> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.skillsdb.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Resource Planning
> Learn how to use SkillsDB for resource planning — assess team skill coverage, identify gaps, find experts, and build upskilling plans to close them.
**Quick Summary:** Resource planning in SkillsDB means using your organization's skill data to answer questions like: Who has the skills for this project? Where are our biggest gaps? How do we close them? This tutorial walks through the full workflow — from assessing your team's current state to finding the right people and building development plans.
# Overview
Resource planning is the practice of matching your organization's skill capacity to its needs. Before you can staff a project effectively, make a hiring decision, or prioritize a training initiative, you need to know what skills your team currently has, where the gaps are, and who is best positioned to fill them.
SkillsDB gives you a connected set of tools to do exactly that. Rather than relying on spreadsheets or informal knowledge, you can use real assessment data, benchmark comparisons, and skills matrices to make resourcing decisions on a solid foundation.
This tutorial covers the end-to-end resource planning workflow:
1. **Assess your team's current skill state** — understand who has what, at what level, across your organization's defined Careers
2. **Identify gaps and strengths** — use the Skills Matrix and Career Overview to pinpoint where capacity is thin and where it's strong
3. **Find the right people** — use Find Experts to search for individuals with specific skills across your organization
4. **Build upskilling plans** — use Learning Plans to close gaps and track development progress
5. **Monitor training coverage** — use the Training Matrix to confirm skills are being trained and certifications are current
Resource planning in SkillsDB is primarily used by managers, directors, executives, and administrators. Employees can view their own skills data and learning plans, but the team-level analytics described here require manager-level access or higher.
***
## Prerequisites
Before following this tutorial, confirm that:
* Your organization has defined **Careers** (role definitions with skills and benchmark grades) in SkillsDB
* Employees have been **assigned to Careers** by a manager or administrator
* Assessments have been completed so that skills have recorded grades to compare against benchmarks
* You have **manager-level access** or higher to view team skills data
If Careers have not been configured or assessments have not been run, contact your administrator before proceeding. The skills data in SkillsDB is only as useful as the assessment coverage behind it.
***
## Step 1: Get an Overview of Your Team's Skill Coverage
The starting point for resource planning is understanding how your team's skills are distributed across the Careers you manage.
#### Navigate to Team Skills
1. Select **Skills** from the left sidebar navigation under the **Team** section.
The **My Team Skills** page opens, showing a consolidated summary of your team's skills organized by Career.
#### Understanding the My Team Skills table
The table is organized into three sections:
| Row | What it shows |
| --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **All Careers** | The total number of people assigned across all Careers and the total number of skills in scope |
| **Highlights** | Skills that have been flagged as highlighted — useful for tracking key or critical skills |
| **Additional Skills** | Skills that people on your team have recorded outside their assigned Career — breadth beyond their defined role |
Below these rows, a collapsible **Careers** group lists each Career assigned to your team. For each Career, the table shows:
* **People Assigned** — how many people in your team hold this Career
* **Skills** — how many skills are attached to this Career definition
Select any Career row to open the Career Overview for that role and see a deeper breakdown of skill coverage, proficiency distributions, and performance rankings.
#### Scoping to direct reports or your full org
If you manage a large or multi-level team, you can scope the view:
* By default, the page shows your full reporting organization — everyone who reports to you, directly or indirectly.
* Administrators can toggle **Direct Reports** in the filter bar to limit the view to their immediate direct reports only.
***
## Step 2: Analyze Skill Coverage for a Specific Career
Once you've identified a Career you want to examine, select it to open the **Career Overview** page. This page gives you a visual and data-driven breakdown of skill health for that role across your team.
#### The Career Overview stats bar
At the top of the Career Overview, a stats bar shows key metrics for this Career:
| Metric | What it tells you |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Total People** | How many people in your organization are assigned to this Career |
| **Total Assign** | How many people have grades recorded in the Skills Matrix |
| **Total Skills** | How many skills are defined in this Career |
| **Meets Target** | The percentage of skill grades that meet or exceed benchmark |
| **Below Target** | The percentage of skill grades that fall below benchmark — your skill gap rate |
| **Training Resources** | How many learning resources are linked to this Career |
\| **Skills w/ Training** | What percentage of skills in this Career have at least one linked training resource |
A high **Below Target** percentage signals that a significant portion of your team's skills are below the expected proficiency level for this role. A low **Skills w/ Training** percentage means that many skill gaps don't have a training path defined — a signal to work with your administrator on adding learning resources.
#### The Career Overview charts
Below the stats bar, the Career Overview displays several charts and tables to help you understand skill health at a glance:
* **Beeswarm Chart** — shows the distribution of average skill levels across your team, visualizing clustering and outliers
* **Bar Chart** — compares manager-assessed grades to employee self-assessed grades by skill, useful for identifying perception gaps
* **Skills Matrix preview** — a condensed grid of skills versus people with color-coded grades; select **Full Report** to open the complete Skills Matrix
* **People ranking** — your team members ranked by average skill grade; toggle between **Top** and **Bottom** to identify your strongest contributors and those who may need the most development support
* **Skills ranking** — your Career's skills ranked by average grade; toggle between **Top** and **Bottom** to identify your team's strongest capabilities and deepest gaps
**Tip:** Use the **Bottom** view on both the People and Skills rankings together. The intersection — people with the lowest averages and skills with the lowest grades — tells you where to focus development effort first.
