In today’s fast-changing world, skills are your company’s most valuable currency. They determine how fast you can adapt, innovate, and execute your strategy. Organisations that focus on skills - not just job titles or training completion - build the flexibility and resilience needed to lead in their industries.
Watch this video to understand better how you can use skills🍿
The story of how Skills were born🌱
Two years ago, a national supermarket chain was facing unexpected challenges.
Their strategy looked rock-solid on paper: expand their fresh-food concept, roll out new self-service checkouts, and improve the in-store customer experience.
But when it was time to execute, cracks started to show.
Frontline employees felt overwhelmed by new digital systems. Store managers were juggling staffing shortages with new leadership expectations. Customer-facing teams were eager to help shoppers—but lacked training in the updated service standards and compliance procedures.
It wasn’t that people weren’t motivated.
They simply didn’t have the skills needed to bring the strategy to life.
Cashiers struggled with the upgraded POS system.
Department managers weren’t confident in coaching younger employees.
Logistics staff weren’t aligned with new cross-store delivery workflows.
Once leadership realized this, they stopped asking, “Why aren’t our stores delivering the results we expected?”
And started asking, “What skills are missing across our workforce?”
That question changed everything.
Together with Learningbank, they began mapping role-specific capabilities, identifying critical skill gaps, and building training that fit the reality of a busy retail environment—mobile, bite-sized, and engaging.
Within a year, onboarding time dropped significantly, customer satisfaction scores rose across regions, employees felt more confident and capable, and Managers finally had the tools they needed.
This story isn’t unique.
It’s what happens when companies shift from traditional one-off training to a truly skills-driven learning strategy—built around the people who make the business run every day.
This article provides best practices for working with skills. Keep reading💡
Real-Life Example
Here's the scenario: At a restaurant, customer satisfaction scores were declining. After analysing the issue, leaders realised the main gap wasn’t food quality or menu knowledge — it was communication.
Action:
The restaurant added active listening and empathetic communication as core skills for all guest-facing roles.
Managers continuously assessed these skills during real guest interactions on the floor.
Employees received short, scenario-based training modules linked to these skills — handling complaints, guiding guests during busy periods, and communicating clearly about wait times or menu changes.
Skill levels were tracked in their Learningbank platform, showing progress over time.
Result:
Within six months, customer satisfaction improved by 25%, and employee engagement rose significantly.
The restaurant saw firsthand that skill progression - not just training completion — drives real results.
Understand the Skills That Drive Success
Start by identifying the skills your company needs - both short-term (to meet current goals) and long-term (to stay competitive). These skills should directly support your business strategy.
Example: If your company’s objective is to improve customer experience, critical skills might include “active listening,” “empathy,” and “CRM system knowledge.”
With these considerations, you can start mapping out what skills are needed to reach your goal, and form here start setting targets in your circles as well as add them to the learning paths within the circles.
Make skill progression your main KPI (key performance indicator), so growth becomes measurable and strategic rather than ad hoc.
Apply Skills to Roles and Functions
Every role in your company should have defined skill requirements, ranging from beginner to expert proficiency levels. By mapping skills to roles, you make it clear what’s expected and what development paths exist.
💡Learningbank makes this dynamic: Skills are connected to roles, automatically updated, and used to guide learning initiatives. You can do all this in your circles. Read more on how to do that in reality here.
Continuously Assess and Update
Skill assessment should happen in the flow of work, not just once a year. Managers can observe, verify, and update employees’ skill levels based on real performance. This keeps skill data relevant and helps identify gaps before they become business risks.
Address Gaps with Tailored Learning
Once you’ve identified gaps, design targeted learning initiatives—digital or blended—to close them. Each learning activity should connect directly to skill progression, ensuring measurable impact and higher engagement.
Measure and Celebrate Progress
With real-time data, you can measure how skill development translates into business results. Skill progression becomes a visible and motivating part of your company culture.
Why use Skills
To sum it up, you hav now learned how crucial it is to not only have employees with the right skills, by also have a easy to navigate scaleable way to ensure you have employees with the necessary skills for you organisation.
1. Define Skills Clearly: Start by defining the specific skills that your learning path will help users acquire. Consider skills as a combination of knowledge, abilities, and experience required for a particular role or task.
2. Skill Level: Assign skill levels to each skill, indicating whether the training is intended for Beginners, Basics, Intermediates, Advanced users, or Experts. Use the 1-5 scale to represent these skill levels, offering users a clear progression.
3. Alignment with Learning Objectives: Ensure that the skills you identify align with the learning objectives of your learning path. Each learning objective should contribute to the skill level.
4. Create a Clear Learning Journey: Develop a logical learning journey that outlines how users progress from one skill level to another. Ensure the learning paths within the learning journey provide the necessary training and practice opportunities for each skill.
5. Regular Review and Updates: Periodically review and update your learning paths to keep them aligned with industry trends and changing skill requirements.
6. Skills Tracking: Utilise the platform for tracking and recording users' progress in acquiring these skills. This data is valuable for both the user and the trainer.
Not only does this help users understand what they will gain, but it also allows for better assessment and tracking of their progress.
To learn how to use the feature in the platform, read this article: Skill Assignment.
Quick Tip💡
If you already have learning content on your platform, it’ll be essential to start with a practical step before you become strategic: Create an overview of all your learning paths, their learning objectives, and which journeys each path is used in. This can be efficiently done by organising this information in a structured format, for instance, within an Excel spreadsheet.
If you are not sure which journeys your learning paths are located in, the See Connections function will be super helpful!
Examples of Skills
In the image below, you can see examples of skills that can be used, shown directly in the Skills overview.
