Skills and endorsements
Skills record what your people can actually do, endorsed by the colleagues who have seen them do it. Unlike assessments and goals, skills are not tied to a cycle — they accumulate, and they stay.
Where: Performance › Skills · the list: Performance › Settings › Skills You need: performance rights; endorsing is a separate right
The three pieces
| What it is | |
|---|---|
| Skill | A capability your company recognises, defined centrally |
| Profile skill | That skill recorded against a person |
| Endorsement | A named colleague vouching for that person's skill, with an optional comment |
The skill list is company-wide and centrally defined. People do not invent skills as they go, which is what stops you ending up with "Excel", "MS Excel", "excel (advanced)" and "Spreadsheets" as four separate capabilities nobody can report on.
How endorsements work
An endorsement attaches a colleague to someone's skill, with an optional comment.
One endorsement per person per skill. A colleague can endorse your Excel once — they cannot stack endorsements to inflate it. That constraint is what makes an endorsement count as a headcount of people who vouch for you, rather than a score somebody can game.
The comment is the valuable part. "Endorsed by five people" tells you little; "built the reconciliation model we now run monthly" tells you what they actually did. Encourage comments, and read them rather than counting endorsements.
Endorsement requests
An employee can ask a specific colleague to endorse a skill. The request records who should be endorsed and who is being asked.
This matters more than it sounds. People are poor at volunteering praise and good at responding to a direct request, so a skills profile built purely on spontaneous endorsement will be thin and will over-represent the most visible people. Asking is legitimate and worth encouraging.
What skills are not
⚠️ Skills are not a rating. There is no proficiency level, no score, and no verification state recorded against a skill — a skill is either recorded against someone or it is not, plus however many colleagues endorsed it. If you need to express how well someone does something, that is an assessment or a goal, not a skill.
Treat endorsements as a social signal, not evidence. They are useful for finding who might know something and for recognising people. They are not a qualification, they are not audited, and they should not be the basis of a claim to a client or a regulator that someone is certified in anything.
Using skills well
Finding capability. The most practical use is answering "who here can do X" — for staffing a project, covering an absence, or finding someone to ask. That only works if the skill list is specific enough to be searched.
Recognition. An endorsement with a comment is a small, public, permanent piece of recognition that costs the giver a minute.
Spotting gaps. A skill nobody in a team holds is a concentration risk worth knowing about before the person who does hold it leaves.
How to set up skills
- Open Performance › Settings › Skills.
- Define the skills your company recognises. Keep the list short and specific.
- Decide who holds the endorse right.
- Tell people they can request endorsements — most will not know.
What Happens Next
- Skills appear on people's profiles with their endorsements and comments.
- Endorsement requests notify the colleague being asked.
- Skills persist across cycles — nothing resets them at the end of a review period.
- Removing a skill from the company list affects everyone who holds it.
Tips
- Keep the list to a few dozen specific skills. Two hundred vague ones get used inconsistently and produce data nobody can act on; thirty specific ones get used.
- Define what each skill means, at least in a sentence. "Advanced Excel" means something different to everyone, and unqualified names make the data unusable.
- Encourage comments, not just endorsements. The comment is the part with information in it.
- Encourage people to request endorsements. Otherwise your quietest competent people will have empty profiles.
- Review the list annually. Retire skills that no longer matter and add the ones that have appeared — nothing prompts you to.
- Do not present endorsements externally as verification. They are colleagues' opinions, and nothing checks them.
Troubleshooting / FAQ
Q: Someone cannot endorse a colleague. Endorsing is a specific right. Check they hold it.
Q: Can one person endorse the same skill twice? No — one endorsement per person per skill. That is deliberate.
Q: Is there a proficiency level or a verified state? No. A skill is recorded or not, with a count of endorsers. Use assessments or goals to express how well someone performs.
Q: Can an employee add a skill to themselves? They can record skills against their profile. What gives it weight is who endorses it.
Q: Do skills reset at the end of a cycle? No. They are continuous and persist.
Q: We removed a skill from the list. It affects everyone who held it. Retire deliberately rather than tidying.