Skills Matrix Archives - Skills Base https://www.skills-base.com/tag/skills-matrix Skills Base Wed, 13 May 2026 05:23:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.skills-base.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/cropped-Skills-Base-Website-Icon-32x32.png Skills Matrix Archives - Skills Base https://www.skills-base.com/tag/skills-matrix 32 32 184397392 Skills Gap Analysis: The Definitive Guide for Modern Enterprises https://www.skills-base.com/skills-gap-analysis-explained Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:57:04 +0000 https://www.skills-base.com/?p=10988 The traditional approach to human resources is failing. For decades, organizations have managed their most valuable asset—their people—using tools designed…

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How to understand, measure and act on your Skill Gaps - Thumbnail

The traditional approach to human resources is failing. For decades, organizations have managed their most valuable asset—their people—using tools designed for the industrial era. We treat employees as static entries in a spreadsheet, defined by rigid job titles, historical credentials, and annual reviews that are obsolete before the ink dries.

In a global economy where the half-life of a professional skill has dropped to a mere five years, this static model is not just inefficient; it is dangerous. If you are relying on job titles to understand your workforce, you are managing a fiction. You are flying blind into a market that demands agility.

If you are a CxO, an HR leader, or a People Manager, you are likely currently in “problem-solving mode.” You are facing a Skills Gap—the widening chasm between what your organization needs to achieve its strategic goals and the actual, verified capabilities of your workforce today.

This guide is your antidote to the “way we’ve always done it.” It is a comprehensive blueprint for conducting a Skills Gap Analysis that actually drives ROI. We move beyond the buzzwords to build a digital model of your workforce capabilities.

What is a Skills Gap Analysis? (The Real Definition)

At its core, a Skills Gap Analysis is the process of comparing your organization’s current workforce capabilities against the skills required to meet your business objectives.

However, at Skills Base, we define it with more precision: It is the identification of the strategic delta between verified proficiency and operational demand.

It is not a subjective “feeling” that a team is struggling. It is not a “Training Needs Analysis” (which focuses only on L&D). It is a data-driven diagnostic that uncovers exactly where your talent architecture is failing to support your business reality. It answers the critical questions that keep executives awake at night:

  • Do we have the talent to launch this product in Q3?

  • Why is our engineering velocity slowing down despite hiring more engineers?

  • Are we overspending on contractors because we don’t know who has these skills internally?

A true analysis provides Skills Intelligence. It moves beyond high-level charts to understand the “so what” behind the numbers. It is the foundation of Skills Gap Analysis itself—a tool that empowers everyone from the CEO to the front-line employee to make smarter talent decisions.

The Cost of the Invisible Gap

The “status quo” of talent management is expensive. Most organizations only realize they have a skills gap when it is too late—when a project fails, a key employee resigns, or a competitor out-maneuvers them.

  1. The Recruitment Burden: Recent SHRM data indicates the average cost per hire is over $4,700, but the “true” cost—including lost productivity, onboarding, and ramp time—is often three to four times the role’s salary. When you hire externally for a gap you could have filled internally, you are leaking capital.
  2. The L&D Black Box: Without a clear analysis, Learning and Development (L&D) spend is often wasted on “blanket” training. Research from Gartner shows that 70% of employees report they lack the skills needed for their jobs, despite billions spent on generic LMS platforms.
  3. The Obsolescence Risk: The World Economic Forum reports that 50% of all employees need reskilling to match the pace of technology. If you are not mapping these gaps today, you are planning for a future with an obsolete workforce.

How to Conduct a Skills Gap Analysis (The 6-Step Methodology)

We break the old habit of manual data collection and “gut feel” estimations. We replace it with a structured, contextual, and connected six-step process.

Step 1: Build the Target Model (The Taxonomy)

You cannot measure what you haven’t defined. Most companies fail at the first hurdle because they rely on generic job descriptions downloaded from the internet. To succeed, you must build a bespoke skills taxonomy.

This is the dictionary of your organization’s value. It reflects your unique language, your competitive edge, and your specific operational needs.

  • Be Specific: Do not list “Leadership.” That is too vague to measure. List “Agile Project Management,” “Cloud Architecture (AWS),” or “Conflict Resolution in Distributed Teams.”

  • Define Proficiency: What does “expert” look like in your context? A Level 4 Python Developer at a bank looks different from a Level 4 Python Developer at a startup. Use a standardized scale (e.g., 1–5) to ensure that when a manager in Sydney says a developer is “proficient,” it means the same thing to a director in London.

