The manager wants to evaluate which skills are missing to prevent the team from missing deadlines, internal conflict or other cost later on. If something goes wrong when saving the spreadsheet or staff send each other different, conflicting versions, then this can quickly lead to confusion about who actually has the latest, correct version. Most of the early analytics teams don’t require advanced data analytics. But you could equally flip this around and list all your skills down the left-hand column, and all your employees along the top row. Skills matrix’s have been around for years and are a common HR tool to help spot employee training needs, skills shortages and potential employee structure changes. Now to the more practical aspects. They’re a snapshot of your organization’s skills and expertise at any given moment. Skills matrices offer virtually limitless possibilities. Professional development, productivity, and skill set growth are all clearly visible. Skills matrices are great for keeping track of your staff’s core competences, skills, qualifications, and certification across your entire organization. They’re also ideal for dealing with peaks in demand within a given department, as they allow you to pinpoint qualified staff in other departments who can be reassigned temporarily to help out. It’s also quick and easy to alter data and other details in the document. AG5 software has a feature to set alerts for individual employees (or groups of employees) or for each certification. Using the skills matrix, you can easily spot the team’s strong and weak points. It is a grid that visualizes the required and available skills and competencies in a team. Pretty straightforward, right? Measure how much time each task requires (e.g. These applications automate a lot of the tasks you carry out manually in Excel. Download this free template as an Excel spreadsheet or a PowerPoint file.. Template #5: EuIT. Each matrix is split into columns and rows. It’s a piece of cake to add new skills or adjust a staff member’s proficiency level. But how do skills matrices work in practice? We developed this example using MS Excel. Armed with these insights, you’re far better equipped to decide about the best way to improve this situation – train up existing staff and/or recruit new staff to fill the ‘skills gap’. On the downside, the team is missing advanced data analytics skills. Make sure you’ve discussed and communicated this adequately with your staff. Doing this before the project starts, helps to ensure a better outcome. For example, through competency testing of the person and his direct peers and manager. First up, it’s a low-cost solution. More importantly, how could you be benefiting from their use? After listing the required skills for the project, you need to assess the available skills in the team. On top of the previous instrument, this one includes other relationships as well, like customers, direct reports and bosses. The following steps constitute the creation of a skills matrix. There are plenty of pitfalls lurking that can undermine your attempts to manage your skills matrices properly. Most of the time this is the case, but sometimes it isn’t. So, you can already see that AG5 software has a number of benefits. Communication is a critical soft skill for people working in human resources. Creating a skills matrix in a spreadsheet means dealing with multiple tabs and countless formulas. Although the examples above clearly illustrate the benefits and potential of skills matrices, they also represent a fairly outdated approach. Download the FREE cheat sheet with 51 HR Metrics. The Job Characteristics Model –what is it and what are its benefits? But how do skills matrices work in practice? The advantage of such an instrument is that people are not always accurate in evaluating their own skills. It is beneficial to — The Team: “Competency Matrix” is a tool to help the team.