The Skills Directory is where you can create, import and manage the skills of your organization.  It is generally managed by a small group within the organization that is charged with defining and maintaining the skills that the organization wishes to track, across all roles, teams and locations.

Skills Directory Administrators can add skills in three ways:

1. By selecting roles and/or skills from the Skills Base Library
2. By manually adding skills
3. By importing skills

The Skills Base Library

The Skills Base Library provides the ability to add skills via Roles or by selecting specific skill categories and skills. 

Upon selection of the Open library feature the Library selections are presented on the right side of the screen. Skills can be added either by selecting a role (Roles) or by selecting skill categories and skills (Skills),

 The roles that are provided contain skills that will be added to the Skills directory. Role names can be searched for, and any matched roles will provide a list of skills for that role.

All the skills associated to that role will be added to the skills tree. This is done using the Import role button. In this example we have selected the role of Accountant which has 61 skills associated with the role. 

When the Import role button is clicked, the skills are added and can be identified via the Skill Library indicator of the skills that were added:

In addition, the selected role will also be added to the Roles directory. The role will be noted as Library Linked indicating it was selected from the Skill Library.

 If Skills are selected, a list of skill categories will be presented reflecting various verticals. In this example we have chosen to select from the Skills Base Library and the skill categories contained therein. 

In the example below, we are selecting skills from the Parent category Legal. 

Skill category selections can be expanded to show the specific skills within the category. The category and sub-categories can be identified by the indicator:  

The specific skills can be identified by the indicator:

When the sub-categories Anti-trust law, Commercial law and Employment law are selected, the skills that will be added are indicted with a check mark. The number of categories selected will be identified and the Import selected button when clicked will import the selected skill category or categories and skills:

The skill tree will be updated with the skill category, sub-category and named skills and identified with the Skill Library indicator   

Manually administering skills

1. Begin by creating a Skill Category

• Grouping similar skills into categories is useful as it makes assigning skills to Roles, Teams, or Individuals easier.  
• Example skill categories names include: Technical design, Financial planning, Customer skills, Teamwork skills.

2. Add relevant skills to your new category   

• For example, in the category “Teamwork skills”, you might want to add skills such as “Collaboration”, “Active listening”, or “Leadership”
• Adding a description to a skill helps ensure everyone has the same understanding of what a skill involves. This in turn leads to more accurate skill assessments and higher quality skill insights.    

 3. [Optional] Create sub-categories for more granular reporting and skill assignment 

• If a skill category is too broad, it might be worth creating multiple sub-categories within it. This will allow for more specific skill reporting and assignment later on.   

4. You’re now ready to assign skills to relevant Roles, Teams, or Individuals.

• Once skills are assigned, you’re ready to set Targets and complete Skill Assessments.

 Additional information

• For assistance importing your existing skills library into Skills Base, you can reach out to the Skills Base team via this link.
• A video exploring how to create and organise your skills library in Skills Base can be found here.