  • Avoid “Soft Skill” Fluff: Treat human skills with the same rigor as technical skills. “Communication” is vague; “Technical Documentation for API Integration” is a measurable skill.

Step 2: Map to Business Architecture (The Alignment)

This a key architectural step. You must create clear connections between talent and operations. Mapping is the process of aligning your data model to the way your business actually functions.

A list of skills is just data. A map of skills is intelligence.

  • Link Skills to Roles: Define which skills are “core” (mandatory) versus “aspirational” (nice to have) for specific roles. Gartner reports that the number of skills required for a single job is increasing by 10% year-over-year.
  • Link Skills to Teams and Locations: A “Customer Success Manager” in the US might need “Spanish Language Proficiency,” while the same role in the UK needs “GDPR Compliance.” Your map must reflect this nuance.
  • Link Skills to Workflows: Map capability data directly to your operational goals. If your strategic goal is “Migrate to the Cloud,” you must map the specific skills (Azure, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes) required to execute that goal.

The Result: When a gap appears, you know exactly which business unit is at risk. You move from saying “We lack Java skills” to “Our Auckland delivery team lacks the specific Java skills required for the Q3 banking project.”

Step 3: Measure Current Capability (The Assessment)

Now that you have the target, you must inventory the reality. You need to move from static resumes to a dynamic view of verified capability using Skills Assessment software.

  • Self-Assessment: Start with the employee. Ask them to rate their proficiency against the taxonomy you built. This engages them in the process.

  • The Verification Layer: Self-assessment is useful, but verified data is the gold standard. Use manager reviews or subject matter expert (SME) verification to confirm true strengths. This eliminates the “Dunning-Kruger” effect where novices overestimate their ability.

  • Capture Interest: A gap is not just about what people can’t do; it is about what they want to do. Mapping employee interest levels allows you to close gaps through motivation rather than mandate. If you have an engineer who is a novice in AI but has a high interest in learning it, that is your solution, not a problem.

Step 4: Analyze the Delta (The Matrix)

Once you have your “target” (Step 1 & 2) and your “actuals” (Step 3), you must visualize the delta. This is best achieved through a Skills Matrix.

  • Visualize Side-by-Side: A matrix allows you to instantly spot team strengths and critical gaps. You can see, for instance, that while your Engineering team is 90% proficient in Python, they are only 10% proficient in the Cybersecurity protocols required for your next release.

  • Leverage AI Intelligence: This is where Skills Lens changes the game. Manual analysis of thousands of data points is impossible. Our AI-powered “agents” analyze your workforce trajectory. Instead of staring at a 500-row spreadsheet, Skills Lens tells you: “You are at risk of missing your deadline because only two people have the ‘Cloud Security’ verification required for this project.”

Step 5: Execute the Action Plan (The Fix)

An analysis without action is just noise. Once you identify a gap, you have three strategic levers to pull. Do not pull them randomly; use the data to decide.

  1. Upskill and Reskill (Build): Target your L&D budget exactly where the gaps are. Stop sending everyone to the same leadership seminar. Assign specific training to the specific individuals who need it to close a specific gap. Gartner data shows that 33% of the skills present in an average 2019 job posting are already obsolete—continuous building is the only way to keep up.

  2. Internal Mobility (Borrow): Use your data to find “hidden experts.” Perhaps a marketing manager has a verified skill in data analysis that isn’t being used. Deploy them to a data project. This is faster and cheaper than hiring. Deloitte found that skills-based organizations are 107% more likely to place talent effectively.

  3. Strategic Recruitment (Buy): When you must go external, do so with surgical precision. Create a job description based on the exact gap you need to fill, not a generic template. This reduces time-to-hire and ensures the new hire actually solves the problem.

Step 6: Embed, Learn, and Iterate (The Culture)

A skills gap analysis is not a “one and done” project; it is a continuous loop. To drive lasting ROI, you must embed this process into your organizational culture.

  • Continuous Updates: We challenge the “annual review” model. Skills change too fast for annual cycles. Encourage employees to update their profiles as they complete projects or certifications. This keeps your digital workforce model real-time.

  • The Feedback Loop: Use your findings to refine Step 1 and 2. If you find your “expert” criteria for a specific skill didn’t lead to project success, update your taxonomy.

  • Cultural Integration: Make skills visibility a benefit, not a surveillance tool. When employees see that their skill data leads to internal promotions, project opportunities, and personalized growth, they become active participants.

