Skills Inventory Archives - Skills Base https://www.skills-base.com/tag/skills-inventory Skills Base Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:56:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.skills-base.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/cropped-Skills-Base-Website-Icon-32x32.png Skills Inventory Archives - Skills Base https://www.skills-base.com/tag/skills-inventory 32 32 184397392 What is the difference between a skills matrix and a competency matrix? https://www.skills-base.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-skills-matrix-and-a-competency-matrix Thu, 26 Aug 2021 03:01:41 +0000 https://www.skills-base.com/?p=9531 Whether you’re looking for a new job, writing a job description, or assembling a team, one thing you are bound…

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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.

A Skill and Competency Matrix Example

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.

skills matrix and a competency matrix - Java Skill Level

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.

skills matrix and a competency matrix - Back-end Languages

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.

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]]> 9531 How To Create a Skills Library For Your Organization https://www.skills-base.com/getting-started-with-your-skills-library-what-you-need-to-know Tue, 02 Mar 2021 03:01:05 +0000 https://www.skills-base.com/?p=6117 A skills library is the foundational element for a skills-based approach, enabling you to act in a real-time and dynamic…

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A skills library is the foundational element for a skills-based approach, enabling you to act in a real-time and dynamic way to support strategy, and employee-focused decisions.

It seems as though we’re in the middle of a perfect storm. As our lives and careers get longer, the useful life of the skills we learn today are getting shorter. Businesses, looking to be more resilient in the times of COVID, automation and AI, are scrambling to find the skills they need for the future. And, employees are looking for development opportunities that better link their career aspirations with their own goals and interests.

As HR leaders, Project Managers, L&D professionals and business leaders we can’t sit back. Gartner’s 2020 Shifting Skills Survey found that 69% of HR professionals have seen an increase in pressure from employees while 60% are being pressured by their CEOs to build a more resilient business that’s aligned with future skills.

It’s very easy to make in-the-moment decisions on these issues, but how do you know they’re working? Are they helping your employees to thrive? Are they adding value to your customers? Are they helping you become more resilient as an organization?

We need to stop and think about the underlying data that we’re basing these decisions on. However, before we can begin to understand the data, we need to define a structure that will allow us to make sense of it and to act in a meaningful way.

The old way of doing things — static, siloed, and ad-hoc — just doesn’t cut it in today’s fast-paced and dynamic world.

So, what is a skills library?

In its most basic form, a skills library — also called, a skills inventory, a skills catalog or skill ontology is a centralized and structured database of skills data, qualifications and employee attributes that helps to create a unified understanding of skills within an organization.

Your skills library should be a dynamic system that can be updated based on your workforce and the ever-changing skills landscape. When deployed as part of a broader skills-based strategy, you are in a better position to build more competent project teams, create fit-for-purpose training programs, support L&D investment decisions and create a business that can thrive in a volatile market.

How do I start building a skills library?

An important starting point in relation to your skills library is understanding the underlying data structure or schema. Excel and spreadsheets will always have their place however, when looking to create complex data relationships, and encourage a collaborative and transparent environment at scale, an Excel tool will inevitably fall apart.

It’s also worth understanding that your skills library won’t ever be perfect. Your strategy should be focused on first getting to an adequate milestone and then constantly measuring, optimizing and iterating based on your employee assessment data and the skills gaps across your business.

So getting started, what are the components of a good skills library?

Component 1 - Skill categorisation and hierarchy

One of the first things you want to do is create a skills hierarchy or skills categories within your business. This will change drastically based on each individual organization. For simple soft skills there is less interpretation involved overall, the decision that you have to make however is whether or not you focus more on role specific categories such as HR, Marketing, Devops, and IT or track highly process driven skills such as “applying security measures to IT infrastructure” or “Quality Assurance for end-of-the-line manufacturing”.

You should take time to consider the implications of skills categories across your organization to ensure they align to your business goals and that everyone can easily understand and interpret the data.

Component 2 - Skill Names

Skill names should not be so broad that the organization loses out on the valuable information a greater number of more specific skills would be captured. Nor should skills be so specific that measuring staff performance against them fails to add more value than what would have been captured by a smaller number of broader skills.

Component 3 - Skill Descriptions

Skill Descriptions are key to creating a unified understanding of each skill. By keeping the descriptions as detailed as possible prevents individual interpretation. This becomes critical when you begin using this as a basis for auditing and assessing the competency of your team.

Component 4 - Skill Relationship Mapping

In order to move beyond a static and simple skills library you must figure out how you want to assign your employees to roles, teams and different geographic locations. Having these specific entities mapped to each skill helps to build context and relevance to your data, and becomes an essential part to measuring success and making data-led decisions based on specific skill gaps and strengths.

