How does targeted people development work without a thorough understanding of everyone's individual strengths and opportunities?
It doesn't.
A skills matrix is the visualization of these and your best friend when it comes to
In short, it will help you to make better decisions about employee development, succession planning, and role design.
A well-managed skills matrix can give your HR department a competitive edge by making it easier to identify and fill high-priority positions quickly. It is also the baseline for any further people development activity.
A skills matrix, typically developed by the hiring team and human resources, is a tool used to assess an employee's skills and abilities. It helps identify the comprehensive skill set, experience level, and general competence required for a position or a project.
In practice, it can be as simple as a two-dimensional table in Excel.
Companies who want to do skill assessment at scale and more effectively can also use a software to save time and tie competencies directly together with development methods.
Employee Learning & Development (L&D) is one of the most important activities performed by HR managers and L&D professionals. Evaluating employee performance and training them on relevant skills can give businesses a competitive advantage, increase profits, and improve retention.
As per the LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2019, 94% of employees said they would stay longer if employers invested in their learning and development. The dynamics of hiring, firing, and work have changed massively since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
A LinkedIn Report found that top L&D professionals agree that reskilling & upskilling is a top priority for them.
But, how do you know where you actually stand? A skills matrix can make things easier here.
It helps to
Let's talk more about how a skills matrix can help your organization.
A skills matrix makes it easy to understand your people's skills. It's that simple.
But, even more importantly: It helps HR teams understand company and team wide skill gaps.
Truth is, way too many HR teams don't approach L&D strategically:
People may get access to a library of training courses or a learning budget, and that's it. No precision, no goal-orientation.
However, this approach is highly inefficient.
A proper people development process includes
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This way
The result:
Setting up training that aligns with an employee's strengths and interests can alsobenefit the organization because happy employees are more productive. They give their best when they enjoy what they do. It can also help them receive recognition for skills they already possess, enhancing their self-esteem and engagement levels.
Obviously, you don't HAVE to disclose assessment results to every individual, but it does have its benefits:
When employees know their skills and strengths is a means of getting to know oneself better.
This newly-gained self-awareness can be more efficient and effective.
A skills matrix can be a valuable tool for team building. By understanding the skills of team members, people can be more proactive and collaborate more efficiently.
Internal mobility refers to the movement of employees within the organization. A skills matrix can enable companies to hire internal employees rather than looking for the right candidate outside the organization.
It can also help managers identify skills gaps within teams and fill them with other internal colleagues with relevant skills.
When skills are mapped out, it becomes easier for employees to move across departments or projects seamlessly.
You can do this by looking at the skills needed for different roles within the team or department. Include skills that are essential to success, desirable but not necessary.
A good starting point is your company's career framework:
A written definition of each role's core competencies - including
Some companies like to keep it casual with one generic model for all, while others have details progression paths for every single role and level.
Looking for an example?
A generic model will faciliate company-wide comparisons on particular skills later on. Highly specified models that are unique for every role are great, but will lack core competencies you may want to see for everybody.
Our tip: A mix of the above elements. Keep some competencies that are the same for everybody in the organization and include a few that are more technical.
The methods employers use to evaluate their workforce's skills vary across organizations.
Some common ways to grade and categorize employees' skills are:
If you're looking for the right way to create the single levels, our free competency matrix will be just what you need:
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We usually recommend 5 levels, ranging from basic to expert.
Feedback bias is real. And every team/person will naturally have a certain tendency to rate people better or worse.
But, this feedback has implications. And subjective bias is hugely unfair.
One of the most common ways to create a skills matrix is via Excel. Follow the below steps to create a skills matrix in an Excel document.
Doing this will give you an overview of each employee's abilities. Sort the skills into categories based on their contribution to practical project completion.
As Dennis from PMI rightly points out, the skills matrix can also be represented using ideograms for visual communication, for example, harvey balls.
Consider the skills needed for each role and map them to employees who have those skills. Employees with specific skills can also use this information to identify skills gaps and bridge those gaps.
Doing this will give you an overview of the skills proficiency of every employee. Sort the skills into categories based on their contribution to practical project completion.
Create training and development programs that will help employees improve their skills. If there are skills that any employees do not currently hold, consider bringing in a trainer to deliver a workshop.
This will help employees develop the skills to succeed in their roles and projects.
Here is an example of a skills matrix that combines expertise AND interest, Something you may want to do - but also something that can make things way more complex at scale.
These numbers represent:
If you're into data-driven insights, you will like this next template.
It is well-suited for bigger organizations that want to understand what skills they are good in - and what skills they should prioritize training.
To avoid overcomplexity, This second example currently does not contain "interests" - but you could surely add that to your table.
What's particularly helpful about this one is that it automatically composes a list of "bottom 3" skills - those that you should focus on improving:
You can download both these templates as a spreadsheet to modify here.
To help you with the career framework, we also created a competency matrix to compliment the skills matrix.
Our template contains:
If you create your matrix improperly, it can make your hiring process more difficult and ineffective. Here are some common mistakes to avoid while creating a skills matrix.
While our above template and instructions are surely helpful, doing this well in practice takes a lot of time.
That's how our tool makes your life easier than ever:
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The best part?
👀 Curious? Here's how our skills matrix software works!
A skills matrix and a competency matrix are similar in that they both aim to provide a structured overview of an organization's skills and competencies.
However, the difference is really in the perspective:
A skills matrix focuses on specific skills or tasks that an employee has
...while a competency matrix focuses on the competencies or abilities required for a role.
In a way, the former is about the present state from an employee - while the latter defines the idea skillset of a person in a certain role.
Skill matrices and competency models complement each other.
While a skills matrix provides a detailed breakdown of the specific skills required for a role, a competency model provides a more holistic view of the broader competencies and abilities needed to succeed in that role. By using both, you can create a more comprehensive understanding of what it takes to excel in a given position.
A skills matrix for hiring is a tool that can be used to assess the skills and qualifications of job candidates. By creating a matrix that outlines the specific skills and tasks required for a particular role, you can compare each candidate's experience and abilities to determine who is the best fit for the job.
The next step is to use it to inform decision-making. This might mean using the matrix to identify gaps in your team's skill set and creating development plans to address those gaps. Alternatively, you might use the matrix to assess job candidates or to determine which team members are best suited to work on a particular project.
Skills matrix software can help streamline the process of creating and maintaining a skills matrix. By using software to automate the process, you can save time and reduce the risk of errors. Additionally, many skills matrix software solutions offer advanced reporting and analytics features that can help you gain insights into your team's skills and identify areas for improvement.
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