The RaRe² (Horizon Europe) initiative unveiled the Early Reskiller, a skill gap assessment tool designed to give employers a fast, evidence-based view of their workforce capabilities and guide timely decisions on whether to upskill existing staff or hire new talent.
Built on recognized skills taxonomies (such as ESCO and O*NET) and powered by modern analytics, Early Reskiller translates strategy into skills in two steps. First, a short leadership survey captures business priorities and the roles most critical to deliver them. Second, an employee self-assessment benchmarks soft, hard, and digital skills against those role profiles. The result is a clear, role-aligned picture of capability gaps at both team and individual levels—plus concrete options to close them.
“Organizations don’t need another generic audit; they need actionable insight that connects business goals to the real skills on the ground,” said a RaRe² project spokesperson. “Early Reskiller provides that link. It helps leaders decide with confidence when to train, when to redeploy, and when a new hire is the right move.”
Unlike traditional assessments that can be slow to update, Early Reskiller’s standards-based approach and NLP-assisted clustering allow the competency model to evolve with changing strategies and market conditions. That means HR, L&D, and business unit leaders can re-run the assessment as priorities shift, keeping development plans current and reducing time-to-competence.
How to work
- Leadership & Strategy Snapshot: HR and business leaders identify priority outcomes and mission-critical roles. Behind the scenes, the tool groups competencies and maps functions to roles to create a shared skills language for the organization.
- Employee Skills Self-Assessment: Staff evaluate their proficiency against selected role profiles, producing a gap analysis that highlights strengths, shortfalls, and development priorities.
What organizations gain
- Clear gap insights: A role-based view of missing capabilities at team and individual levels.
- Actionable decisions: Evidence to choose between targeted upskilling and external hiring.
- Targeted development plans: Personalized learning paths and internal mobility options aligned to business outcomes.
Early Reskiller is sector-agnostic and designed to be run across functions and planning cycles. By combining leadership intent with employee data, the tool aims to cut time-to-competence, focus hiring on genuinely net-new capabilities, and create learning journeys that move the needle on performance.
“From audit to action, Early Reskiller shortens the distance between strategy and skills,” the spokesperson added. “It’s a practical way to make workforce transformation measurable, repeatable, and fair.”
Availability
Early Reskiller is available now to organizations participating in the RaRe² program, with broader access planned. Demonstrations can be scheduled for teams interested in piloting the tool on a priority role.
Press & inquiries:
Website: raresquare.eu
Email: alexander.dementyev@iwu.fraunhofer.de