#### Drilling into the full Skills Matrix
The full Skills Matrix is the most detailed view available for resource planning. To open it, select **Full Report** on the Skills Matrix preview or select **Skills Matrix** from the Career Overview breadcrumb.
The Skills Matrix displays a grid where:
* **Rows** represent individual people on your team, grouped by level (for example: Junior, Mid, Senior)
* **Columns** represent the skills defined in the Career
* **Cells** show each person's grade for each skill, color-coded by gap status
| Grade badge color | Meaning |
| ----------------- | --------------------------------------------- |
| **Red** | Grade is below benchmark — a skill gap exists |
| **Green** | Grade meets benchmark |
| **Blue** | Grade exceeds benchmark |
| **No badge** | No grade recorded yet |
Use the Skills Matrix to answer specific resource planning questions:
* **"Who on my team is ready to lead this project?"** — find people with green or blue grades across the relevant skills
* **"What is our coverage risk for this skill?"** — look at how many people have red or no-grade cells in a column
* **"Which team members have the most development needs?"** — look for rows with many red badges
***
## Step 3: Find People with Specific Skills
When you need to identify who in your organization has a particular skill — to staff a project, form a team, or find a subject-matter expert — use **Find Experts**.
#### Navigate to Find Experts
1. Select **Find Experts** from the left sidebar navigation under the **Explore** section.
The Find Experts page opens with a search bar and type filter tabs.
#### Searching by skill, career, or keyword
You can search across multiple dimensions:
| Search scope | How to use it |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **All** | Searches across people, skills, careers, training, and certifications simultaneously |
| **People** | Finds people by name, job title, department, region, or other attributes |
| **Skills** | Finds people or resources associated with a specific skill |
| **Career** | Finds people assigned to a specific Career definition |
| **Training** | Finds training resources available in your organization's library |
| **Certifications** | Finds people with specific certifications or certification records |
Select the appropriate scope tab in the filter bar, then type your search term. Results appear instantly as you type.
#### Filtering results
For People searches, you can apply additional filters using the builder filter panel:
* **Business Unit, Division, Department, Team** — filter by organizational structure
* **Country, State, City, Site, Region** — filter by location
* **Job Title** — filter by job title
* **Flag** — filter by people flags applied to individuals (such as Expert or Mentor designations)
For Skill searches, you can filter by minimum proficiency grade — for example, to find only people who have been assessed at Level 3 or above for a given skill.
Use the **Match all / Match any** toggle to control how multiple filters interact:
* **Match all** — results must satisfy every active filter (narrower)
* **Match any** — results can satisfy any one of the active filters (broader)
**Tip:** When searching for project resources, combine a Skill filter with a Department or Region filter to find people with the right skill who are in the right location or business unit.
#### Navigating to a person's profile
Select any person in the search results to open their individual profile. From a person's profile, you can:
* View their full skill grades across all assigned Careers
* See their self-assessment and manager-assessment grades for each skill
* View their benchmark comparison and skill gaps
* See their assigned learning plan and certification status
* Manage their Career assignment, assessments, and development plan
***
## Step 4: Build Development Plans to Close Gaps
Once you've identified skill gaps — either through the Skills Matrix, Career Overview, or individual profiles — you can take action by assigning learning resources to close them.
#### Assigning a learning resource to a team member
Learning resources are assigned to individuals through their Learning Plan. To assign a resource:
1. Navigate to the person's profile by selecting them from the **People** section in the sidebar under the **Team** section, or by finding them through Find Experts.
2. From their profile, navigate to their **Learning Plan**.
3. Assign a library resource or ask your administrator to link learning resources to the Career so they appear automatically.
Alternatively, use the upskilling view on the person's own Skills page to find and recommend resources linked to their specific skill gaps.
#### Monitoring learning plan progress
Assigned learning resources appear in the person's Learning Plan, organized into four stages: **To Do**, **In Progress**, **Completed**, and **Archived**. Employees move resources through these stages themselves as they progress.
As a manager, you can view any team member's Learning Plan to track:
* Which resources they are actively working through
* Which resources they have completed and when
* Their self-reported ratings on completed resources
#### Viewing team-wide learning activity
To see all learning activity across your team in one place, use the **All Activity** view under **Training** in the Team section of the sidebar.
1. Select **Training** from the left sidebar under the **Team** section.
2. The page opens in the **All Activity** view, showing all learning plan items and training approval requests for your team in a single table.
Use the **Type** filter to focus on Learning Plan items specifically, and the **Status** filter to find resources that are in progress, completed, or have not yet been started.
***
## Step 5: Track Training Dates and Certification Coverage
For roles where training compliance matters — such as safety-critical or regulated functions — resource planning must also account for formal training records, expiration dates, and certifications.
#### The Training Matrix
The Training Matrix shows which team members have recorded training dates for each skill in a role, and whether those records are current, pending, or expired.
