Skills Matrix – Template

Download this Skills Matrix and make it your own. 

How to use:

1. Fill your company and team details in the set up sheet
2. Update your staff details (if you have more than 20 staff I suggest you split by team)
3. Update your activities (add all activities)
   1. Tactical = daily physical tasks
   2. Soft skills = non physical task – typically interaction –  e.g. Communication, Leadership
   3. Values = alignment to your business values/culture – e.g. quality, customers service, attitude, willingness
4. Score staff on each activity/skill
   1. Try to be consistent when scoring – you want to write down what each score means for a set of skills
      1. This is the view of you and your managers – assign as you see fit.
   2. Where the activity/skill is not applicable for that person leave cell as blank – do not use 0 as this will mess up the average
5. Analyse results
   1. The total scores are a simple average. It is designed to help you see the picture overall do not expect everyone to be fully green
   2. Look at skills/activities and see if there are any coverage gaps
      1. If you have an activity with very few skilled staff what is the risk?
   3. Identify any highly skilled staff across many skills – are we using to their full potential?
   4. Identify those who have skill gaps and start to pan how to close those gaps.

Best Practices

• Don’t keep it a secret – use this to discuss gaps with staff, confirm if they agree and explain why you see the gap.
  • TIP: Be honest, positive (about improvement), and flexible e.g. if they disagree, agree a pan for you to understand the “real” situation.
• Support – this is all about adding support to develop people – it is useless if you do not provide adequate support for people to improve
• Agree and document any improvement plan – ALWAYS agree the actions and the time frame e.g. from Red to Yellow – do training within next x days.
  • TIP: I personally don’t like to dictate the plan. I find it very effective to ask the staff member how they might approach it to improve and come up with a plan together.  If you let them define the actions and result, they are more likely to achieve it.
• Where improvement pan in place define what success looks like and when/how your will reassess.
  • TIP: No need to create a separate assessment e.g. if you already have a review/audit process you can simply use that as the assessment approach and timing.
• Be consistent – the rating applies to level of standard expected.
  • That standard should not change. It may take some longer to achieve than others, that’s ok, but DO NOT change the standard!
  • Ensure you clearly define what each skill level means for each skill so assessment is as consistent as possible across staff regardless of who is assessing.
    • TIP: At the beginning you may want to share and rotate skills assessors/or assess separately and come together to compare and discuss to ensure consistency.