Skills include proficiencies such as team play, stenography or negotiating skills. They can be assigned to courses, course templates and learning paths, which serve to enhance the selected skill by a specific degree. They can also be assigned to users who have reached, or are to reach, a specific degree.
A meta tag allows to determine that users are awarded the target value of the skills assigned to a course or learning path automatically upon completing the course or learning path.
Skills can be combined into job profiles that describe the proficiencies required to carry out a specific task. For instance, the job profile "Sales Manager" requires the skills "Customer communication" and "Self-reliance".
For search purposes, personnel resources can also be assigned skills and job profiles.
This function is only available with the licence or the add-on component "Competency Management."
Why are Skills useful?
Skills are widely utilised by many imc clients and important to those that have competency driven training requirements.
The use of skills is ideal where a learners employment role needs to determine what skills are needed to operate in the role.
Other uses of skills include:
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Guiding individual training paths by filling role-based skill gaps
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Being able to capture the various skills held by staff members
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Identifying staff with desired skill sets to complete tasks or fill a role
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Developing staff by setting skill targets as part of goal setting
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Using skill assessment for competency based performance reviews
Functions and Skill Management
New
There are a number of options for creating and editing skills.
Skills can be assigned to objects or users or used as a basis to search for objects. Depending on the context, levels that were achieved or that are to be achieved can be entered. The evaluation type determines whether the given level is taken from a fixed skill ranking (such as "Novice", "Advanced", or "Expert") or corresponds to a value between 0 and 100 points, or if a combination of the two is available. The option not to evaluate a skill also exists.
Description
Evaluation type
If an evaluation type for a skill was selected, evaluation can be skipped while assigning the skill to courses, course templates, learning paths and resources, depending on the configuration.
Depending on the chosen evaluation type, various expiration options are available: If a skill with a specific level has been achieved, the learned proficiencies can decrease again over time. This can occur at a determined point in time or regularly, at set intervals. The skill will be reduced by a determined number of levels or points, or it expires completely.
The determined expiration rules can be further modified for each given object upon assigning the skill to courses, course templates and learning paths. Upon saving a skill that is already in use, it can be determined whether the new rules apply to all uses of the skill or whether the rules specific to a given object are to be maintained.
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Setting |
Description |
|---|---|
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Evaluation through scales |
The assessment type is used when evaluating individuals’ achievement of skills and then assigning skills to objects and limiting the search on the basis of the skills application. A skill scale can be selected which is used to assess the achievement of skills.
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Level assignment by accumulation |
This function allows for this skill to be added up from component to component instead of a direct assignment after completion. While assigning a skill of this kind to content, a specific value has to be entered which the user will gain if completing the content, added to his existing level. |
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Parallel skill expiry |
This option enables that cumulative skill values can add up to more than 100 in order to enable the correct skill expiry based on multiple course skills. This setting cannot be undone. |
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Level selection mandatory for assessment |
If this option is active, no skill assessment can be made without level selection. |
Confirmation mode
The selection of a confirmation type has an effect when staff members assign skills to themselves. Depending on the confirmation type, the skill will automatically count as achieved (confirmed), will require confirmation by a superior or administrator, or confirmation by competency evaluation that the learner and supervisor confirm.
Possible modes:
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Confirmation not applied
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Confirmation by supervisor/administrator required
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Denial by supervisor/administrator possible
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Confirmed by completion of learning activity
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Confirmation by Competency Evaluation
More information to be found here.
Skill level completion logic
When the “Confirmation by competency evaluation” confirmation mode is enabled, the “Percentage of Yes answers needed to pass the skill level” configuration allows marking a skill level as complete based on a specified percentage of Yes answers across all related competency statements. The logic sets the minimum requirements for passing a skill level within a competency evaluation. The result is displayed in the learner and supervisor front-end for final confirmation, approval, or rejection of the level confirmation. No entry is equal to 100%.
Example: If a 75% Yes threshold is set and the skill has four competency statements, at least three must be ‘Yes’ to achieve a positive result.
Scheduling Options
When creating a skill in the Skill Manager, some Scheduling Settings that define when/how a skill expires can be configured. Here are the options:
Expiry Options
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Option |
Description |
|---|---|
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Never |
The skill does not expire once acquired |
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Expires after a specific period |
The skill expires X days/months/years after it was granted (relative) |
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Expires by a concrete date |
The skill expires on a fixed calendar date (⚠️ not recommended — see below) |
Where Scheduling Settings Can Be Defined
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Skill Manager – directly during skill creation (applies equally to all learners)
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Job Profile Manager – when adding a skill to a job profile
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Course Manager – when linking a skill to a course (overwrites the learner's existing expiry upon successful completion)
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Skill Assessment – only "never" and "complete expiry by date" are available here
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Staff Pool/ Competency Manager – can change expiry settings directly per learner
Important Considerations
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Avoid concrete expiry dates in the Skill Manager definition — they become invalid over time and apply the same fixed date to everyone. Use relative periods instead.
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Avoid combining course skill expiry and skill assessment on the same skill — this leads to conceptual inconsistencies.
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The SkillTerminationJob cronjob calculates expiry and updates skill values — it should run daily.
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Each context (course, assessment, competency manager) can overwrite the original scheduling setting.
Scales
Skill scales can be assigned to skills as evaluation options. They can be selected from a list of existing skill rankings or created manually per skill. Depending on the configuration, it is also possible to have a ranking integrated by default upon creation of a skill. If a fixed skill scale is used, it can be refined or modified for each skill. A sample application is the use of a three-level scale with the levels beginner - advanced - professional, which is already selected for new skills. The three levels can now be expanded upon with further descriptions that elaborate, for instance, on what "Advanced" means for a given skill.
Further entry fields
No new fields can be created — instead, custom meta tags of the type “Meta tag with select box” can be added that have already been created centrally in the meta-tag management system and attach them to the skill.
This does not define properties of the Skill itself, but additional input fields that must be filled in every time this Skill is assigned to or confirmed for a person.
What gets defined here is which structured supplementary data is captured when a Skill is assigned/confirmed — e.g. "Issuing body," "Proof type," "Certificate class" (always as a multi-language select list, since only metatags of type Select are eligible). Marking a field "mandatory" enforces that this entry cannot be skipped when the data is captured.