Skills matrix: Overview

What is a skills matrix?

A skills matrix is a grid showing who in your organisation holds which skills and accreditations, and to what level. People are listed down the side and skills across the top. Each square shows whether that person meets the requirement, and if not, why not: the skill might be missing, expired, below the level needed, or waiting to be checked.

In pro-Forms, the skills matrix covers two kinds of item:

- Skills: things a person can do, often at different levels. For example, boiler servicing at Aware, Competent or Expert.
- Accreditations: certificates or cards issued by an outside body, usually with a certificate number and an expiry date. For example, Gas Safe registration, CSCS cards, IPAF or 18th Edition.

Why do you need one?

- Safety and compliance. You can see at a glance that only qualified people are sent to do qualified work, and spot expired or missing certificates before they cause a problem.
- Audits and tenders. Accreditation schemes such as SafeContractor and CHAS, principal contractors and clients often ask for proof that your staff are competent. The matrix, its reports and its audit trail give you that evidence quickly.
- Planning work. When allocating a job, you can find the people who hold the right skills at the right level.
- Planning training. Gaps in the matrix show who needs training, and in which skills, so you can book courses where they are needed most.
- One source of truth. Certificates, levels and expiry dates are kept in one place, against each person's profile, instead of in scattered spreadsheets and folders.

Key terms

- User category: a group of people who need the same skills, such as "Domestic Gas Engineer" or "Office Staff". A person can belong to more than one category.
- Heading: a label used to group skills within a category, such as "Gas" or "Health and Safety". Headings can sit inside other headings.
- Library: your company's list of skills and accreditations. Categories pick from the library.
- Starter library: a ready-made list of common UK skills and accreditations provided by pro-Forms. You can copy any of these into your own library.
- Proficiency scale: the levels a skill can be held at, lowest first, such as Aware, Competent, Expert.
- Required: a skill a category must hold. You can also set the minimum level needed.
- Record: one person's skill or accreditation, with its level, certificate number, issue date, expiry date and evidence.
- Evidence: a file that proves the record, such as a photo of a card or a PDF certificate.
- Pending, verified, rejected and revoked: a new record starts as pending. A manager checks it and either verifies it (it now counts) or rejects it. A verified record can later be revoked if it is no longer valid.

Getting started

A typical setup order is:

1. Build your library of skills and accreditations. See Setting up your skills library.
2. Create your user categories, add headings and skills to them, and add people. See Creating user categories.
3. Record people's skills, one at a time, by training session, or by importing a spreadsheet. See Recording and verifying skills, Recording a training session, and Importing skills from a spreadsheet.
4. Verify the records. See Recording and verifying skills.

Articles in this section

- Skills Matrix: Setting up your skills library
- Skills Matrix: Creating user categories
- Skills Matrix: Reading the skills matrix
- Skills Matrix: Recording and verifying skills
- Skills Matrix: Recording a training session
- Skills Matrix: Importing skills from a spreadsheet
- Skills Matrix: Finding people with the right skills
- Skills Matrix: Compliance reports and the audit trail
- Skills Matrix: FAQ