1. Select **Training** from the left sidebar under the **Team** section.
2. Select the **Training** breadcrumb at the top of the page and choose **Training Matrix**.
The Training Matrix displays a grid where rows are skills and columns are team members. Each cell shows:
* A **date and green badge** if training has been recorded and approved
* A **yellow badge** if a training approval request is pending review
* An **Expiring Soon** or **Expired** badge if the training record is approaching or past its expiration
* **NA** if the skill is not assigned to that person's Career
* A **dash** if the skill is assigned but no training date has been recorded
Use the **Has Training Date** toggle to hide skills where no one has recorded training yet, focusing the matrix on skills with active coverage. Use the **Role** filter to scope the matrix to a specific Career.
**Note:** Only skills belonging to a Career with the **Training Dates** setting enabled will appear in the Training Matrix. If a Career or skill is missing, ask your administrator to enable this setting for that Career.
#### Certifications
If your organization tracks professional certifications — credentials that require submission, approval, and renewal — you can view certification status for your team from the **Certifications** section.
1. Select **Certifications** from the left sidebar under the **Team** section.
From here, you can see which team members have been assigned certifications, the status of each (submitted, approved, expiring, expired), and take action on pending submissions.
Certification tracking is especially valuable in resource planning when certain roles require specific credentials before an employee can be deployed on a project.
***
## Putting it All Together: a Resource Planning Workflow
Here is how the above steps connect into a practical resource planning workflow:
**Scenario:** You need to staff a project that requires expertise in three specific skills. You also want to confirm your team's overall readiness for an upcoming audit that involves those same skills.
1. **Open My Team Skills** (Team > Skills). Confirm the relevant Career exists in your team's Career list. Note the number of people assigned and the total skills defined.
2. **Select the Career** to open the Career Overview. Check the **Meets Target** and **Below Target** percentages to understand overall readiness. Look at the **People** ranking to identify your top performers in this role.
3. **Open the full Skills Matrix** (select Full Report). Filter or scan the three specific skills. Identify which team members have green or blue grades for all three — these are your project-ready candidates. Note which team members have red grades — these are development targets.
4. **Use Find Experts** (Explore > Find Experts) to confirm your candidates. Search by skill to verify grades and check for additional attributes like location or flag designations. Select a candidate's name to open their profile and review their full skill record.
5. **Assign learning resources** to team members with red grades for the targeted skills. Use their Learning Plan to assign specific training. Monitor progress from the All Activity view (Team > Training).
6. **Check the Training Matrix** (Team > Training > Training Matrix). Confirm that team members assigned to this Career have current training dates for the critical skills. Follow up on any Expiring Soon or Expired records before the project begins.
7. **Review certifications** (Team > Certifications). Confirm that required credentials are approved and not expiring during the project timeline.
***
# Common Questions
Use the Skills Matrix for the relevant Career. Look at the column for each skill the project requires. Count how many people have green or blue grades (meeting or exceeding benchmark). If only one or two people meet the threshold for a critical skill, your coverage is thin and you may face a capacity risk. The Career Overview's **Meets Target** percentage gives you a quick top-level signal, but the full Skills Matrix gives you the granular data you need for staffing decisions.
No grades appear when assessments have not been completed for that skill. This can mean the assessment cycle has not been run yet, or the employee was not included in a recent assessment. Contact the relevant manager to schedule an assessment. Until grades are recorded, you cannot make benchmark comparisons for that skill.
Yes. The **Additional Skills** row on the My Team Skills page shows skills that team members have recorded beyond their core Career assignment. These represent breadth of capability that may not appear in the Career's skills matrix. Select **Additional Skills** to explore these records. This is useful when you're looking for someone with a specific capability that may not be formally defined in their role.
SkillsDB does not track availability or workload, so you cannot filter by current assignment or capacity. However, you can use the Skills Matrix and Find Experts to identify who has the right skills at the right level, and then coordinate availability through your organization's existing resourcing processes outside SkillsDB.
A **skill gap** exists when a person's assessment grade for a skill is below the benchmark set for their Career and level. A **training gap** exists when a person has no recorded training date for a skill that requires formal training (tracked in the Training Matrix). Both types of gap are relevant to resource planning. A person may have a high skill grade but an expired training record — or a current training record but a grade that still falls below benchmark. Use both the Skills Matrix and the Training Matrix to get the full picture.
Employees can see their own skill grades, benchmark comparisons, and learning plan. They cannot see other people's data or team-level analytics. The team views described in this tutorial — My Team Skills, the Skills Matrix, All Activity, the Training Matrix, and Certifications — are only visible to managers, directors, executives, and administrators.
***
# Related Articles
View and analyze skill grades and gaps across your team using the Skills Matrix
Monitor team learning activity and training dates
Review and manage certification status for your team
Assign and track learning resources for your team
Search for people by skill, career, and other attributes
How skill gaps are calculated and displayed
How training expiration dates work
***
# Need Help?
If you run into any issues or have questions, reach out to your organization's SkillsDB administrator or contact [SkillsDB Support](https://www.skillsdb.com/support).