As your company grows and you take on more employees, you will usually find that you have a diverse range of people with a wide skillset between them. Determining your employees’ skills, strengths and weaknesses is crucial for a company’s success as it allows you to make sure that the right people have the work that is most suitable for them and that everything runs smoothly. A clear skills matrix makes it easy for you to quickly glance and see which employees are skilled at different things or the qualifications and certifications that they hold which might make them an ideal or not-so-ideal choice for a certain project. Here are some of the main ways a skills matrix can benefit your workforce.
Delegate Tasks to the Right People
A clear skills matrix that is regularly updated will make it easier for you to delegate the right tasks to the right employees. When you can easily look and see who is skilled at what, it allows you to quickly pick the right person or team for a certain job. When using skills management software, delegation becomes much easier as you can make sure that employees are being given work that they enjoy and are good at, which in turn will increase productivity and make sure that you are always getting the best results.
If you’re not sure where to start with putting together a skills matrix, these free templates from AG5 can help. You can download and test them all to find the one you need. This company also offers skills matrix software that allows you to easily create your matrix and update it at any time without any coding experience or knowledge of spreadsheets, so if you find the templates useful, you could try their software too.
Boost Employee Morale
As a company owner or manager, you’ll know just how important the morale of the workplace is. But sadly, when employees are being saddled with tasks that they don’t enjoy or don’t have the right skills for, it can lead to a culture of frustration which might see productivity levels drop or staff turnover rate increases.
It makes sense to ensure that you are giving the right jobs to the right people. And when employees are working on the projects that they wanted to do when they applied to work for you, because that’s what they trained for, they will generally be much happier and more satisfied at work.
Improve Employee Training
A clear skills matrix will not only allow you to see at a glance where employees’ skills lie, but it will also make it easier for you to track any gaps in skillsets and training that you could help certain employees with. You can even create a section in your matrix where you can list the skills that employees would like to improve or gain in the future, or whether they want to get a certain qualification.
This can make it much easier if you decide to invest in training and career advancement opportunities for your employees since you can quickly make the right decisions based on what they themselves have told you they would like to learn or improve.
Finding Cover
At times, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to find cover for an employee who isn’t able to work due to sickness, for example. Ideally, you will want to find somebody who is equally skilled and able to do the job just as well. If you are a team member down on a certain project and their skills need to be replaced, a skills matrix gives you the perfect tool to search your company for somebody who is suitable for the job, allowing you to maintain productivity levels and get the same results even if you’re a member of staff down.
A clear skills matrix is an excellent tool for a company of any size, but particularly as you grow, and it gets harder to track your employees’ skills and strengths by memory alone.
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