Most companies want their employees to have the desired skills and competency needed to drive their projects more successfully. In order for them to do so, they will often rely on their human resources (HR) and training teams to provide tools to measure a team member’s skills and competencies. One of the tools that these teams can employ to measure employee skills successfully is a skills matrix.
A skills matrix is a helpful way to organise the skills and competencies that are needed to be successful in your organisation. It’s also an excellent tool for identifying gaps in your organisation and finding the talent to hire that will fill them. Read on to learn what is a skills matrix, how to implement one to address skill gaps, and how it can benefit your company.
Content
- What is a Skill Matrix?
- Download Our Free Skills Matrix Template
- Benefits of a Skills Matrix
- Methods to Implement a Skills Matrix
- Employee Skills Matrix Software
- Other Cloud Assess Matrices & Free Templates
What is a Skill Matrix?
A skills matrix is a tool used to analyse and assess the specific skills of individual employees within an organisation. This tool is typically used as part of an employee development program with the help of the HR team. The purpose of using a skills matrix is to identify gaps and assess the training needs of the employee’s skill set. Meanwhile, by using it as a learning platform, skills matrices can help employees also track their training progress over time.
Some of the core items you will find within a skills matrix template generally include the following information about employees and their skill sets:
- Names of the employees who are being assessed.
- Title and role within the company.
- Skills necessary to complete the desired role.
- Proficiency rating that allows for skills mapping of each employee
The employee’s skills that are evaluated can vary depending on the organisation and the roles of the employees being assessed. For example, a matrix for a sales team member might include competencies such as product knowledge, negotiation skills, and closing abilities. While a matrix for a software development team might include skills such as JavaScript, Python, and Agile methodologies.
The rating system used in a skills matrix can also vary spending on skills needed to work their projects successfully. Some organisations use a simple scale, such as a 1-5 rating, where 1 indicates that the employee has little or no proficiency in a skill and 5 indicates that the employee is highly proficient in that skill level.
Once the skills matrix has been completed, it can be used to identify skills gaps and training needs. For example, if many employees are rated as “beginner” or “intermediate” in a particular skill set, it might indicate a need for additional training in that area. The skills matrix can also be used to track the progress of employees’ skill levels over time, especially as they complete training and develop their skills.
A skills matrix helps team leaders and HR teams have a visual way of understanding how employee skills are distributed within the organisation. It can serve as the basis for identifying crucial skills, areas to aid with competency training, and future project planning. Skills matrices also provide the HR department with the hiring process for new team members, employee retention, and fulfilling a particular role within the company.
How is a Skills Matrix Differs from a Capability or Competency Matrix
Overall a skills matrix is nearly identical to a capability or competency matrix. The difference between each of these matrices is that it likely measures a different capability or competency of the skills required of each role or identity a skill gap amongst employees. All three measure different critical skills needed to map skills of your employees, help aid hr professionals with new hires and training, and provide companies a competitive edge on future projects and planning.
Download Our Free Skills Matrix Template
Our free skills matrix template is available for download by clicking on the link below. We’ve carefully considered everything you will need in order to provide you with the best resource for your skill management needs.
Download our free skills matrix template
Benefits of a Skill Matrix
Each of these matrices allows your business leadership to create different assessment types to measure the soft skills, technical skills, and other necessary skills needed for future planning. Doing this also helps you understand how well each employee performs within their role.
Measuring where team members are on the skills matrix against other employees at their same job level within the company. Managers are then given more valuable insights and skills analysis into whether or not they need to provide additional training or coaching to help improve a team member’s performance and skill set in the entire company.
Some benefits of using a skill matrix for training include:
- Identifying skill gaps: a skills matrix can help managers and HR professionals identify areas where employees need additional training in order to meet job requirements or company goals.
- Facilitating career development: By providing employees with a clear view of their current skills and what they need to learn to advance in their careers, skills matrices can help employees set goals and plan their professional development.
- Improving performance: When employees receive training to fill skill gaps identified in the skills matrix template, they are better able to perform their jobs and contribute to the overall success of the organisation.
- Aligning training with business needs: By identifying the skills that are most important to the organisation, skills matrices can help managers and trainers align training programs with the needs of the business.
- Prioritising training resources: By identifying the most pressing skill gaps, these skills matrices can help managers prioritise the use of training resources to ensure that they are being used most effectively.
- Enhancing team dynamics: skills matrix can also provide insight into how team members’ skills align, where cross-training opportunities may exist, and which team members may be best suited for specific tasks or projects.
Methods to Implement a Skill Matrix
When it comes to creating a skills matrix for your employees, your learning and development employees in conjunction with your HR team can work together to develop a strategy for measuring the team’s skills within your company. The following are several ways to implement a skill matrix for training your employee’s available skills successfully:
Online surveys and self-assessments
Employees can complete an internal survey or self-assessment online in order to identify their current skills and areas for improvement. This can serve as the starting point for creating a skill matrix.
Performance evaluations
Supervisors can assess the skills of their employees and provide ratings. This can be done through a performance appraisal or a separate skill assessment form. These performance evaluations can provide insight into the skills that are required for specific roles, as well as areas where employees may need additional training.
HR interviews and observations
Conducting interviews, one-on-ones, and observing employees in their work environment can also provide valuable information about their skill sets and learn about their missing skills and interested areas for improvement.
Peer collaboration
Collect inputs and feedback from multiple team members in the form of a peer assessment matrix. This skills matrix peer assessment among team members can be a good idea to get an overall understanding of an employee’s skills and how they compare to other employees within the department or company. For example, you can have your marketing department assess the competencies of your sales team to ensure both teams are helping your business best succeed.
Once the data is collected, it can be used to create a skill matrix that assigns a skill level to each employee for a variety of skills. This can then be used to identify training needs amongst individual teams or specific employees needed to improve their and create personalised development plans for each employee.
Employee Skills Matrix Software
In today’s employee learning and development industry, there is a multitude of cloud solutions, programs, and online software solutions that can assist with reviewing the relevant skills of your employees. Some of the software programs you can use to measure the skills listed for employes are:
Learning Management Software: LMS is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, and delivery of companies educational courses, training programs, or learning and development programs. An LMS can be used to create and manage the skills mapped for each employee by tracking the completion of training courses and other learning activities. It then takes the information collected from assessing the skills and abilities of employees.
Learning Experience Platform: LXP is a software platform that aims to provide personalised and immersive learning experiences for users. This system can be designed to track the progress of the user and provide a personalised learning path for them. This type of software makes creating a skills matrix important to employees skills by tracking the progress of the user through different skills-based learning content and assessing their abilities through quizzes or other online assessments.
Both an LMS and LXP can be designed to help generate a skills matrix by providing a means to track employees’ progress through training and development activities as well as assessing their missing skills and abilities. An LXP will tend to have more features such as personalised learning paths and e-commerce functionalities than LMS, which focuses mainly on managing courses and tracking progress in relation to employee-relevant skills.
Other Cloud Assess Matrices & Free Templates
Matrices are tools that can help your business grow but also help reduce your exposure to risk. Check out our other free guides and resources below:
