Skills Matrix: Example, Tips and Best Practices

The skills matrix is a human resources management tool that maps employees' skills within a company through a table or grid. It helps recruiters identify available skills in the company as well as gaps for a specific position or project.

Simplifying talent management, this skills matrix helps structure training plans to develop specific team skills while optimizing the recruitment process to attract the most suitable profiles.

How to build a skills matrix to mobilize the right profiles at the right time? Intuition Software explains everything you need to know about this HR tool and offers an example to design your own matrix.

Skills Matrix Summary

• A skills matrix is a visual tool that identifies team strengths and gaps to align available skills with company needs.
• There are several types of skills matrices: individual, team, and project.
• This matrix enables better talent management and distribution, facilitates targeted recruitment, and optimizes training plans.
• Creating a skills matrix involves 5 steps: identify essential skills, define mastery levels, evaluate existing skills, assign levels to each employee, and implement an appropriate action plan.

What is a Skills Matrix?

A skills matrix is a table or grid that visually establishes the skills present within a work team. It allows the company to map all available know-how and identify gaps to fill for a project or position.

In a skills matrix, each skill is cross-referenced with an employee, position, project, or specific activity, and can be evaluated according to different criteria:

• Mastery level
• Degree of autonomy
• Frequency of use
• Strategic importance for the position

The objective of a skills table is to compare required skills with those actually available. This comparison highlights strengths to rely on as well as weaknesses to strengthen. This therefore facilitates decision-making related to training, recruitment, or team reorganization.

What's the Difference Between Skills Matrix and Versatility Matrix?

The skills matrix measures the mastery level of know-how related to a position, while the versatility matrix highlights employees' ability to occupy different roles. Although different, these two tools remain complementary, following the same logic of management and talent management.

• The skills matrix allows verification of the mastery level of a key skill (from beginner to expert), identification of existing expertise in the team, and spotting potential gaps for a specific position.
• The versatility matrix focuses on employees' ability to occupy different positions or master a business process as a whole. It shows skill diversity beyond current functions. It can be very useful, for example, to find a replacement in case of absence or to set up teams with multi-skills.

What are the Different Types of Skills Matrices?

There are three types of skills matrices: individual skills matrix, team skills matrix, and project skills matrix. Depending on needs, a company can implement one or more types of individual, team, or project skills matrices.

• Individual skills matrix: this is the most common form. It crosses a given position with expected skills, then indicates each employee's mastery level. This skills table allows quick identification of a person's strengths, improvement areas, and training needs to effectively occupy their position.

• Team skills matrix: this table groups skills from a service, department, or work team. It highlights the overall distribution of aptitudes, complementarities, and collective gaps. This overview helps plan a group's skill development and distribute missions more evenly.

• Project skills matrix: this matrix is designed for a specific project or one-time mission. It compares available team skills with those necessary for project success. It serves to form an appropriate team and identify potential reinforcement needs, and to monitor project management throughout.

Why Use a Skills Matrix?

The skills matrix has many benefits, both for HR teams and employees. For HR, it offers a clear vision of talents, facilitates recruitment, and guides training. For employees, it makes their achievements visible, highlights skills to develop, and clarifies company expectations.

Benefits from a Human Resources Perspective

For human resources, the skills matrix:

• Offers a complete vision of skills present in the company, allowing anticipation of needs and adaptation of HR strategy.
• Facilitates recruitment by quickly identifying gaps and profiles to seek.
• Helps with better talent distribution in teams and ensures creation of coherent groups.
• Promotes professional training, by orienting skill development plans on real needs.
• Enables regular performance monitoring, useful for improving collective productivity and efficiency.

Benefits from Employees' Perspective

For employees, a skills table:

• Provides the opportunity to visualize their current skills and identify those to develop to progress in their career.
• Clarifies company expectations regarding skills so employees better align their personal objectives with those of the organization.
• Strengthens managerial support: employees feel monitored, accompanied, and better supervised in their professional development.

What are the Steps to Create a Good Skills Matrix?

To create an effective skills matrix, you must follow a clear 5-step method:

• Identify essential skills
• Define mastery levels
• Evaluate existing know-how
• Assign a level to each employee
• Implement an appropriate action plan

Step 1: Identify Key Skills

The first step consists of defining indispensable skills for each position. For this, you must integrate both hard skills and soft skills and mad skills, to be as complete as possible and establish a reliable reference framework. Managers can help specify which skills are expected, as they experience the reality in the field.

