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No matter how well you know a team, you might not know the full extent of what those employees can do. There’s genuine benefit in mapping out those skills and seeing where to build on them. The skills matrix is a simple yet invaluable tool in the toolkit of any HR professional or business leader. Why? Because skills-focused organisations are 107% more likely to place talent effectively, and 98% more likely to retain high performers.
If you haven’t built a skills matrix before, it’s easy to get started with this guide. Keep reading to pick up the essentials, download a template, and keep your data useful over time.
What Is a Skills Matrix?
A skills matrix is a simple grid that maps individual employees against the skills they possess, helping you see where strengths are and where skill gaps exist. This type of matrix can include employees across a team, project, department or an entire organisation.
If you’ve ever asked these types of questions, then a skills matrix could help:
- Who’s equipped to lead this project?
- Who can take over this task when its usual owner is absent?
- Where should we focus our training and development right now?
With an up-to-date skills matrix, you’ll be able to easily refer to the data and find the answers to make more informed, strategic decisions.
How A Skills Matrix Differs from a Competency Matrix
The two are often used interchangeably, but they technically differ in both scope and function. While a skills matrix primarily focuses on the concrete, transferable skills of team members, a competency matrix also incorporates attitudes and behaviours. A skills matrix looks at ‘what’ the employee can do, while a competency matrix looks at the ‘how’ and ‘why’ as well.
What Are the Benefits of Using a Skills Matrix?
The key advantage is that you can see a clear view of employee capability right there on the page, and where each employee’s skills sit relative to others.
This can have a range of flow-on benefits including:
- Appointing the best-equipped person for a task, project or responsibility
- Supporting more evidence-based assessments, decisions and employee relations
- Being able to spot and address skill gaps before they cause issues or delays
- Identifying at-risk skills that could be lost if one or two key people leave
- Better targeted training and development investment
- Helping employees to understand their own strengths and professional pathway, which can improve employee engagement and retention.
Supports the Shift Towards Skills-Based Talent Management
86% of organisations are moving toward skills-based hiring and development, rather than relying on job titles alone. That’s because focusing solely on conventional markers of competence like degrees or certifications can lead to a ‘paper ceiling’ , which limits access to capable people. In environments where rapid tech changes and talent shortages can make it difficult to meet needs, a skills-based focus can help identify and develop those who are ideal for the task or role at hand. The skills matrix supports that focus.
What Should a Skills Matrix Include?
At its core, a skills matrix plots employee names against the skills that are relevant for the role, team or project. Skill levels are rated on a simple proficiency scale of your choosing: for example, with 0 indicating no experience and 3 indicating expert proficiency. Or, the scale could be more focused on training status. You can choose to add a column for relevant certifications or licenses so these can be easily referred to.
Some skills matrices will also include an interest rating, to show how motivated the employee is to actually use or develop that skill.
How to Build a Skills Matrix in 5 Steps
Whether you’re using a simple Excel sheet or more sophisticated software, here’s the general order to building out a skills matrix.
1. Define the Skills That Matter
First, decide on the skills that the skills matrix will focus on. What are the skills needed for this specific role, department, or project? Drawing from job descriptions, team objectives and broader HR strategy will help list skills that are genuinely relevant. Consider asking department heads or subject matter experts for their input.
Don’t forget to include both hard and soft skills that are relevant. For example, collaboration and management skills could be just as important as technical capabilities.
2. Choose How You'll Rate Proficiency
Your scale of assessing proficiency can really be structured in any way as long as it’s clear, and consistently defined and applied. It could be beginner to expert, or 1 to 5. Setting clear definitions for each level will help make evaluations accurate even with different assessors involved.
For example:
- Level 0 = No proficiency or experience.
- Level 1 = Basic: Has the basics covered, but may need some assistance or supervision.
- Level 2 = Intermediate: Can work independently on tasks without assistance.
- Level 3 = Expert: Can handle complex tasks and is capable of mentoring, teaching or designing processes in this area.
3. Assess Each Team Member
While this step can be carried out from just one source, using a combination of sources will help deliver a more neutral, balanced evaluation. You could pull from any or all of these sources:
- Self-assessment, where the employee rates their own abilities
- Manager input and performance management data
- Colleague, customer or client evaluation
- Certifications obtained
- Skills assessments such as tests or quizzes.
In an ideal world, there would be 360° feedback on skills, including perspective from the employee as well as their colleagues, managers and leaders, peers and customers/clients.
4. Map the Results and Look for Gaps
Here’s where the skills matrix becomes actionable. Once you have all relevant skills mapped, you can start to highlight who’s ideal for the role or task in question, and how best to adjust your learning and development program.
Seeing everything on one page not only makes it easier to assess and develop each individual employee’s skills, but also across the team, department or organisation. Check out our guides to skill gap analysis and training needs analysis for more on addressing any shortfalls.
5. Review and Update Regularly
Naturally, proficiencies will change as roles evolve and employees upskill. As such it’s important to regularly update the skills matrix to reflect any recent changes. Keep note of when the matrix was last updated, and aim to revisit it on a regular schedule that meets the organisation’s needs.
A Skills Matrix Example
Let’s consider a skills matrix example to see how this grid might look in a real-world situation. Within a small marketing team, the roles are clearly defined, but there’s a lack of understanding of where strengths and skill gaps exist. Even a simple skills matrix can help clarify these proficiencies and the employees’ interest in using them.
If the focus is more on what training needs to be implemented, the matrix details can be adapted to suit. This example also uses colour coding for clearer visualisation.
A Free Skills Matrix Template
If you’d like to start setting out the skills within your team or department, it’s easiest to begin with a skills matrix template. We’ve included a download below that you can adapt and expand as needed.
Download skills matrix template
Best Practices for Keeping Your Skills Matrix Useful
There are a few handy things to remember as you start defining and populating your matrix. Aim to:
- Get buy-in from employees and their managers by explaining how the skills matrix can lead to better training and opportunities, so it’s not dismissed as a box-ticking exercise.
- Balance hard and soft skills, rather than focusing on technical ability alone. Doing so can highlight strong leaders, communicators or collaborators for the responsibility in question.
- Combine multiple assessment methods instead of relying on self-rating alone. It can be difficult to objectively assess our own skills, particularly relative to others.
- Align the skills matrix with employees’ individual career paths and development plans, as part of the organisation’s broader talent development strategy.
- Set a review schedule, such as every 6 to 12 months, and stick to this to make sure skills and training are updated. A skills matrix is most useful as an evolving document.
Closing Your Team’s Skill Gaps
Most business leaders and HR professionals will already have a good grasp on internal skills, but a skills matrix helps turn that information into visual, actionable data. It's a simple tool that helps you invest more strategically in your people and hold onto your best talent, no matter the size of your team.
If you’d like support closing your skill gaps or embedding skills matrices into your wider people strategy, HumanX HR can help through project-based HR consulting and ongoing outsourced HR. With our teams in Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth, Brisbane and Canberra, there’s always someone close by to help.