  • Measure Success: Track the ROI. Are you hiring less externally? Is project velocity increasing? Is employee retention improving? Use these insights to prove value upward to the board.

Winning Over the Committee

A skills gap analysis affects everyone. To succeed, you must demonstrate value to three distinct groups in your buying committee.

For the CxO: Driving ROI and Reducing Risk

Executives do not care about “skills” in a vacuum; they care about capability. They need to know if the workforce can execute the three-year strategic plan.

  • The Value Prop: We show you that “talent risk” is “business risk.” According to PwC, 74% of CEOs are concerned about the availability of key skills. By identifying gaps early, we prevent costly project overruns and ensure the organization remains agile. We provide the “So What?” behind the data, turning HR metrics into executive intelligence.

For HR Leaders: Efficiency and Strategy

HR is tired of being the “spreadsheet police.” They spend too much time chasing data and not enough time on strategy.

  • The Value Prop: We automate the collection and verification of data. We provide a platform that integrates into existing workflows, meaning HR becomes a strategic partner that provides verified data the board can actually trust. You stop guessing and start knowing.

For the CxO: Driving ROI and Reducing Risk

If the end-user doesn’t see value, the data will be poor.

  • The Value Prop: People leaders gain a tool to coach their direct reports objectively. Employees gain a “career roadmap.” They can see exactly which skills they need to develop to reach the next level, turning the gap analysis from a “test” into an “opportunity.” Gallup research shows that individuals who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged at work.

Conclusion: Move Beyond the Spreadsheet

Spreadsheets are where skills data goes to die. They are static, prone to error, and disconnected from your daily workflows. They cannot model the complexity of a modern workforce.

Skills Base is the platform for Total Talent Visibility.

We help you move beyond the surface level. With our tools, you aren’t just looking at a point-in-time snapshot. You are building a dynamic, real-time model of your organization’s competitive edge. You are giving yourself the visibility to manage today and the insight to plan for tomorrow.

Stop guessing. Stop hoping. Start measuring. Deploy an agentic analyst team with Skills Lens and start making smarter talent decisions powered by verified skills.

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]]> 10988 What is a skills matrix? [FREE Excel Template] https://www.skills-base.com/what-is-a-skills-matrix Thu, 09 May 2024 00:09:56 +0000 https://www.skills-base.com/?p=9059 With workplaces embracing flexible working styles, remote opportunities, and global footprints, as well as employees asking for clear career progression…

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With workplaces embracing flexible working styles, remote opportunities, and global footprints, as well as employees asking for clear career progression and communication, keeping track of staff skills and knowledge is essential. Skills analysis has never been more important, and a skills matrix is a great way to visualize skill gaps and strengths.

Organizations can have hundreds, if not thousands, of skills and people across different geographic locations. It’s still important to visualize these skills via a skills matrix, but the process needs to be automated to free up time for creating reports so that time can be invested in analyzing the data at hand and acting on those insights.

Skills matrices are nothing new but have generally been locked away within the HR function. The changing nature of skills (granularity, dynamic nature, and a workforce that isn’t as rigid), means that the rapid identification of these skill gaps and strengths is critical to informing decisions across a business.

What is a skills matrix?

A skills matrix is a tool used to map out a visual representation of the skills and capabilities of employees. It’s laid out in a grid format, making it simpler to assess and evaluate team capabilities at a glance. Cataloging the abilities of individuals or teams, allows leaders and decision-makers to easily assess the mix of skills and capabilities in a team or group, create new teams, identify skill gaps, and assess recruitment needs. Empowering managers and organizations to make informed choices for strategic workforce planning, resource allocation, and recruitment decision-making.

A skills matrix is also often referred to as a competency matrix, however, they aren’t the same thing. Skills and competencies are related but there are key differences between the two, for the purpose of this article we will be covering the specifics of a skills matrix and skills management.

What is a skills matrix used for?

