Skills, endorsements and feedback
Skills record what people can actually do, endorsed by colleagues and verified by those qualified to judge. Unlike assessments and goals, skills are continuous — they are not tied to a cycle.
Where: Performance › Skills, and Performance › Settings › Skills You need: performance rights; endorsing and verifying are separate rights
Endorsement and verification are different
| What it is | Who does it | |
|---|---|---|
| Endorsement | A colleague vouching for a skill | Anyone with the endorse right |
| Verification | A formal confirmation the skill is held | Someone with the verify right |
This distinction is the point of the feature. An endorsement is social — useful, plentiful, and only as good as the person giving it. A verification is an assertion your company stands behind, which is why it is a separate permission.
💡 Treat verification as the one that counts for anything consequential — staffing a role, meeting a compliance requirement, proving capability to a client. Endorsements are a signal, not evidence.
Employees can also request an endorsement, which is a reasonable thing to encourage: people are poor at volunteering praise and good at responding to a request.
Feedback topics
Feedback topics define what feedback can be given about. Configuring them centrally keeps feedback comparable instead of free-form.
Feedback can be public or private depending on your configuration — whether it may be public is controlled by a specific right, because it changes who sees it.
How to set up skills
- Open Performance › Settings › Skills.
- Define the skills your company recognises, grouped by category.
- Decide who holds the endorse and verify rights — they should not be the same population.
- Configure feedback topics in settings.
What Happens Next
- Skills appear on employees' profiles with their endorsements.
- Verified skills carry the weight of a formal confirmation.
- Endorsement requests notify the person being asked.
- Skills persist across cycles — they are not reset when an assessment period ends.
Tips
- Keep the skill list short and specific. A list of two hundred vague skills gets used inconsistently and tells you nothing; thirty specific ones get used.
- Restrict verification tightly. If everyone can verify, verification means the same as endorsement and you have lost the distinction.
- Define what a skill means. "Advanced Excel" means different things to different people, and unqualified skill names produce unusable data.
- Review the skill list annually. Skills that no longer matter clutter it, and new ones will be missing.
- Do not use skills as a performance rating. They record capability, not how well someone is doing.
Troubleshooting / FAQ
Q: Someone cannot endorse a colleague. Endorsing is a specific right. Check they hold it.
Q: What is the difference between an endorsement and a verification? An endorsement is a colleague vouching; a verification is a formal confirmation, and is a separate right for that reason.
Q: Can an employee add a skill to themselves? They can record skills; whether that carries weight depends on endorsement and verification.
Q: Feedback is not visible to the person it is about. Check whether it was given publicly or privately — that is controlled by a right.
Q: Do skills reset each cycle? No. Skills are continuous and persist.