Analyse the present to better prepare for the future with skills mapping

By Jennifer Montérémal

Published: 20 February 2025

There's no secret about it: successful companies are those that make the most of their employees' skills. Making sure you have the right profile for the right job increases your chances of achieving your business objectives.

At the same time, employees increasingly fear boredom at work. So they want to see their potential fully exploited.

Faced with these challenges, HR departments are evolving and integrating more and more GPEC (Gestion Prévisionnelle des Emplois et des Compétences) into their day-to-day processes. One of the resulting tasks is skills mapping.

This method makes it easier for human resources to identify and understand employees' skills, and then deploy strategies accordingly.

Read our article to find out what it is, what's at stake, what's involved and how to go about it. 🚀

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Skills mapping: definition

What is a skills map?

Skills mapping refers to a structured method for identifying, assessing and then listing all the skills present in a company.

What emerges from this work is a " skills map ", which takes the form of a structured table (model at the bottom of the article 👇), also known as a grid or matrix. However, some HR departments prefer the mindmap format.

Skills mapping is traditionally part of a GPEC approach, increasingly evolving towards GEPP (Gestion des Emplois et des Parcours Professionnels). The aim of the latter is to help employees progress :

to ensure their professional development;
while at the same time alleviating the needs of the organisation.

💡 Note: skills mapping includes both hard and soft skills. Mad skills, on the other hand, are less frequently included - atypical, often creative skills that are increasingly attracting the interest of recruiters.

Who uses skills mapping?

When we think of "skills mapping", we immediately think of " human resources ", since this tool is of direct use to HR strategy and the GPEC approach. In particular, it can be used to anticipate recruitment needs and manage internal mobility.

However, this method also promises a host of advantages:

for training managers, who have greater visibility of future needs ;
managers, who get to know their teams better and know exactly who can do what;
employees, who become aware of their strengths, as well as their areas for improvement.

Skills mapping and skills repository: what are the differences?

A skills repository is a document that defines the set of skills required to fill each position in an organisation.

The two concepts are therefore very similar and, above all, complementary. 🤝

Skills mapping often relies on the skills repository to compare existing skills with those to be developed or acquired. Together, they ensure that the actual situation matches the company's strategic needs.

Challenges and objectives of skills mapping

The primary aim of skills mapping is to draw up a precise inventory of current skills, by individual, team or department. This snapshot at a given moment of the company's assets simply reveals the differences between the skills required for a position and those actually possessed by the employee in charge of that position.

This comparison will reveal some interesting facts:

Is the employee under-qualified? If so, it's best to plan a training programme.
Are they over-qualified? In this case, it's in your interest to mobilise his or her skills for a position where they will bring more value.

And if it's impossible to envisage an increase in skills or internal mobility, no problem, skills mapping also helps to anticipate recruitment needs.

💡 To wit: skills mapping is used to recognise, in a very concrete way, the know-how and interpersonal skills of teams. It therefore acts as a powerful tool for motivating and engaging employees. This recognition of their work and qualities initiates dialogue around potential professional development opportunities!

What are the benefits for the company and its employees?

The benefits of skills mapping for the company

Thanks to skills mapping (especially if it's digitised!), managers have all this information centralised in one place. It is therefore a decision-making tool, very useful for preparing the future resource allocation strategy.

At the same time, there are a number of other benefits:

this visualisation of skills helps to break down silos, and therefore encourages inter-team collaboration ;
by promoting internal mobility and the development of existing skills, mapping limits the need for external recruitment, which is often costly;
This method provides a rapid response to unforeseen events, such as staff departures or the implementation of new projects;
You reduce the risks associated with dependency, by identifying the critical skills held by a single person;
you enhance your employer brand, because an organisation that highlights its efforts to develop the skills of its employees makes itself more attractive to talented people.

The benefits of skills mapping for employees

Having been in post for some time, employees sometimes forget to take stock of what they have achieved and how far they still have to go until the end of their career. Competency mapping helps them to do this, by revealing the skills they need to develop to go even further in their jobs.

☝️ So this is clearly a way of promoting well-being in the workplace!

What's more, mapping helps to build a common foundation, so that all employees have the same level of knowledge and use a similar vocabulary when talking about skills. And that's much more practical when it comes to carrying out joint projects!

Finally, skills mapping strengthens interaction between colleagues by identifying complementary areas of expertise. This brings us back to the desire to break down silos, which is so important to companies that want to capitalise on innovation and collective intelligence.