A skills matrix is used for identifying the skills, competencies and proficiency levels within teams and the wider organization. It helps with:

  • Project Planning: Facilitating better team composition and project assignment based on skill sets, assessing whether a team has the necessary skills to complete a project successfully, and identifying when additional talent is needed.
  • Team Formation: Facilitating the creation of new teams with complementary skills for specific projects or initiatives, ensuring each team is able to handle their assigned tasks.
  • Identifying Skill Gaps: Highlighting areas where skills may be lacking in a team, department or the broader organization
  • Resource Allocation: Ensuring optimal assignment of tasks based on individual skills and capabilities, enhancing overall productivity.
  • Cross-Training: Identifying opportunities for effective upskilling, reskilling and cross skilling skill development to enhance team versatility.
  • Workforce Planning: Planning for future workforce development and strategic talent management. Informing learning and development programs by highlighting areas for skill enhancement across teams.
  • Strategic Hiring: Guiding recruitment efforts to fill specific skill gaps, making hiring more targeted and effective.
  • Career Pathing: Helping employees understand potential career paths within the organization and aligning their development with organizational needs.

How a skills matrix benefits different parts of the business

Reporting and analyzing skills should be a staple of any industry or business type. Within these businesses there are several core functional areas where rapidly understanding skill gaps and strengths is important, including:

Hiring & Recruitment

Quickly see the skill gaps and strengths at a team or organizational level. This data can be used to support decisions about the current business skill landscape, and support the investment and justification to hire a certain skill set for now or in the future.

Training & Learning

Get a baseline of skills and competencies of people or teams across the business. Use this visualization to see comparable skill levels, and set pathways for people to complete courses and learnings to improve a skill set over time.

Training & Learning

Get a baseline of skills and competencies of people or teams across the business. Use this visualization to see comparable skill levels, and set pathways for people to complete courses and learnings to improve a skill set over time.

Workforce Planning

Visualize the current skill makeup of project teams to see if it meets a customer brief, and ensure the skill set is there to add value to customers and drive revenue.

Internal Mobility / Employee Experience

Give people the ability to see where they compare with their peers. Ensure they meet the competency targets you set, but also give people the opportunity to join different teams that align to their skill set, and find coaches and mentors who are adept in certain skills.

How to create and use a skills matrix

Whether you’re using software, pen and paper, or a skills matrix tool, the steps to create a skills matrix is fairly consistent:

Step 1: Build a taxonomy of skills

The first thing you need to do to create your skills matrix is put together a list of skills for your team, workforce or organization. This underlying dataset is the foundation to your broader skills management strategy and is critical to informing many decisions, and applying the next crucial steps.

Step 2: Invite your team

Next, you want to identify who within your team or organization needs to be a part of this process and then associate them with the relevant skills. At this stage it’s also important to also identify the teams, roles and geographic locations that they belong to — as it will help with reporting in the long run.

Step 3: Assess your team on those skills

The assessment process is critical and provides the actual data that you need to define skill levels. Skills Base advocates its structured-subjective™ approach to skills assessment involving the employee self assessing their skills and interests.

Step 4: Report with a skills matrix

Finally, when you have this data in place, and your team is beginning to assess their skill levels, you can automatically report on this skill level and competency data in the form of a skills matrix. Whether it’s creating an employee skills matrix, a skills matrix for a team, or a large skills matrix of the organization’s skill set.

The benefits of using a skills matrix tool is that when you get the underlying data right, build up a rigid assessment process, creating your skills matrix can be completed in seconds.

Why use skills matrix software? Scale, Integrity, & Agility

We have already touched on a few reasons why skills matrix software can be a great option if you want to implement a skills matrix in your organization, but there are many more benefits over the more manual options people have traditionally used.

Many people ask why Excel isn’t the best option. The explosion of skills data, agility required and decisions made means that spreadsheets just can’t keep up. The process needs to be automated, and it needs to be a part of a larger skills management strategy that focuses on your skills taxonomy, skills assessment processes, and skills that are mapped to projects and training. You also need to be able to create skills matrices in real time. Using software means this process is entirely streamlined and laid out for you.

Looking for a skills matrix tool?

Our skills experts are here to help you make it a reality — Book now for a no obligation meeting.

Book my meeting now

Understand Your Gaps: A Free Skills Matrix Excel Template

If you’re not quite ready to invest in dedicated skills management software but still want to start implementing a skills matrix, we’ve got you covered. To help you get started, we offer a free Skills Matrix Excel template. This template is a great place to start if you have never used a skills matrix before or need a good base to build from. It serves as an introductory tool, allowing you to begin mapping out your team’s skills and identifying key areas for development.

By filling in your team’s details, our downloadable spreadsheet will give you a better understanding of your employees’ skills so you can find the gaps and opportunities in your team. As with any manual matrix, this does have its limitations but it is a great way to familiarize yourself with tracking and auditing skills.

Image of the free skills matrix template to download

Find your skill gaps now

Download the Template

How to use the free skills matrix template

The free template is designed to give you the basics required to start your journey on building a skills-based company. Using it is easy:

  • Add team member names in the relevant column
  • Add the required skills for either a particular role/process or skills required for the whole team to adequately function
  • Adopt the predefined rating system and evaluate your team members on their competency levels of current skills, as well as their interest level in each skill
  • Review the information gathered to easily view and act on the areas of strength in your staff and any skill gaps.

These steps can also be found in the Excel template, along with further information around how to make the most of this skills matrix tool.

What to do once you have outgrown the template

While this template is useful, it is also designed for small teams and can be quite manual, as well as requiring version management to ensure sharing does not result in missing or incorrect data. When you want to move on to something that offers speed, automation, and ease of sharing, as well as the ability to scale with you, there are lots of great options. In fact, we even have a free option in our training matrix software that is perfect for smaller teams and can grow with you.

Over to you

Getting started with a skills matrix can be quite eye-opening, especially if you’ve never visualized your team’s skills this way. If you’re just beginning or working with a small team, our free Excel template can be a great starting point. It’s simple, straightforward, and gives you a clear snapshot of where your team stands today.

However, as your needs grow and become more complex, you might find this manual method limiting. Lacking the scalability and depth required for effective skills management. That’s when Skills Base can step in with a more advanced solution that grows with your organization.

Ready to take the next step? Explore Skills Base’s full capabilities and see how we can help you keep pace with change and prepare for the future.

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]]> 9059 Better Learning Outcomes Through Skills Management https://www.skills-base.com/better-learning-outcomes-through-skills-management Wed, 28 Sep 2022 03:14:15 +0000 https://www.skills-base.com/?p=11667 There are thousands of ways to train and upskill your workforce but doing it in a way that helps both…

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There are thousands of ways to train and upskill your workforce but doing it in a way that helps both the organization and the individual is a little more complex, particularly for teams in rapidly evolving fields like technology, engineering, and advanced manufacturing. With the half-life of perishable skills at barely 2.5 years, teams must constantly learn and upskill to be productive, competitive, and happy. 

The question becomes: Is it possible to create better learning outcomes for your people that; close their unique skill gaps, can be linked to desires and career pathways, and can be measured and data-driven?

To create highly productive learning, it needs to be agile and measured; this is where skills management comes in.

Looking at learning through the lens of skills

Every person has unique skills DNA, so why do we force them into training that might be too broad, untargeted, or not fit for purpose? It leads to worse training experiences for the individual and also a lower ROI on your overall L&D investment.     

Taking a skills lens to your learning experiences is about going deeper than the job or role. Instead, you are focusing on the skills that the organization requires from the individual to do the work at hand and that the organization demands from the workforce in the future. But most importantly, you are recognizing the skills each individual has now, needs help with, and is interested in developing throughout their careers.

However, skills can’t sit in isolation. They need to have strong contextual relationships with your organization, its teams, roles, and office locations, and for the purposes of this article, training. 

You also require a proven methodology for measuring your people and one that can scale and ultimately create a unified understanding of skill and competency levels. 

A skills management platform brings these areas together. To complement existing learning technologies but provide the lens of skills needed to deliver better learning outcomes.

Visualizing and understanding skill gaps

Knowing skill gaps differs from identifying and prioritizing which ones to focus on. This is where good data is essential, as it gives you clear information about where there are strengths and opportunities to upskill staff, allowing L&D managers to create data-driven decisions around what people need to focus on in their learning.

By visualizing your people’s skill gaps, you can better communicate their learning pathways and areas for investment. And how do you get good data? Through good tools and processes.

4 ways skills can be used to support learning interventions

By using skills data to drive learning outcomes and experiences, you enable a greater ability to access the entire talent pool within your organization. Skills management software makes it easier to quickly search your teams and organization for people with specific gaps or strengths. There are four key ways such tools and data can help:

  1. Online Training & Courses

The appropriate data is much easier to find and select the proper training and courses to upskill your people. Organizations should be able to link individual skill gaps to microlearning opportunities from any online platform like Udemy, Linkedin, Redhat, or internal documentation.

  1. Mentoring & Coaching

Skills data can help organizations find the right mentors and leaders for others. By understanding an individual’s skill gaps, organizations can match those gaps to someone in the business with the right skill strengths.

