How to build an onboarding checklist that actually works
A good onboarding checklist isn’t a list of forms to sign: it’s a shared plan that brings HR, managers and IT together. Here’s how to design one, step by step.
Development · 3 min read
Mapping skills: where to start and which mistakes to avoid
Knowing who can do what helps you build teams, plan training and create growth paths. A practical guide to launching a skills map without getting lost.
What a skills map is really for
As a company grows, knowledge of who can do what tends to stay in the heads of a few managers for a long time. That works as long as those managers are around and available, but it becomes a constraint as soon as you need to build a new team, replace someone or decide where to invest in training.
A skills map makes this know-how visible. It isn’t a cataloguing exercise for its own sake: it helps you make better decisions about assignments, training and career paths, and gives people a common language for talking about their own development.
Start small
The most common mistake is to start with a huge catalog, perhaps downloaded from a generic template, with hundreds of entries. The result is that nobody fills it in carefully and the data loses its value straight away. It’s much better to start with a handful of skills, chosen with team managers, that genuinely matter for day-to-day work.
A good rule of thumb is to distinguish between technical skills, tied to the job itself, and soft skills such as client management or coordination. Each one needs a scale of levels with concrete descriptions: writing basic, intermediate and advanced isn’t enough; you need to explain what a person can actually do at each level.
The catalog will need revising over time. Better to accept that from the outset than to try to foresee everything on the first attempt.
Huge catalog
- Hundreds of generic entries
- Levels with no description
- Filled in hastily
Essential catalog
- A few relevant skills
- Levels described concretely
- Reviewed over time
Self-assessment and discussion
Who should assess someone’s level? The most effective answer is both: the employee and the manager. Self-assessment engages the person and brings to light skills the manager may not know about, while the follow-up discussion corrects overestimates and underestimates, which are just as common.
The discussion is the most valuable part of the process. That’s where expectations for the current role and the next one are clarified, and where the gaps to work on are identified. A map filled in without a conversation is just a questionnaire.
Certifications deserve separate treatment: they are verifiable, often have an expiry date and should be linked to the employee file along with the supporting document.
A word of caution: the map must never become a tool used against people. If employees fear that admitting a gap will count against them in their review, they will answer defensively and the data will lose all its value. Make it clear from the start that the purpose is development.
From gap to growth plan
Once the current and expected levels are known, the difference shows where to act. The growth plan turns this gap into actions: a course, a period of mentoring, an assignment that lets the person practice the skill in a real setting. Each action should have an indicative timeframe and a way to check progress.
This is where AI can make a real contribution, proposing a first draft of the plan based on the gaps and the training resources available. The key point is that it’s a proposal: the plan must be discussed and agreed between the employee and their manager, because no algorithm knows someone’s aspirations better than they do.
- 01 Current level
- 02 Expected level
- 03 Gap
- 04 Agreed actions
- 05 Progress check
Keeping the map alive
A skills map updated once every two years is little more than a faded snapshot. The best way to keep it alive is to tie it to the moments when people already sit down together: regular reviews, the end of a major project, the completion of a training program.
In People, skills, reviews and growth plans sit in the same employee file, and the AI suggests paths based on the gap between the current role and the target role. But the advice applies more broadly: a few well-described skills, an honest conversation and concrete plans deliver more value than any exhaustive catalog.
A few well-described skills and an honest conversation are worth more than any exhaustive catalog.
Keep reading
