Organizational Wellness

How to Build and Use an Employee Skills Matrix (Examples & Template)

Last Updated Dec 9, 2024

Time to read: 7 minutes

One of the most rewarding parts of being an HR leader is supporting employee development. Seeing your employees grow can be incredibly rewarding — and it can also improve your company’s bottom line.

Offering employee training programs can help you retain your talent and nurture employee satisfaction. As revealed in Wellhub’s State of Work-Life Wellness 2024 report, 89% of workers say professional development in their field is important to keeping them more engaged at work!

So, how exactly do you know who to train and what to train them in? That’s where an employee skills matrix can help. These handy tools will help you identify which skills you’re missing so you know where to train. Let’s take a look at how you can harness the power of these matrices.

What Is a Skills Matrix and Why Are They Useful?

A skills matrix is a visual tool that helps you track which skills you have in your team — and which ones are missing. It typically looks like a table or grid, where rows list individual employees and columns list relevant skills. Each cell in the matrix indicates the employee’s competency level in the corresponding skill.

Think of them as a chef’s cooking guide, where the competencies represent ingredients, and the employees represent your stock. To make a beautiful cake, you’ll need ingredients like flour, butter, and cream. Similarly, to create the perfect team, you’ll need a mix of hard and soft skills like software proficiency, communication, and leadership.

A skills matrix gives you an overview of what skills you already have in your kitchen and what skills you still need, either through professional development or talent acquisition.

Types of Employee Skills Matrices (With Examples)

The best part about skills matrices is that you can customize them to fit your needs. Depending on where your organization is at, you might need different things from your skill matrix.

Individual Skills Matrix

These matrices map out each employee’s individual skills. This is helpful if you want to see what each employee brings to the table so you can identify how to best maximize their skills and identify potential areas of employee development. In fact, over half of employees say that their job requires specialized training, according to a PwC survey. So, on-the-job training is a critical part of most jobs.

For example, you can create a spreadsheet for a single employee that lists skills like project management, software proficiency, leadership, and specific technical abilities. Each skill is rated according to the employee’s current proficiency level, helping you identify areas for growth.

Team Skills Matrix

With these matrices, you'll get a bird's-eye view of the skills in a certain team. The beauty of teamwork is that you can rely on your partners to fill in the gaps, and these types of matrices can help you create high-performing teams.

These matrices include all members of a team and their proficiencies across various skills necessary for the project’s success. For example, a marketing team might include skills like content writing, SEO, graphic design, and ads management. This matrix will help you identify gaps in team capabilities so you can reshuffle your teams or hire new talent to fit your needs.

Departmental Skills Matrix

These are similar to the team skills matrix but focused on a much broader scale. Picture a grand blueprint for your entire department, mapping out skills from foundational to emerging. Beyond just helping you see who’s good at what today, this matrix will help you prepare your crew for tomorrow’s challenges with skills in emerging tech and innovative strategies.

For example, you might want to use this to map out your entire programming team and categorize each programmer’s expertise level across different programming languages. Then, think about future trends. Who’s familiar with AI? Who knows how to work with extended reality? Mapping this out can help you stay on top of your department’s skills across different technologies.

Tips to Leverage Your Skills Matrix in Talent Management

Creating a skills matrix is a time-consuming effort that, if leveraged correctly, can yield incredible results. Here are some expert tips to help you leverage your talent management like a pro:

Spotlight on Skills Gaps

Your biggest area of opportunity will be developing your employees’ skills. These matrices will help you pinpoint exactly where your team’s competencies might be lacking so you know where to implement training programs. Plus, more than half of employees reported that career training improved their overall performance, according to a SurveyMonkey survey.

Tailored Training Programs

Training programs can be pricey. In fact, the average employer spends $954 per year per employee on training programs, according to Training Industry Report. If you’re going to spend close to a thousand dollars on training, then you want to make sure you get the most bang for your buck.

By looking at the data in your employee skills matrices, you’ll be able to craft tailor-made training programs that support everybody’s growth.