So, where to from here?

Your skills library is an essential part to your business, and making data-driven decisions around employee, and organization outcomes. And, it should be a priority for any Human Resources, Learning and Development, Training and organizational leader.

If you need help getting started, looking into your skills-based technology stack, or stuck on what to do next we’re always here to help.

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]]> 6117 Skills Management 2020 Feature Updates in Review https://www.skills-base.com/skills-management-2020-feature-updates-in-review Thu, 10 Dec 2020 00:36:57 +0000 https://www.skills-base.com/?p=5153 As things start to quieten down for the holiday period, we wanted to take the time to show you the…

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As things start to quieten down for the holiday period, we wanted to take the time to show you the amazing features that the Skills Base community has helped us create this year.

One evident observation across the industries and organizations that we deal with is clear focus on skills.

In June, we saw Microsoft launch a global initiative to help 25 million people improve their digital competencies. In August, we saw Google announce a ground-breaking new skills and certification initiative set to disrupt college degrees. And we have seen governments across the globe announcing major investments to enable the rapid transition to skill-led economies. What’s more, this transition has been accelerated by the COVID-driven shift to remote work.

It’s crystal clear that effective skill management is no longer a nice-to-have. Skills are now the atomic element of every business and every business’ skill management strategy. And that strategy needs to be more powerful, more efficient and more agile than spreadsheets or directories full of PDFs.

Over the last year, we’ve been fortunate enough to work closely with our growing, global customer base to improve their skills management experience. This means we’ve been able to provide a constantly improving cloud-based platform that puts employee skills at the heart of decision making.

We appreciate the input of the Skills Base community, and we’re excited to show you the amazing features that you’ve helped us create this year! Make sure to follow us on Linkedin and Twitter to stay updated on new features, case studies and news.

Jump to the updates you want to read

Skills Inventory Updates for 2020

Improvements to your skills inventory and database

Your skills inventory (or skills database) is one of the most important parts of Skills Base. It’s where your skills data resides. This year we’ve focused on giving you more visibility into this data while enabling you to build additional relationships between the data and your people to help you make better-informed, faster decisions. Here is a quick sample of some of those improvements.

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Implemented the new Interactive Skills Matrix within the employee dashboard

Read more >
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Added the ability to export your people directory

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Added the new "My Team" navigation menu item

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Added the option to set individual employee competency targets

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Added the ability to assign custom fields to skills data

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Added the ability to assign multiple roles to employees

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Added the ability to overwrite view permissions within the people finder

Do you need even stricter control over your data and who sees what in Skills Base? This update gives you even more options to build on your data security.
WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Talk to the Skills Base team now. Schedule a live demo

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Skills Assessment & audit Updates for 2020

Improvements to your skills audits and assessments

Auditing and assessing the competency of skills is key to any successful skills management approach. This is where the human element really comes in and you need everyone to be involved and motivated. This year we’ve focused on; a) giving you greater control to link assessment dates with your business needs, b) the ability to control who views and performs assessments, and c) we’ve given you the tools to prompt your team when assessments are due. And more…

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Improved the ability to customize the assessment requirements for employees and supervisors

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Added in overall comments to assessment history

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Added in the ability to export employee and supervisor assessments with comments

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Added in the ability to set fixed assessment dates

Better align the skills audit and assessment process with the cadence of your team and organization.
Read more >
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Added the ability to notify employees via email to take self-assessments

Get your employees and teams assessed sooner by notifying them when their assessment is upcoming and due.
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Added the ability to perform partial assessments for employees via roles

Do you have employees that belong to different teams? This is a powerful new feature that works along side the new "multiple roles" feature and gives you the ability to better control skills audit outcomes.
Skills Reporting Updates for 2020

Improvements to your skills reporting

What good is data if you can’t do anything with it? We’ve worked hard to give you all the tools you need to make decisions within Skills Base, and extract the data you need to perform additional analysis. Whether it’s finding your skills gap, hiring, learning and development, investment planning, or project management, the Skills Data gives you the ability to make better-informed, data-driven decisions. Here are just some of this year’s improvements.

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Added direct links to the heat matrix & capability matrix reports from your dashboards

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Dashboard report links will now respect user's saved preferences

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Added new skills category level dashboards

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Added the ability to select multiple teams in the heat matrix report

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Added the new competency heat matrix report

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Added the ability to export team level data

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Added the ability to export skill assignment data

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Added the ability to export skill level targets

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Added the "last login" field to the report builder workflow

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Added the functionality to filter "report builder reports" by person

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Added the ability to export your Skills Matrix to Excel and .csv

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Added the option to edit saved reports

“With Skills Base we no longer see career development in a traditional vertical sense. Having the skills data readily available for anyone, staff can select roles they’re interested in and can progress towards them horizontally and diagonally, giving them a lot more freedom and control over their own career journey.’
Vodafone Case Study
Andy Hamilton
Training and Development Manager, Vodafone Retail NZ
Qualifications Updates for 2020

Improvements to your qualifications and certifications

Qualifications are an integral part of truly measuring employee competency. This year we’ve worked hard to embed a more robust qualification module within Skills Base (check out the knowledge base here). If you have any feedback or additions you were looking for, reach out and let us know but here are some enhancements you asked for and we delivered.

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Added the option to set expiry notifications for qualifications

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You can now add attachments to qualifications

Integrations & APi Updates for 2020

Improvements to your APIs, Integrations and SSO

Your skills management platform can’t sit in isolation. This is why Skills Base was built from the ground up with REST APIs and Single Sign On (SSO) connectors in mind. From HR Systems (HRIS), Project Management Tools, and Learning and Development platforms, we’re always interested to learn about the other tools you have in place so we can learn how to better integrate and make your experience with Skills Base better. 

Do you have a suggestion for a specific integration? Reach out and let us know.

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Added the ability to edit qualifications assignments via API

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Added the ability to update skill levels via the API

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Added the ability to trigger a workflow when when ratings are updated via the API

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You can now view the status of SSO certificates via the Skills Base UI

Infrastructure Updates for 2020

Improvements to the Skills Base global infrastructure

With customers around the world of varying sizes, and in many private and government organizations, we’ve put in a lot of effort this year to further enhance a safe, secure and globally scalable platform.

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Major Database Upgrades

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Major Global Infrastructure Upgrades

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Major Skills Base Deployment Process Upgrades

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Major Global Infrastructure Reporting Upgrades

What's else is new in 2020?

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Added new language preferences

You can now instantly change between German, English (UK) and English (US) within your profile options.
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Added the ability to filter columns within tables

You can now better understand your bulk data within Skills Base by filtering columns based on what you're looking for.
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Added the ability to change the default landing page for employees

Looking to improve your teams first time experience? Send them to the right page within Skills Base.
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Added opt-in functions for future Skills Base feature updates

Interested in staying up-to date with everything new in Skills Base for 2021? You can now opt in to our monthly feature updates from within your account settings.

Help us make Skills Base even better in 2021

We have some big plans for Skills Base in 2021. Make sure to stay in the loop by signing up to feature notifications, follow us on Linkedin and Twitter, and keep providing your feedback!

Enjoy the rest of the year and we look forward to 2021.

Schedule a demo

Talk to the team, ask us questions and see a demo of Skills Base for yourself.

Book my demo

Get started for free

Have a play around with Skills Base yourself and let us know what you think.

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]]> 5153 Quicker and easier reporting for roles, teams and locations https://www.skills-base.com/quicker-and-easier-reporting-for-roles-teams-and-locations Thu, 17 Sep 2020 01:42:28 +0000 https://www-test.skills-base.com/?p=3353 We’ve added new functionality to help you access Skills Base reports more quickly and efficiently. Team, Role and Location dashboards…

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We’ve added new functionality to help you access Skills Base reports more quickly and efficiently.

Team, Role and Location dashboards now include a “Reports” drop down menu which contains a list of reports that support filtering by those entities:

These links provide a convenient shortcut for accessing reports such as Heat Matrix and exports, and are preconfigured with filters based on the current entity.

We hope this new feature helps you even more efficiently access important insights across your organization.

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]]> 3353 One click aggregate data reporting for Skills Categories https://www.skills-base.com/one-click-aggregate-data-reporting-for-skills-categories Thu, 17 Sep 2020 01:40:48 +0000 https://www-test.skills-base.com/?p=3349 We’re pleased to announce the release of Skill Category dashboards, which are available to all customers. Each Skill Category now…

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We’re pleased to announce the release of Skill Category dashboards, which are available to all customers. Each Skill Category now comes with its own dashboard that is able to aggregate data from all skills within it, including skills of all sub-categories. This provides higher level of insights across skills within the organization, previously only available in the Heat Matrix report.

Skills Category Dashboard

Skill Category dashboards can be viewed by people that have permission to view Skill dashboards, and the contents are configurable via Security Group permissions. To view one, click a Skill Category name wherever one is presented as a hyperlink, or visit the Skills Directory.

We hope this new dashboard will help your organization by providing greater insights into the capabilities of the workforce.

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