  1. Career Pathing

Employees expect managers and organizations to invest in their long-term Career development. Doing so leads to a win-win situation: where you’re retaining staff while helping them to thrive. You can’t simply look at the skill gaps that exist now but the skill gaps for future roles while providing actionable learning opportunities to reach that goal.   

  1. Learning Content Strategy

As a training or learning manager, discovering the content that needs to be created can be daunting. Through skills management, you can work to align your content strategy to develop fit-for-purpose materials that genuinely close the most critical skill gaps of your teams and organization.

Measuring learning outcomes and ROI

While training staff is essential, it loses much of its value if you aren’t measuring the outcome. It is crucial to understand the days, weeks, and months following training to determine learning outcomes and how competent someone may be.

To best measure the outcome and ROI of training, you should set up a dynamic skills assessment process that looks to re-measure skill levels after an individual has had some time to apply a skill. Organizations can better measure the ROI of training by understanding skill and competency level changes of a given time and relating that back to specific training interventions. 

From there, you can better determine what is working and what isn’t and pivot where necessary.  

Ultimately, this ensures you create an environment that supports and enriches employees, so they are engaged, learning, and happy, resulting in retention, productivity, and better work overall.

Choosing the right skills management software

There are a few things you need to look for in skills management software to best support training and learning interventions. At a fundamental level, you should consider if the software has a way to:

  • Track and manage skills
  • Measure skills
  • Visualize skills
  • Link skill gaps to training
  • Re-measure skills in a fast and dynamic way.

Now is the time to get started. Talk to the team and learn more about best practices surrounding your learning and development strategy and how you embed skills management into your decisions.

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]]> 11667 Skills Management & Workforce Planning – A Match Made In Heaven https://www.skills-base.com/skills-management-workforce-planning-match-made-in-heaven Wed, 30 Mar 2022 04:09:10 +0000 https://www.skills-base.com/?p=10926 Ongoing innovation and business agility are imperative in today’s competitive world. Organizations must continuously evolve to keep up, shifting from…

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Ongoing innovation and business agility are imperative in today’s competitive world. Organizations must continuously evolve to keep up, shifting from understanding work in terms of fixed, static jobs, to a dynamic landscape of skills which can be deployed and acted on as needed.

Instead of putting someone on a project based on reporting lines or roles, staff are matched with projects that fit their interests and skills. Rather than looking at job postings or reaching out to their networks, staff are served customized opportunities based on their unique skill set. Leaders and managers get real-time insight into the skills makeup of their workforce and how this can impact work processes and business outcomes.

This is a people-centric future that means better outcomes for the business, teams and each individual person.

But how can you actually start applying a skills-based approach to workforce planning?

It all begins with embracing skills management

Skills Management and skills management software is all about understanding the skills of your workforce in a transparent, scalable way. Measuring those skills through a structured subjective assessment process, and then acting on the skill gaps and strengths of your workforce.

  • For workforce skill gaps, it’s all about how they can be closed. This might be through learning and development, training, or mentoring.
  • For workforce skill strengths, it’s all about how you can allocate those people to work, so that they are happy and your customers are happy.

Let’s say one of your major customers comes to you wanting to migrate their on-premise infrastructure to the cloud. You want to make sure you’re keeping this customer happy and want your A-team on it. Unfortunately, someone has left the business, another is on holiday. How do you find people from across your organization to fill in the skill gaps of this project?

You don’t want to trawl through CVs, and everyone is now working remotely so it’s hard to quickly ask around the office. With Skills Management software at your fingertips, managers can now have a central location to source skilled employees from.

By focusing on skills, employees that might have fallen through the cracks could be given an opportunity to join a project or team they might not have been able to in the past, allowing them to use their skill set to its fullest and giving you the best person for the job.

A win-win situation.

Finding skilled workers in real-time

That all sounds great, but what might it actually look like?

When you have your data in order, finding the right skilled employee becomes easy. All you have to do is search for the criteria that meets your objective.

In this example, I am looking for someone in my organization that is:

  • Skilled in assembly efficiency
  • Skilled in equipment maintenance
  • And is based out of Sydney, Australia.

In seconds, I should be able to find who meets these targets, and who might be a close match.

Are you interested to see how you can begin applying skills management to your strategic workforce planning? Now is the time to book in a demo of Skills Base, and discuss your requirements with the knowledgeable team today.

Learn what Skills Base can do for you

Schedule a 15 minute chat

The post Skills Management & Workforce Planning – A Match Made In Heaven appeared first on Skills Base.

