Skills Library 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.

How To Create a Skills Library For Your Organization

Nick — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 03:01:05 +0000

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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