Boost Internal Mobility

A well-maintained skills matrix reveals current competencies and potential aptitudes. It could be your key to unlocking internal mobility, promoting from within, and retaining top talent. For example, if you notice that an employee’s skills align more closely with a different department, then it might be their time to make a lateral move.

Plan for the Future

The proactive leader will take advantage of skills matrices to plan for the future. Almost half of employers plan to increase their training spending in the future, according to a LinkedIn Learning Workplace Learning Report. If this sounds like your org, then you can use these matrices to plan smarter.

How to Create a Skills Matrix (Step-by-Step Guide)

So, how do you actually go about creating your first skills matrix? Here’s an easy step-by-step guide, following our chef analogy:

Cook Up Your Skills Menu

Start by listing all the skills your team or organization needs. Think of this like writing your grocery list before you even think about firing up the oven. Include both soft skills like leadership and communication, and hard skills like coding or graphic design. You want a well-rounded menu that covers all bases.

Whip Up a Grading System

Now, decide how you'll measure these skills. You can use a simple scale like:

0 (No capability)
1 (Basic capability)
2 (Intermediate capability)
3 (Advanced capability)

This scale helps you assess how well each team member performs a specific skill.

Taste-Test Your Team’s Skills

Time to evaluate your team's skills. You could have them rate themselves. Or for a fuller flavor profile, add a dash of feedback from colleagues and managers. This helps you get a more accurate measure of each person’s skill level.

Mix in Interest Levels

Don’t forget to sprinkle in a measure of each team member's interest in using their skills. Simply ask them to rate their interest on a scale of 0 (no interest) to 1 (some interest). This helps you understand who’s keen on taking on new challenges and who is happy at their current level.

Plate Up Your Skills Matrix

Put all this data into a matrix. Lay out the skills on one axis and team members on the other, filling in each cell with the capability and interest levels. It’s like mapping out who brings what to your team’s potluck.

6: Garnish With Insights

Now that your matrix is ready, use it to spot who might need a bit more training, who could be ready for a promotion, or how you might fill skill gaps in your team. It’s your blueprint for building a well-balanced team that can handle any project you cook up.

And voilà! You've got a skills matrix that not only looks good but gives you all the insights you need to manage your team's talents effectively. Use this tool to keep your team growing, learning, and excelling — and watch as they transform your organization’s goals into reality.

Employee Skill Matrix Template

Now that you’ve learned all about employee skills matrices, we’ve made an employee skills matrix template for you to use. Feel free to add, remove, and edit columns based on your organization’s needs.

Employee Name	Technical Writing	Software Proficiency	Project Management	Data Analysis	Leadership	Communication	Client Relations	Interest in Development
John Doe	2	3	1	1	2	3	2	Yes
Jane Smith	3	1	3	2	1	2	3	No
Sam Lee	1	2	2	3	2	1	1	Yes
Lisa Ray	2	3	1	1	3	2	2	Yes
Alex Kim	3	2	3	3	3	3	1	No
Mia Wong	1	1	2	2	1	3	3	Yes
Tom Brooks	2	3	3	1	2	3	2	Yes

Key for Skill Levels:

0 = No capability
1 = Basic capability
2 = Intermediate capability
3 = Advanced capability

Interest in Development:

Yes = Interested in further development
No = Not interested in further development

Help Your Employee’s Talents Shine

Understanding the skills within your team lets you make the most of your team’s talents. Using a skills matrix to do this lays the foundation to optimize your talent management and address skill gaps.

An employee wellbeing program can also help your team's skills shine. Wellbeing programs support employees' health, increasing their performance — nine out of 10 of workers say, for example, their physical wellbeing impacts their productivity.

Speak with a Wellbeing Specialist for a wellness solution that fosters a more resilient and capable workforce!

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See how we can help you reduce your healthcare spending.

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[*] Based on proprietary research comparing healthcare costs of active Wellhub users to non-users.