The 7 stages of skills mapping

#1 Determine the objectives and scope of action

Skills mapping can serve a variety of purposes, such as :

identifying the gaps in the company's skills ;
Determining recruitment needs for the coming period;
drawing up a training plan
setting up an internal mobility process.

So start by asking yourself what you're aiming for, by analysing the major challenges ahead.

👉 F or example, if the organisation wants to prepare its teams for the integration of a new technology, it will seek to identify the digital skills that are lacking .

Of course, this work involves close collaboration with the relevant stakeholders, those who work close enough to the ground to accurately anticipate future needs.

💡 Tip: at this stage, you should also define the scope of your mapping. Depending on the size of the company, you will either carry out the mapping by department, or for the organisation as a whole.

#2 Identify the skills the company needs

Next, you need to list the hard and soft skills required for the various positions, making the link with the company's missions and strategic objectives.

☝️ Here too, it's important to work closely with the right people, in this case management, who have a fine-tuned view of the teams under their responsibility.

💡 Tip: why not draw up the famous skills framework mentioned above?

#3 Make an inventory of employees' current skills

Once you know what the company needs, it's time to determine what skills it actually has.

There are several ways of doing this:

Ask employees to assess themselves (beware of personal bias!);
Invite managers to identify the skills of their teams, based on defined criteria;
hold individual interviews, which provide an opportunity to discuss the employee's skills... and not just!
conduct skills tests (practical exercises, simulations, etc.);
consult documentation, particularly CVs. CVs often contain information about skills developed in previous positions that the company has not yet had the opportunity to exploit.

#4 Analyse the gaps between current skills and the skills required

At this stage, you have all the data you need to compare existing skills with those required to meet future needs.

However, this work may reveal quite a few "holes to fill". In this case, prioritise the most critical gaps, so that you can focus your actions on the most strategic skills gaps first.

#5 Represent the results visually

As a reminder, skills mapping should above all be practical and simplify the analysis of the data associated with your employees' skills.

All this information should therefore be grouped together in a single document, in the form of your choice. Note, however, that the most common formats are :

matrices, in other words Excel tables ;
mindmaps, these tree structures that organise and link an individual's skills to specific categories or objectives.

💡 Tip: using a colour code will help you to spot any major discrepancies more quickly.

#6 Draw up an action plan

Once you've established the link between :

the organisation's needs ;
and the skills already present ;

you will determine the solutions needed to close the gaps.

These solutions generally revolve around the following areas:

training and mentoring, which strengthen employee commitment through professional development ;
recruitment, the quick answer to integrating missing skills;
internal mobility, which is also very well received by employees, as it enhances their careers.

💡 Worth knowing: as with any project roll-out, implementing these action plans involves:

planning the various related activities ;
allocating the necessary budgets and resources;
setting measurable objectives to monitor progress.

#7 Evaluate the success of your actions

Finally, it's important to measure the progress you've made thanks to the KPIs you've set up. In this way, you maintain the relevance of your skills mapping in the face of internal and external changes.

👉 For example, you need to make sure that training plans have borne fruit and have made up for any skills shortages. Or that the right profiles have been recruited.

In all cases, only regular monitoring will reveal potential areas for improvement, and therefore the corrective action required.

Example of a free Excel skills map

Need a little help? Appvizer can help you with this free skills mapping template, , which you can download in Excel format.

All that's left is for you to carry out a survey to complete it with data from your own employees. 🕵️

Which tool should you use to map your skills?

Traditional tools

If you're just starting out, it's perfectly possible to draw up your skills map using an Excel-type spreadsheet, especially if you don't have the resources to invest in more advanced software. Spreadsheets are perfectly capable of structuring and analysing information.

And for clearer, more visual representations, you can also use mindmap solutions.

☝️ Bear in mind, however, that these tools are essentially used to organise and visualise your skills map. In other words, in this context, all the preparatory work of identifying needs and listing skills has to be done by hand. The same goes for performance monitoring, since Excel, like mindmap software, remains relatively static. Not very practical for large organisations...

Specialist software

That's why companies with major needs are quick to see the benefits of using specialist software, whether it's a GPEC platform or an HRIS that includes a skills management component.

Here are just a few examples of what these solutions promise:

automation of skills collection, analysis and monitoring processes;
centralising all information in one place; and
the circulation of data towards training implementation functionalities, in order to streamline operations;
Continuous monitoring and updating of data.

🛠️ Skeely, for example, is a solution designed for interviews (annual, professional, follow-up, etc.) and GPEC. It manages your appraisal interviews from A to Z. All the data obtained during these discussions is then centralised in the software, making it easy to draw up your skills map. You can also use this map to set up your training plan, again directly in Skeely.