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Overview

The Skills Matrix is SkillsDB’s primary tool for understanding how proficient your workforce is across the skills in a given career role. The matrix organizes data as a grid: each row represents a person, each column represents a skill, and each cell displays that person’s grade for that skill. This structure lets administrators and managers instantly see where employees meet, exceed, or fall below role expectations — without needing to open individual profiles or run separate reports. The Skills Matrix draws on assessment data submitted by employees (self-assessments) and managers (manager assessments). Each grade in the matrix reflects either the employee’s self-reported proficiency or the manager’s evaluation, depending on which grade tab is active. You can toggle between these two perspectives at any time. The matrix also displays benchmark grades — the target proficiency level set for each skill in the role — so you can compare actual grades directly against expectations. Beyond proficiency grades, the Skills Matrix includes three alternative views: the Training Matrix (which shows training completion dates), the Skills Flag Matrix (which shows designations like Expert and Mentor applied to each person’s skills), and chart views for aggregate pattern analysis. All views share the same navigation, filtering, and export tools. Administrators have full access to the Skills Matrix for all career roles in the organization. Managers can access the matrix for roles assigned to their team, depending on the organization’s settings configuration.

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Prerequisites

Before using the Skills Matrix, ensure the following:

• Permission level: Administrator role, or Manager access with the Skills Matrix feature enabled in your organization’s settings
• Career role setup: At least one career role has been configured in Library > Careers with skills assigned and benchmark grades set
• Employee assignment: Employees have been assigned to the career role so they appear as rows in the matrix

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Navigating to the Skills Matrix

The Skills Matrix is accessed through the career details in the Library.

1. Select Library from the left sidebar navigation.
2. Select Careers to open the careers list.
3. Select the career role you want to analyze.
4. In the career details panel, select Skills Matrix.

The Skills Matrix opens for the selected career role. The page title reads Analytics / [Role Name]. To switch to a different career role without returning to the Careers list, use the career selector dropdown in the breadcrumb navigation at the top of the page. Select any career from the dropdown to load its matrix instantly.

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Understanding the Matrix Layout

The Skills Matrix is organized as a grid with two axes: Rows (people): Each row represents one employee assigned to the selected career role. The People column, pinned to the left side of the grid, shows each person’s name, job title, and role level badge (for example, “L1” or “L2”). Columns (skills): Each skill in the career role appears as a separate column. Skills are grouped by section — the category they belong to within the career. Section names appear as column group headers above the individual skill column labels. Cells (grades): Each cell at the intersection of a person and a skill shows that person’s grade for that skill. Grades are displayed as numeric badges and are color-coded to indicate performance relative to the benchmark for that skill: The specific grade levels available in your organization (for example, 1 through 5, with labels such as “Beginner” through “Expert”) are configured by your administrator in the grading scale settings. Benchmark grades for each skill are set per career role in Library > Careers.

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Switching Between Views

The Skills Matrix page offers five views. To switch between views, use the view selector dropdown in the breadcrumb navigation area at the top of the page.

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Skills Matrix (default)

The Skills Matrix view is the default. It displays numeric proficiency grades for each person-skill combination. Grades reflect either the manager’s assessment or the employee’s self-assessment, depending on the active grade tab. See Toggling Between Manager and Employee Grades below for details on switching between grade sources.

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Training Matrix

The Training Matrix view replaces proficiency grades with training completion dates. Each cell shows the date an employee completed training for that skill, or “NA” if no training record exists. Selecting a cell in the Training Matrix opens the Skill-Based Training Records modal for that person-skill combination. The modal displays existing training records — including the trainer’s name, training date, and attached documents — and allows you to add new training entries.

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Skills Flag Matrix

The Skills Flag Matrix view shows the skill flags applied to each person for each skill in the role. Flags appear as colored badges inside each cell: A cell may display multiple flag badges if more than one flag is applied to that person-skill combination. Empty cells indicate no flags have been applied.

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Nightingale Chart

The Nightingale chart view displays a radial (polar/rose) visualization of skills and grades aggregated across the selected career role. This view is best for identifying overall patterns in skill strengths and weaknesses across the role at a glance, rather than examining individual people’s data.

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Bar Chart

The Bar chart view displays average grades for each skill, aggregated across all people currently visible in the matrix. You can toggle between Manager and Employee grades in this view. This view is useful for comparing relative proficiency levels across all skills in the role and spotting which skills have the lowest or highest average performance.

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Toggling Between Manager and Employee Grades

In the Skills Matrix and Bar chart views, you can choose which grade source is displayed.

• Manager: Shows the grade submitted by the employee’s manager in their manager assessment.
• Employee: Shows the grade submitted by the employee in their self-assessment.

To switch between grade sources, select Manager or Employee in the tab switcher in the top navigation bar. Switching the active grade tab immediately updates:

• The grade value displayed in every cell
• The color-coding of each cell (performance vs. benchmark is recalculated using the selected grade source)
• The performance counts in the filter drawer (Meets Target, Exceeds Target, Below Target, and Unassigned totals)
• The people averages (top and bottom performers) shown in the filter drawer
• The Bar chart data

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Filtering the Matrix

The Skills Matrix supports several layers of filtering to help you focus on specific people, organizational groups, performance levels, or role tiers. Open the filter drawer by selecting Display (the settings icon) in the top-right area of the page.

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Filtering by organizational attributes

Use the filter bar at the top of the matrix to filter rows by organizational attributes: Select any filter label to open a multi-select panel. Filters work with AND logic across types — applying a Department filter and a People filter shows only the selected people within the selected departments. To remove all organizational filters, select Clear Filters in the filter bar.

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Filtering by performance level

In the filter drawer, the Legend section displays counts for each performance category based on the currently active grade tab:

• Meets Target — grade equals the benchmark
• Exceeds Target — grade exceeds the benchmark
• Below Target — grade is below the benchmark
• Unassigned — no grade has been submitted

Select a performance category label to filter the matrix to show only cells matching that performance level. Cells hidden by an active performance filter are counted in the “X grades hidden by filters” indicator that appears at the bottom of the table. Select Clear Filters in that indicator to remove all performance filters at once.

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Filtering by grading scale

In the filter drawer, the Grading Scale section lists each active grade level in your organization’s grading scale (for example, grade 1 through 5). Each grade level shows the count of cells currently at that grade. Select one or more grade levels to filter the matrix to show only cells at those specific grades.

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Filtering by role level

In the filter drawer, the Average Grade by Level section lists each level within the career role (for example, L1, L2, L3). Each level shows a count of employees at that level. Select a level to filter the matrix to show only employees assigned to that level. Use the Levels tab in this section to filter by role level. The Labels tab is reserved for a future filtering capability and is not yet active.

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Exporting the Skills Matrix

You can export the current view to an Excel file for use in external reporting or sharing.

1. Apply any filters you want reflected in the export.
2. Select Export in the top-right area of the page.

SkillsDB downloads an Excel (.xlsx) file. The export includes only the rows and columns that are visible after any active filters are applied. If you want to export the full matrix, clear all filters before selecting Export. Export filename format: role_{View Name}_{Grade Tab}_{YYYY-MM-DD}.xlsx Examples:

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Common Questions

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