Step 2: Define Skill Levels

After identifying and listing skills, you must build a grid that shows whether they are acquired, expert, or developing among different employees. For this, you can structure the table as follows:

• Rows: employees
• Columns: skills
• Cells: mastery level

The scale that will measure skill levels can be qualitative (from beginner to expert) or numerical (for example from 1 to 5). Each level must correspond to objective and observable criteria to avoid any bias. Here's an example of five-level progression:

• Level 1 - Beginner: basic knowledge, needs constant accompaniment.
• Level 2 - Intermediate: possible application with regular supervision.
• Level 3 - Competent: autonomy on routine tasks.
• Level 4 - Confirmed: ability to manage complex situations and supervise other employees.
• Level 5 - Expert: reference in their domain, active transmission of know-how.

Step 3: Evaluate Existing Skills

You must then analyze the reality of skills present in the company to measure gaps between current skills and those necessary to achieve planned objectives. This evaluation phase can take several forms:

• Individual interviews
• Performance assessments
• Technical tests
• Self-evaluations completed by employees

Self-evaluation can be particularly interesting, as it directly involves employees and promotes their engagement. However, it must be complemented by managers' opinions to guarantee an objective and balanced vision.

Step 4: Attribution of Skill Levels

At this step, each employee is assigned a precise level for each skill recorded in the matrix. This classification makes visible the adequacy between available resources and position or project requirements.

This highlights strengths to rely on and gaps to address. It's this diagnosis that transforms the skills matrix into a real HR analysis tool for managing talents.

Step 5: Implementation of Actions to Take

Once established, you must exploit the skills matrix to define concrete actions to implement. Based on gaps identified compared to needs, the company can implement:

• Targeted training plans
• Offer individual development paths
• Organize internal mobility
• Recruit new profiles

These actions aim to fill identified skill gaps, improve team performance, and support employees' professional development.

What are the Best Practices for a Skills Matrix?

For building an effective skills matrix, it is essential to:

• Involve all stakeholders
• Update it regularly
• Use appropriate tools like skills management software

1. Involve All Stakeholders

A skills matrix must not only involve HR teams, but also managers and employees. Indeed, managers know the specific skills necessary for each position, and employees, as direct users of this matrix, must be able to understand and appropriate it.

2. Update the Skills Matrix

A skills matrix must be regularly updated to reflect the evolution of professions, skills, and company objectives. It's important to plan an evolutionary roadmap to track employee progress and adjust it according to strategic needs.

3. Use Skills Management Software

To make the matrix more dynamic and easy to manage, using dedicated skills management software allows creation of an interactive matrix, with filters, search options, and automated updates. Software allows to:

• Centralize all data
• Avoid manual errors
• Optimize logistics on skills analysis

Skills Matrix Example

Discover our skills matrix example in table form. Most common matrix form, rows represent employees and columns represent identified skills. Cells are then filled with skill mastery levels.

This skills table model can be made on paper, in a spreadsheet like Excel, or via skills management software.

Well built, the skills matrix allows your company to effectively manage talents. It offers a clear vision of available skills and needs to fill, thus contributing to overall team performance. It's up to you to structure this tool to meet your company's requirements while supporting employee development.

Do you want to strengthen talent management and enhance your HR approach from recruitment? Contact our Intuition Software team and discover JobAffinity, our recruitment software (ATS) designed to simplify recruiters' daily work.

FAQ

How to Create a Skills Mapping?

To create a skills mapping, you must identify necessary skills for each position, then evaluate employees' mastery level for each given skill. Grids or Excel tables allow quick visualization of skill distribution and identification of gaps.

What are the 4 Levels of Professional Skills?

The four skill levels are:

• Beginner: basic knowledge, supervision necessary.
• Intermediate: autonomous application with occasional supervision.
• Confirmed: complete mastery, ability to manage complex situations.
• Expert: reference in the domain, ability to transmit and supervise.

How to Measure the Effectiveness of a Skills Matrix?

To measure the effectiveness and success of a skills matrix, you must evaluate its impact on organizational performance:

• Check if identified skill gaps have been filled.
• Verify if employees progress according to development plans.
• Verify if talent distribution is better aligned with the company's strategic objectives.