company skills matrix Archives - Skills Base

What is the difference between a skills matrix and a competency matrix?

Nick — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 03:01:41 +0000

Whether you’re looking for a new job, writing a job description, or assembling a team, one thing you are bound to come across is “skills” and “competencies”. If you thought they were the same thing, you’re not alone! However, while they are definitely related, the two terms also have some key differences, and we are going to break them down in this article.

What are skills?

The term “skill” can have many definitions in its broad use, however, in the context of skills management, a skill is a granular, learned ability possessed by a person, and especially the proficiency in performing or executing that ability. We say “granular”, because when it comes to something like optimizing training, or allocating employees to projects, being specific really counts!

A few examples of skills

It’s important that skills data should become a common language across your workforce and organization. Without a clear foundation in terms of your skills taxonomy your employees and teams will have a greater range of subjective interpretation.

If we were to look into someone in a software developer role a few of their skills could include:

Java,
Data Entry,
HTML 5,
AWS Kubernetes. or
Working Remotely

It is all about what a person can (or cannot) do.

What are competencies

Competencies are a combined set of abilities, desire, and knowledge required to be considered “competent” in performing or executing a particular function. Competencies form the basis for measuring the capabilities of an organization’s workforce. Competency tracking systems help organization’s stay across staff skill abilities, desires and knowledge.

It is also critical for managers to create competency targets for their business as a way to understand their ability to properly track skills or groups of skill sets at the desired level or output.

A few examples of competencies

Competencies are those that can benefit the business in a strategic way and give an overview of whether or not someone can perform a skill or perform a group of skills in a valid way. Taking the software developer example above a few examples include:

Competence in using the skill Java,
Competence in Back-end Language Skills,
Competence in Software and Digital Skills

Why both skills and competency tracking is valuable

The main difference between these two terms is, to put it very simply, competencies are broader than skills. A competence combines knowledge, skills, and ability together, where a skill is a part of a competence. Understanding both someone’s skills and competencies can be very valuable for businesses and hiring managers, as well as individuals who want visibility of their career progression.

Visualizing through a skills and competency matrix

Skills and competency matrix software, can help with visualizing what a person can do and how they can contribute to a team or organization. And, unlike Excel, it can be used to track, measure and visualize data in real-time regardless of being at an employee, team or organization level.

A matrix or framework can help map out skills and competencies so decision makers have a clear picture of teams and individuals and staff can see how they are progressing. They can make creating teams easier, pinpoint where there are skill gaps, find people with skills you wouldn’t typically know they had, link training outcomes to skill and competency levels and help cover staff that are sick or away.

A Skill and Competency Matrix Example

Using the skills and competency reporting features in Skills Base as an example, and focusing on the software developer role we discussed earlier, we can start to get a clearer picture of what it all might look like. This image (using some dummy data) reports on the skill levels, and competency levels for this specific employee.

If we take a closer look at a specific skill ( Java ) You will be able to see a few things. As an organization we have said that we need all employees to have a skill level of at least 2. This employee unfortunately only has a assessed skill rating of 1. Therefore they are only 50% competent in completing this skill.

Having this data visualized and mapped out means that from a training perspective, a manager can work collaboratively with an employee to improve their skill level. Whether it’s through online courses, new qualifications or coaching.

If we take a step back and look at the broader category of Back-End Languages, this employee is well and truly above target in PHP, and if we average those ratings out, (2.5 skill level) the employee will have a competence rating of 75% in Back-End language skills.

As you can start to imagine, this starts to paint a powerful picture for the skills and competencies of an employee, team or organization as a whole. Opening up the opportunity for data driven Workforce planning, employee experience and business decisions.

Want to start tracking skills and competencies today? We can help! Our team can assist in getting started, looking into your skills-based technology stack, or just figuring out what is the next best step. Send through an enquiry or book your demo today.

The post What is the difference between a skills matrix and a competency matrix? appeared first on Skills Base.

A Skills Matrix Tool vs Excel: Finding your Skills Gaps

Nick — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 09:47:22 +0000

Using a skills matrix to keep track of skills and competencies is a valuable tool for many organizations and HR professionals. However, over the last decade, the way in which we manage and understand skills has shifted. Skills are now the cornerstone of every element of an effective business from recruitment and retention to resource management and execution of strategy. This has resulted in an ever-expanding volume of skills to be tracked, an increase in their complexity and the need to understand technical skills in a considerably more granular way.

There are many options for crafting a skills matrix, with most organizations first looking to spreadsheets like Excel, or Google Sheets, as a simple, affordable solution. While this does work in some situations, their static, siloed nature means it may not be the ideal tool for creating your employee, team, or company skill matrix long term.

As we continue to invest in critical skills and competencies in 2021 to improve training, learning and development, workforce allocation, recruitment and business outcomes, we need to think about the tools that can help us better visualize, understand and act on our workforce’s skills gaps and strengths.

Is there a modern skills matrix tool that can scale, in an efficient, collaborative and transparent way?,

Excel struggles as a part of a broader skills management approach

Excel is a powerful tool that many organizations use across many different tasks. It offers flexibility in how it displays data, and is one of the most common pieces of software in a company’s technology stack.

However, In order to properly utilize and create a skills matrix with Excel, there are many systems, processes, integrations, and technologies that work behind the scenes in order to identify the right skills and competencies to show. This includes:

Building a taxonomy of skills,
Clearly mapping relationships between skills, employees, teams, roles and different geographic locations,
Assessing those employees in an achievable and sustainable (structured-subjective) way, and
Reporting on that underlying data via a skills matrix.

It’s this complexity that Excel and other spreadsheets struggle to manage.

Vodafone Retail NZ is just one organization that identified how Excel and spreadsheets could not manage their skills and competencies. By understanding the bigger skill management approach problem, they were able to bring all of their skills and assessment data into one place to create a single source of truth. From this they can now take advantage of a real-time Skills Matrix that can be used to easily spot the skills gaps and opportunities across their workforce to make informed planning, training and learning decisions.

5 Reasons to use a skills matrix tool over Excel

While Excel and Google Sheets have an important place in any organization, when it comes to a competent skills matrix, a purpose-built option far outweighs it – but why? Here are 5 reasons:

1. Scale

Excel is great at reporting on small, medium and large datasets, but it is not made specifically with a skills matrix in mind. Today, there are thousands of skills to consider and having specific software provides automatic tracking and reporting, with simple creation of employee, team, and organization level skills matrices at any scale.

2. Speed

Creating and maintaining an Excel spreadsheet can be labour-intensive. The software isn’t made specifically for the task of mapping skills and therefore requires starting from scratch. Keeping it updated takes significant time and effort. You then have to consider how often the document needs to be updated and when to inform relevant parties when updates have been made. A skills matrix tool can do a lot of the hard work for you.

3. Transparency

Excel documents are often stored on local devices and even if they are uploaded to the cloud or on Google Sheets, organizing them into the right place requires specific processes and education of staff. This means they are often lost in unknown locations and updated, accurate versions are difficult to find and identify. A skills matrix ensures everything is in one place, accurate, and up-to-date.

4. Data & Security

When users access an Excel sheet, their level of access is the same across different people. Even on Google Sheets, the options for access levels are limited. Who has what type of access, who is allowed to perform what type of action, or who can act in what role cannot be configured using these programs. While this makes it easy to edit a document, when it comes to skills mapping and sensitive employee information, something more secure is crucial. Global Data laws including GDPR, CCPA can also come into play here. Skills matrix software that is made with good security in mind can allow permission based read and write access for different employees within an organization.

5. Actionable

Excel can gather lots of data but collating data from many different sources and turning that into something actionable can be difficult. Skills matrix data can be linked with HR, Learning Management systems, and training systems to support key decisions. You can track and view skill trends over time to see what’s working and what isn’t, as well as quickly determining what to act on from these trends.

Finding a purpose-built skills matrix tool

So, what are the alternatives to Excel and Google Sheets? Today, HR Systems and Skills
Management Systems come in many forms to suit different applications. HR Systems have
more functionality and better user experience than Excel but focus on broader skill types. If you are looking for something specifically made for building a skills library, data mapping, assessing employees, and then reporting via a skills matrix tool, a Skills Management system is a powerful addition to your arsenal.

Skills Management Systems remove the problems of Excel and offer an easy
solution for tracking and management of team skills, their career progression, and skills gaps.

Looking for a skills matrix tool? Skills Base can help you build a robust data-driven skills
platform simply, with the ability to scale up or down as needed. If you need help getting started
or you’re reviewing your skills technology stack, book in a demo, or get in touch today.

The post A Skills Matrix Tool vs Excel: Finding your Skills Gaps appeared first on Skills Base.