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.
The story of how Skills were born🌱
Two years ago, a mid-sized logistics company was struggling. Their strategy looked perfect on paper—expand internationally, launch a new digital platform, and improve customer delivery times.
But when the time came to execute, things fell apart. Teams were overwhelmed, innovation slowed, and competitors started moving faster. It wasn’t that employees weren’t working hard — they simply didn’t have the right skills to make the strategy happen.
Customer service agents lacked digital communication skills. Managers were unsure how to lead hybrid teams. Developers could code, but not collaborate across departments.
Once leadership realised this, they stopped asking, “Why aren’t we performing?” and started asking, “What skills are we missing?”
That question changed everything.
They began mapping their organisation’s capabilities, identifying key skill gaps, and building development programs aligned with real business goals. Within a year, productivity increased, employee engagement rose, and their digital launch was a success.
This story isn’t unique — it’s a reflection of what happens when companies move from traditional training to skills-driven strategy.
This article provides best practices for working with skills. Keep reading💡
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 goal is to improve customer experience, critical skills might include “active listening,” “empathy,” and “CRM system knowledge.”
Make skill progression your main KPI (key performance indicator), so growth becomes measurable and strategic rather than ad hoc.
Build a Skills Framework
A skills framework maps how organisational capabilities break down into competencies and individual skills.
Capabilities are organisation-level strengths (e.g., “digital innovation”).
Competencies describe specific functions or areas (e.g., “software development” or “user experience”).
Skills are the transferable abilities individuals bring (e.g., “Python programming,” “data analysis,” “user testing”).
Mapping these relationships helps you see which skills your workforce already has—and which ones you need to develop.
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.
Real-Life Example
Here's the scenario: At a mid-sized tech company, customer satisfaction scores were declining. After analysing the issue, leaders realised the main gap wasn’t product knowledge - it was communication.
Action:
The company added active listening and empathetic communication as core skills for all customer support roles.
Managers continuously assessed these skills during real customer interactions.
Employees received short, scenario-based training modules linked to these skills.
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 company saw firsthand that skill progression—not just training completion—drives real results.
Moral of the story: Great employees aren’t born—they’re developed. By strategically managing skills, your organisation doesn’t just keep up with change—it leads it.
Why use Skills
To sum it up, you hav now learned how crutial it is to not only have employees with the right skills, by also have a easy to navigagte scaleable way to ensure you have employees with the nessesary 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!
Mapping our your Skills in a Learning path
The following table shows how one could structure what skill and level is given after completing a learning path that focuses on Safety in Production for new employees.
As you can see, the skill is based on the purpose of the learning path, followed by an explanation of the level and, lastly, an overview of what is learned in the different modules.
Learning path name | Navigating a Secure Start in Production |
Learning purpose | The learning path aims to provide new employees in Production with essential safety knowledge and skills in a production environment through short, focused, 3–5-minute modules. The requirement for the employee before this learning path is basic knowledge of safety, and we need to introduce them to both the specific requirements within our organisation and lift their skill assessment to intermediate. |
Assessment of Skill for the Learning Path |
Skillset: Safety Proficiency for Production Workers Level: Level 3 - Intermediate The learning path is designed to take participants from a novice level in safety to an intermediate level by the end of their training. They will have a solid understanding of safety protocols, danger identification, and emergency response. However, they may still require some guidance and experience to reach an advanced or expert level of proficiency. |
Module Number & learning objective | Module 1: "Safety First: Your Role in Production Safety" Learning Objective: Understand your active role in maintaining safety within the production environment. |
Module Number & learning objective | Module 2: "Spotting Danger: On-the-Job Safety" Learning Objective: Develop the ability to recognise and address common on-the-job dangers quickly. |
Module Number & learning objective | Module 3: "Safety Rules in Action: Protocols and Procedures" Learning Objective: Implement safety rules by effectively following protocols and procedures. |
Module Number & learning objective | Module 4: "Emergency Response Mastery" Learning Objective: Master the skills to respond confidently in emergencies. |
Module Number & learning objective | Module 5: "Incident Attentiveness: Reporting for a Safer Workplace" Learning Objective: Become proficient in reporting safety incidents and contributing to a safer workplace. |
Module Number & learning objective | Module 6: "Safety Pro Certification Challenge" Learning Objective: Take the Safety Pro Certification Challenge to demonstrate your competence. |