask for feedback, it could mean employees aren’t getting what they need from the learning management system, and you could easily waste your money.
Wrapping up
How do you choose the right learning platform for your business needs?
We’ve done some of the work here.
Here’s how to choose the right learning platform for your business.
FAQs
What is a knowledge gap?
A knowledge gap occurs when there’s a difference between what learners currently know and what they need to know to perform a task or achieve a goal, such as not knowing product codes, even if they have the skills to scan, they lack the informational foundation.
Why is identifying knowledge gaps important?
Because knowledge gaps can lead to skills gaps and performance issues, affecting productivity, increasing errors, and lowering morale. Pre and post-training assessments help spot what learners don’t know, enabling targeted support that improves real-world performance.
How can you identify knowledge gaps effectively?
Four effective methods are:
- Audits of documentation and talking to subject-matter experts to uncover undocumented or missing knowledge areas
- Pre and post-training quizzes to measure knowledge before and after learning
- Self-assessments and surveys to gather perceived knowledge needs
- Supervisor observations and performance data, analyzing mistakes or KPIs