Imagine you’re about to engage on your first HR analytics project.

You want the

project to be a success – obviously. How do you make sure you have the right
people and the right skills to start quickly and finish the job successfully? The skills
matrix, or competency matrix, is your best friend.

What is a skills matrix?

A skills matrix, or competency matrix, is a tool to map required and desired skills
for a team or project. It is a grid that visualizes the required and available skills
and competencies in a team. This makes it an essential tool for any data-driven
HR professional.
A completed skills matrix visualizes the skills that are required, the skills that are
available in the team and the skills that the team is missing. This is the skill gap.

What is a skills matrix used for?

Now to the more practical aspects. What is a competency matrix used for? There
are two general purposes.

First of all, a competency matrix helps to assess the required skills for a project or
team. In order to successfully implement a skills matrix, you need to create an
overview of the skills that are required to complete the job or project successfully.

This exercise helps to define the key activities of the team and define the relevant
skills or competencies required to complete these activities.

Secondly, a skills matrix provides insight into the available skills within a team.
After listing the required skills for the project, you need to assess the available
skills in the team.

For example, if an HR analytics project requires business acumen, IT skills, data

analytics capabilities and reporting capabilities, you need to check which person in
the team has which skills.
If there’s a particular skill that’s missing, you can easily hire an employee with the
relevant skills to add to the team. Doing this before the project starts, helps to
ensure a better outcome. If you need to do a skills analysis in retrospect, it usually
means that you’re evaluating a failed project!

Benefits of a skills matrix

A skills matrix helps to drive performance in multiple ways. It is not only beneficial
to the team but also to the individual, organization and, potentially, internal and
external clients!
 Team: The competency matrix is primarily a tool to help the team as a whole. The
team gains a quick overview of both the skills that are present and the ones that
are missing. These missing skills can be found by hiring people with the relevant
competencies.
Additionally, the team is more aware of its own weak spots and can take extra
care to prevent the missing skills from interfering with performance.
 Individual: The skills matrix also helps the individual twofold. First, it gives the
individual insight in their own competencies and what they bring to the table and
what they are missing. This is an excellent starting point for learning and
development opportunities.
Secondly, it makes the individual aware of the skills that are required for the team
to successfully perform. It also communicates expectations as the matrix shows
the capabilities that the individual is expected to excel in.
 Organizations: On a larger scale, the organization gets an overview of available
competencies and areas of improvement. These are the areas that the
organization can invest their learning and development budget into in order to
function better. In addition, these competency matrixes can help to redistribute
internal talent to the places it’s most needed.
 Clients: The final stakeholder, clients, receive a better service. It doesn’t really
matter whether these are internal or external clients. The teams have increased
awareness of missing skills which help to prevent pitfalls.