What is skills intelligence and why is it important?

Did you know that skills-based organisations are 107% more likely to place talent effectively, 98% more likely to retain top performers, 98% more likely to prioritise growth, 63% more likely to see results, and 57% more likely to effectively anticipate and respond to change? These are the findings of a 2022 Deloitte study. Given these advantages, it’s no surprise that 98% of business business leaders see value in adopting a skills-based approach. 

But how does one transition from a jobs-focused to skills-focused model?

The key lies in skills intelligence – the ability to make sense of granular skills data to drive informed talent decisions. Skills-based organisations rely on real-time skills insights to optimise skills management and enable strategic workforce planning. Without an effective skills intelligence platform, skills data remains just a jumble of words and numbers, lacking the structure needed to inform meaningful action.

In this article, we explore what constitutes skills intelligence, its benefits for organisations, and how skills intelligence is a contributing factor in becoming a skills-based organisation.

What is skills intelligence?

Skills intelligence is a systematic, data-driven approach to understanding, analysing, managing, and developing an organisation’s skills and competencies. It involves identifying each individual’s abilities, determining the best ways to apply their skills, and making workforce decisions based on the information gathered.

Skills intelligence is not one-dimensional. Instead, think of it as a system that integrates multiple tools or components, each playing a distinct role. These include:

• Skills taxonomy: A structured framework for classifying skills and competencies, providing a common language and a standardised way to identify, describe, and group them based on characteristics, proficiency levels, and interrelationships.
• Skills inventory or skills matrix: A dynamic big picture record of an organisation’s skills and competencies. It can range from a simple list to a more advanced assessment tool, incorporating proficiency levels, expertise, certifications, and more.
• Skills profile: A comprehensive overview of an individual’s skills and competencies, expertise, certifications, experience, and other key attributes. Skills profiles allow employees to showcase their strengths, interests, job focus, and more with colleagues. Skills management platform MuchSkills, for instance,  enables all users to create a public skills profile, which allows colleagues and managers to easily view their strengths, interests, and certifications to optimise resource planning.
• Skills assessment: The process of evaluating and validating skills and competencies through self-assessments, peer reviews, tests, and performance data.
• Skills analytics: The use of data analytics to gather, analyze, and interpret real-time skills data, generating insights that inform strategic workforce decisions, identify skills gaps, and support talent development initiatives. For example, by analysing industry trends and workforce capabilities, skills analytics helps organisations identify which new skills to acquire and which existing skills to upgrade, ensuring employees stay prepared for future demands and businesses remain competitive.

Sixty-one per cent of business leaders told the previously mentioned Deloitte study that the movement to becoming skills-focused is driven by automation, AI, and other new technologies that require fresh skills. Furthermore, the global talent crunch has contributed to organisations taking a more proactive stance on skills development. In a 2023 Gartner study, HR leaders picked skills management as a priority HR technology. In this reality, a skills intelligence platform can be counted among a company’s most valuable asset.

Benefits of using skills intelligence

By harnessing the power of skills intelligence, organisations can enhance talent management, employee development, and workforce planning – leading to smarter decision-making and improved efficiency. Here are five ways skills intelligence drives organisational success:

1. Builds workforce agility

Skills intelligence provides real-time insights into employees' capabilities, enabling organisations to adapt to shifting business needs. By maintaining an up-to-date skills inventory and leveraging data-driven analytics, companies can identify skills gaps, implement targeted reskilling and upskilling initiatives, and redeploy talent where it’s needed most. This agility allows businesses to stay competitive amid market shifts and technological advancements while building a future-ready workforce. In today’s unpredictable environment, workforce agility isn’t just an advantage – it’s a strategic superpower.

2. Improves talent acquisition and retention

Skills intelligence helps organisations create clear growth pathways, ensuring employees have opportunities to learn and advance. This is important because employees are more likely to stay with and join companies that invest in their development. Seventy-one per cent of organisations that prioritise employee development feel confident in attracting qualified talent, compared to just 58% of those that don’t, according to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report 2025. The impact on retention is equally strong, with confidence levels at 67% versus 50%.

For more on the benefits of data-driven talent acquisition, read ‘Why Organisations Should Adopt Skills-Based Hiring’

3. Fosters efficiency and productivity

Talent decisions based on real-time skills insights empower employees to put their abilities to use across the organisation instead of confining them within their job descriptions. The best people are picked to perform a task, regardless of hierarchy. Siloes are broken, ensuring that teams and departments work in tandem. By unlocking the workforce’s full potential in this manner, organisations that utilise skills insights achieve five times higher levels of productivity. They also double their chances of achieving or exceeding their financial goals.

