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What is the magical Skills Matrix you speak of?…and how will it help me to manage skills within my company?
A skills matrix, training grid, or competency matrix, is a tool to map required and desired skills for a team or department. It is a grid that visualises the required and available skills and competencies available. Usually integrated with a colour rating, such as red (in training) through to green (adequately trained) this tool acts as an essential heat map for any data-driven HR, team leader or management professional.
A completed skills matrix visually demonstrates the skills that are available, with those missing acting as a gap analysis from which to take effective action.
There are many ways in which to create a skills matrix. One method is through an Excel spreadsheet – there are many great and FREE tools out there such as this one https://freeskillsmatrix.com. Spreadsheet versions can have their limitations such as moving employees from one team to another (full time or via secondment), or in creating holistic department and organisational data from data entered at team level – this is where more dedicated applications such as https://ability6.com may be useful. Ability6 offer a full, unrestricted version of their software for 30 days, with no need to add any payment de0tails. Just sign up, evaluate and then benefit!
It sounds like it could be a lot of work?Some work will be required; however, the benefits significantly outweigh the small investment in time required.
Investing in the people that make your business tick is an essential aspect of any great team leader, department manager or indeed business owner. Identifying training needs will improve turnaround times, leading to greater efficiency, whilst also reducing or mitigating risks such as product of service defects.
The benefits are widespread and can easily be categorised into three core areas, namely;
1. Individual / Employee
- Increased competencies – a feeling of investment into their role and their development
- Decreased stress levels – work competencies increase thus removing uncertainty
- Full awareness of what their ‘role’ entails including the relevant skills competencies required
- Full awareness of the desired areas of growth and where they need to focus their training efforts
- Can; within some organisations be used within employees Personal Development Plans (PDP)
- Employees gain from improved identification and understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses
- Aid in understanding the value they bring to the organisation (which in turn can boost morale)
2. Organisation / company
- Enables managers, function or business owners to understand the skill strengths and weaknesses of employees reporting to them.
- Increased capacity – by addressing skills shortages and increasing employee competencies companies can release real capacity into their businesses without incurring the heavy costs of recruitment
- Creates the ability to search for desired skills and talents across the organisation (e.g. to help fill a role or to assist with either short or long term increased requirements of a task from an end-client)
- A rolled-up view of skills and skills gaps across an organization can enable its executives to see areas of skill strength and weakness.
- Enables proficient future planning against projected availability of staff. When used company-wide creates management consistency to drive an organisation forward
- Customers experience a quality of product/service increasing the likelihood of them returning and advertising your products/services.
- Customers experience a quality of product/service increasing their loyalty levels
3. Customer / end-client
The customer should largely be unaware of the existence of a skills matrix. The customer will however benefit from the increased levels of competency of your staff, their ability to resolve queries in a timely manner and on first touch (i.e. avoiding the ‘I’ll call you back’ scenario). Simply put the benefits are endless.
- Faster response rates (decreased lead times)
- Increased rate of quality in service or products (reduced defect and return rates)
- Increased employee competencies leads to speed which can result in ‘faster to market’ products and services
- Customers feels valued
- Customers experience a very easy and smooth transaction with company
How do I get started?Getting started is fast and easy.
- Your People / Employees / Workforce (the people that make your business happen!)
- The tasks and process that make up your teams and departments
- A competency scoring system
Your people can be a detailed list, or just their name and team.
The tasks and process should be specific to a function, team or department.
We believe that the ability6 scoring system is by far the most mature in terms of its accuracy and broad usability. They’ve prudently identified through their long-standing experience in this space that there are 6 active proficiency indicators that could be included in a skills matrix