]]> 10926 The skills-based movement | 12 Industry Articles from 2021 https://www.skills-base.com/the-skills-based-movement-12-industry-articles-from-2021 Thu, 02 Dec 2021 09:10:48 +0000 https://www.skills-base.com/?p=10543 2021 has been a chaotic year with our work environment continuing to change at an accelerating rate. Delivery is moving…

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2021 has been a chaotic year with our work environment continuing to change at an accelerating rate.

Delivery is moving away from the concept of function-based work, towards a dynamic pool of skilled and talented people from across, or even outside an organization.

The clear understanding of skill gaps and strengths is providing new pathways for people to upskill or be mentored. This is supplanting a sole focus on hiring.

For people to stand out, be heard, grow and thrive, skills are becoming the single source of objective truth.

The skills-based movement is here, and it’s picking up pace… fast.

And the good news is that it’s never been easier to build your skills inventory, assess skill levels at scale, and visualize skill gaps to act on.

You just have to get started — and we’re here to help, simply book in a time to chat and see what it’s all about.

Better yet, you’re not alone. Over the last year we’ve seen Deloitte, Mckinsey & Company, Forbes, Boston Consulting Group, SHRM, Gartner, Lighthouse Research and Advisory, and Mercer all talking about the benefits of a skills-based approach. (And this content is just the tip of the iceberg).

So grab a drink, and have a read of these 12 Articles from 2021.

Deloitte

Article

Part 1 - The skills-based organization - Fuelling the 21st century enterprise with skills

Deloitte

Article

Part 2 - Skills: The new workforce operating system Goodbye talent management, hello skills-based organization

McKinsey & Company

Article

Getting skills transformations right: The nine-ingredient recipe for success

McKinsey & Company

Article

How companies can help their employees become “future ready”

Forbes

Article

Three Strategies To Leverage Skills As The New Currency To Create Organizational Agility

SHRM

Article

Skills Provide an Objective Data Foundation and a Common Business Language
Want to become a skills-based team or organization?
Ask us how today

MyHRfuture

Article

Building an Effective Skill-Based Workforce Planning Capability

Boston Consulting Group

Article

Creating People Advantage 2021 -- The Future of People Management Priorities

Gartner

Article

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From pandemic to permanence -- gaining an employee skills edge through agile talent practices
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The post The skills-based movement | 12 Industry Articles from 2021 appeared first on Skills Base.

]]> 10543 Your IT Skills Matrix; Friend or Foe? https://www.skills-base.com/your-it-skills-matrix-friend-or-foe Wed, 03 Nov 2021 11:27:42 +0000 https://www.skills-base.com/?p=10197 Today’s technical world is rapidly advancing and if you’re a manager of an IT team or technical organization, one of…

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Today’s technical world is rapidly advancing and if you’re a manager of an IT team or technical organization, one of your biggest challenges may be overcoming the digital skills gap.

Finding the best talent, upskilling your current workforce, and keeping up with the demand to deliver projects better and faster every time is no easy task. There has never been a more critical time to see your team’s makeup clearly so you can attract, retain, and train your IT staff to ensure gaps in skill do not threaten overall performance and results.

How to overcome IT skills gaps

A skills matrix is a great tool in any business or industry but becomes even more beneficial for fields like IT, software development, and cyber security which warrant more tracking and updating of skills due to the rapidly changing landscape of the industry. Creating and managing a staff skills matrix allows you to easily visualize individual, team and organization-wide IT skills and determine where effort needs to be put in to hire or upskill staff and overcome gaps.

Calculating the competency levels of employees starts with a few questions:

  • What are the skills that are important to your workforce now?
  • What are the skills that are needed in the future?
  • How are these skills mapped to people, roles, teams and office locations?
  • What are the necessary proficiency levels in each of these skills?

These core questions all help outline the foundation to creating and building your skills library. The next step is to create a scalable IT skills assessment framework, that allows each employee to consistently measure their skill levels in an efficient and scalable way. (we’ve actually created a checklist to get you on your way.)

After you have all the foundation information, it comes down to building the matrix itself.

Competency and skills matrix tools

The best way to collect, compare, and update skill levels is through a custom matrix. There are lots of ways to create a skills matrix, with some people choosing Excel or a Google Sheet, which can be good for small teams and smaller skill sets but given the complexity of IT and technical teams, we recommend using skills management software.

The right skills matrix software can collate team, skills, and opportunities to give you a full picture of your team. From creating the perfect team and finding gaps to career planning and upskilling, good software can automate everything so you can make educated, positive decisions for your organization and team.

Getting team buy-in

A skills matrix isn’t just for management or organization benefit – it helps companies on every level.

It’s not uncommon for individuals to see a skills matrix as a foe, something that is a burden and won’t really help them personally, but really they can be a great friend when used correctly. It gives insight into someone’s competencies and where they can learn and grow, arming them with the data to back up training requests and even promotions and pay rises, as well as identify when an individual might need help. If you work in IT, having transparency in your skills and any gaps means you can continue to learn in a rapidly changing industry.

From a team or organizational perspective, the benefits are many. As a team, it is easier to see how everyone’s skills work together and where there is room for improvement or growth. Team members can easily identify who can help them or where they can step up. Organizations can clearly pinpoint where they can invest their learning and development budget and how to find hidden gems in their current workforce, preventing the move to hire new staff until genuinely needed, while also helping staff grow and increasing retention.

Finally, a skills matrix can mean better results and happier clients, stakeholders, and teams in different areas. Whether internal or external, by knowing team skills and where to train, everyone benefits.

Want to supercharge your tech teams? Keep your IT department up to speed with technological changes by regularly assessing skill and competency levels across your workforce with Skills Base. We work with technical teams every day and understand how important understanding employee skills and competencies is, so get in touch to see how we can help!

The post Your IT Skills Matrix; Friend or Foe? appeared first on Skills Base.

]]> 10197 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.

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

]]> 9531 A Skills Matrix Tool vs Excel: Finding your Skills Gaps https://www.skills-base.com/a-skills-matrix-tool-vs-excel-finding-your-skills-gaps Thu, 22 Apr 2021 09:47:22 +0000 https://www.skills-base.com/?p=6768 Using a skills matrix to keep track of skills and competencies is a valuable tool for many organizations and HR…

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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.

]]> 6768 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

Schedule a live demo
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

Read more >
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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

Read more >
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Added new skills category level dashboards

Read more >
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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

Read more >
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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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The post Skills Management 2020 Feature Updates in Review appeared first on Skills Base.

]]> 5153 Introducing the new interactive skills matrix for all Skills Base customers https://www.skills-base.com/introducing-the-new-interactive-skills-matrix-for-all-skills-base-customers Wed, 09 Dec 2020 23:45:03 +0000 https://www.skills-base.com/?p=5142 With the end of the year almost here, we’re excited to announce a new major feature release that’s available to…

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With the end of the year almost here, we’re excited to announce a new major feature release that’s available to all Skills Base customers.

Say hello to the new interactive Skills Matrix. All employees and supervisors now have one consolidated location to view and in some cases edit:

  • Skill level based on self assessment
  • Skill level based on supervisor assessment
  • The difference in skill levels
  • The average skill level
  • The target skill level
  • Competency level based on your self assessment
  • Competency level based on your supervisor assessments
  • The average competency level rating

If interest levels are enabled on your account you will also have visibility into:

  • Interest level based on self assessment
  • Interest level based on supervisor assessment
  • The difference in interest levels

If you want to learn more about each of these metrics in more detail, head across to the knowledge base article.

Where can I find the new interactive skills matrix?

The new skills matrix feature is an update to all employee dashboards. We’ve altered the navigation menu to replace the old “Detail” tab with a new “Skills” tab.

From this new view you can easily see your holistic skill and competency levels– Giving you control to understand where your strengths are, and what opportunities you have to improve on.

Interactive Skills Matrix

Edit Skill data from within the interactive Skills Matrix

Skill ratings can be edited (where enabled) directly in the matrix, and skill, interest and competency values are color-coded using the Heat Matrix colour schemes which are set when generating a Skills Matrix report.

Interactive Skills Matrix Edit

You will also see some new definitions in “active skills” and “inactive skills”. Active skills are those that were assessed in either (or both of) the previous self or supervisor assessment, whereas Inactive Skills are those which no longer appear on any dashboards or reports due to not being assessed in any recent assessment.

Dig deeper into each skill detail and trends

The previous “Detail” tab screens are still easily accessible. In order to reach this information you can now access them by clicking on the skill category names.

Skills Detail Tab

We’re really excited to have this feature released to the Skills Base community. If you have any feedback, looking for a demo or want to request a new feature, don’t hesitate to reach out to the team.

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