4. Promotes equity

Workforce strategies shaped by skills intelligence are more equitable and inclusive, free of the biases that have traditionally held back many underrepresented groups. When project managers pick team members based purely on their skills and not their job titles or where they went to school, the message goes out that anyone with talent can grow in the company. Similarly, equity in pay and learning opportunities is only possible when leaders put skills first.

5. Supports data-driven leadership

Many companies are using skills intelligence to identify employees with leadership potential, design targeted training programmes to hone their inherent leadership qualities, and create opportunities to put their newly acquired skills to the test. In addition, the leaders born of such a system tend to be data-driven themselves, relying on facts rather than intuition and guesswork. Skills intelligence is, therefore, an enabler of data-driven leadership, which has been known to strengthen decision-making and strategic workforce planning.

Skills Intelligence: The foundation for a skills-based, future-proof workforce

In a world where skills have a half-life of just four years and 74% of employers struggle to find skilled talent, skills intelligence is no longer optional – it’s essential. By creating a common language for skills, harmonising data from multiple sources, and enabling real-time workforce planning, skills intelligence helps organisations stay agile and competitive. Leading companies across industries are already leveraging it to drive talent decisions, fill skills gaps, and future-proof their workforce.

Case studies: How leading companies leverage skills intelligence

• American Express: The financial service provider is known for hiring candidates from leading hospitality companies for its sales and service team. It decided to bank on data-driven talent acquisition after it conducted a skills-based analysis that deduced that the core skills required in the team were not customer service skills but, rather, hospitality skills.
• Standard Chartered: Anticipating the decline of several thousand jobs and the creation of almost as many new roles in the coming years, Standard Chartered mobilised a skills intelligence platform to inventory its employees and find people with the relevant skills who could move into the emerging roles. The global bank stands out as an example of a company using skills intelligence to further its journey as a skills-based organisation. 

• Google: In 2013, Google called for an analysis to identify its most in-demand skills and the findings were surprising. By harnessing all hiring, firing, and promotion data it had collected since its incorporation in 1998, Google found that the top eight qualities of its highest performers were not STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills but all soft skills, including communication and listening skills, problem-solving, critical thinking, and being a good coach. The analysis led to a revamped data-driven talent acquisition process that welcomed previously ignored humanities majors and MBAs. In another instance of Google using skills intelligence, the company launched Project Aristotle in 2012. It studied the performance data, employee surveys, and other intel of 180 Google teams in a bid to build the perfect team. It was a comprehensive exercise with the project group exploring not only abilities but also educational qualifications, hobbies, socialising habits, interests, and more.
• Novartis: With 105,000 employees on its rolls, pharma major Novartis turned to a skills intelligence platform to gather and harmonise skills data from multiple sources to create a unified skills database to drive its workforce planning.
• HSBC: The financial service provider used a skills intelligence platform to align its upskilling/reskilling strategies with existing skills gaps and future skills requirements. Using skills insights, it came up with new projects and experiential learning opportunities to create a future-proof workforce. 

Skills intelligence offerings from MuchSkills

Rapidly transitioning into a skills-based organisation is not possible without technological assistance. For example, without a user-friendly interface or top-notch competency mapping software, it is next to impossible to get the most out of skills data and turn that intel into actionable insights. As a skills management and skills intelligence platform MuchSkills offers many features that can help including:

• Skills matrix: Data is best visualised, and MuchSkills simplifies complex data, visualising it in a modern skills matrix that reveals patterns, drives real-time insights, and supports informed decision-making for organisations.
• Skills and competency mapping: Our competency mapping framework is designed to comprehensively capture all the competencies in a workforce, create dynamic skills profiles of each individual, and assist leaders in taking a skills-based approach to workforce planning and skills management.
• Skills gap analysis: By providing actionable insights into employees’ capabilities, our skills gap analysis tool can breathe new life into upskilling/reskilling efforts and contribute to creating a future-ready workforce.

To learn more about all the features of skills management platform MuchSkills, click here.

And let’s not forget our award-winning playbooks, which can answer queries and clear doubts on the correct use of skills intelligence tools. There’s one on ‘How to prioritise the skills listed in a skills matrix or skills taxonomy’, another on ‘Upskilling: An 8-step guide to successfully upskill your employees’, and more. You can check out all of the MuchSkills Playbooks here.

Decisions on talent acquisition, role allocation, promotion, pay, etc, are highly sensitive. To make sure there is no room for error, wise organisations take a skills-based approach to workforce planning, deploying skills intelligence platforms and skills management software. Yet, only 6% of companies use technology to derive skills insights and drive strategic action. To build workforce agility through effective talent development, companies must prioritise skills intelligence as the currency of the future of work.