Understanding Skills Inventory
What is Skills Inventory
Skills Inventory is your live registry of all skills currently in your taxonomy. It gives you a full picture of taxonomy health, what skills exist, where they came from, how well employees are proficient in them, and where the biggest gaps are.
Navigate to Skill Gaps → Skills Inventory.
It is not just a list of skills. It is a real-time registry that connects every skill in your taxonomy to the employees who hold it, the job profiles that require it, and the market signals that shaped it. Every change or a skill added from a market recommendation, renamed by an admin, or self-declared by an employee - is tracked, timestamped, and visible.
Skills Inventory is your single source of truth for workforce capability.
The Summary Cards
At the top of the Skills Inventory, five summary cards give you an immediate read on the state of your taxonomy:
| Card | What It Tells You |
|---|---|
| Total Skills | The total number of active skills in your taxonomy |
| High Skill Gap | Skills where employees are significantly below required proficiency — these need the most attention |
| Medium Skill Gap | Skills with moderate gaps — worth monitoring and addressing in your next development cycle |
| Low Skill Gap | Skills where employees are close to required proficiency |
| No Skill Gap | Skills where employees meet or exceed what their role requires |
Click any card to filter the skill grid to that gap level. Start with High Skill Gap to identify where your organisation's readiness needs the most work.
The Four Tabs
All Skills
The complete active taxonomy in a card grid. This is your full picture — every skill your organisation currently tracks, in one view.
Each skill card shows:
- Classification — the skill type (for example, Technical, Behavioural)
- Critical tag — a yellow label for skills marked as essential to your organisation
- Change badge — a coloured tag showing if the skill was recently updated: New Skill (green), Renamed (purple), or Type Changed (blue). These badges help you track taxonomy momentum at a glance without having to dig into version history
- Employee count — how many employees currently hold this skill
- Skill gap dial — a colour-coded proficiency gauge: red for High, amber for Medium, green for Low or No gap
Use the search bar to find a specific skill, or use the sort control to order by gap level, employee count, or skill name.
New Skills
All skills added to your taxonomy in the current month from any source.
A banner at the top of the tab shows the total count and the market signal version it corresponds to (for example, "23 New Skills - Lightcast Additions (v9.42 · Apr 2026)").
Each card includes a source tag so you know exactly how the skill entered your taxonomy:
| Source Tag | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Lightcast Taxonomy | Accepted from a monthly market signal |
| Manually Added | Added directly by a Taxonomy Admin |
| Discovered Skill | Surfaced from internal org data and accepted by an admin |
Skills with no employees yet show "Not Applicable" for skill gap. This is expected for newly added skills that haven't been assessed yet.
This tab answers a question L&D teams often ask: what changed in our taxonomy this month, and why? The source tags give you the full answer.
Renamed
Skills that were renamed in the current month, shown with a clear before-and-after view.
A banner shows the count and version (for example, "15 Renamed & Consolidated — Lightcast Changes (v9.42 · Apr 2026)").
Each card shows:
- The old name (in strikethrough) and the new name with an arrow (for example,
Machine Learning→ ML Engineering) - Employees affected - number of employees whose skill records reference this skill
Renames propagate across your entire taxonomy in one action - job profiles, employee records, and assessments all update to reflect the new name. The Renamed tab is your record of what changed and who it touched.
If you see a rename that does not align with your organisation's terminology, you can edit the skill display name from the skill detail view to use your preferred label while keeping the underlying taxonomy mapping intact.
Removed
Skills removed from your taxonomy, with a record of when they were removed and how many employees held them.
A banner shows the count and version (for example, "12 Removed Skills — Lightcast Removals (v9.42 · Apr 2026)"). Each card shows the removal date and employee count.
Removed skills are soft-deleted - they are hidden from employee-facing views but their history is retained. If employees still hold skills that have been removed from the taxonomy, this tab surfaces that so you can decide whether to reskill those employees or retire the skill from their records.
The Removed tab is particularly useful for L&D planning. A skill that 4 employees hold but no longer exists in the taxonomy is a signal to redirect that development investment toward adjacent, current skills.
Skill Detail
Click on any skill card anywhere in the Skills Inventory to open the Skill Detail view. This is where you move from taxonomy-level insight to skill-level understanding.
The Header Metrics
Three metrics sit at the top of every skill detail, giving you an immediate health check:
Org Coverage The percentage of employees in your organisation who have this skill regardless of whether it is in their job profile or not. A low Org Coverage on a High Skill Gap skill is a red flag: the skill matters, and very few people have it.
Avg Proficiency The average proficiency score across all employees who hold this skill, rated on a 5-point scale. This tells you not just whether employees have the skill, but how well developed it is across the organisation.
Skill Gap The average gap between required proficiency (as set in job profiles) and actual proficiency across employees. A 73% skill gap means employees are, on average, operating well below the proficiency level their role requires for this skill.
Read these three metrics together. A skill with high Org Coverage but a high Skill Gap means many people have the skill but few are proficient enough. A skill with low Org Coverage and a high Skill Gap means both reach and depth need attention.
Overview Tab
Four panels give you a detailed breakdown of the skill.
Employees in Job Profile
Employees whose current job profile formally requires this skill, with their collective skill gap. This is your core group, the people for whom this skill is a defined part of their role.
Additional Employees
Employees who have this skill but it is not required by their job profile. This is a valuable signal. It can indicate that a skill is more widely relevant than your current job profile design reflects or that employees are proactively building capabilities beyond their role requirements.
How Many Employees Were Validated on This Skill Each Month?
An area chart showing monthly assessment activity over the last 6 months (adjustable). Use this to track whether validation coverage is growing - a rising trend means more employees are being assessed on this skill, which improves the reliability of your gap data. A flat or declining trend may mean assessments need to be prioritised.
How Are Proficiency Levels Distributed Across Employees?
A distribution chart showing how proficiency spreads across the employee population for this skill. A cluster at lower proficiency levels alongside a high average skill gap confirms a systemic development need, not just isolated individual gaps.
Talent Pool Tab
A full list of every employee assessed on this skill, with the following columns:
| Column | What It Shows |
|---|---|
| Employee | Name and email |
| Job Profile | The role this skill is mapped to, or "N/A — skill not in job profile" if the skill was detected outside a formal role requirement |
| Skill Gap | Individual gap level (High / Medium / Low) |
| Grade | Employee grade |
| Band | Pay or seniority band |
| Location | Office or region |
| Experience | Years of experience |
The N/A skill not in job profile label is worth paying attention to. These employees have demonstrated the skill through assessment or self-declaration, but their current role does not formally require it. This is useful for internal mobility decisions, project staffing, and identifying candidates for roles that do require the skill.
Search by employee name or email to find a specific person. Use the sort control to order by skill gap to quickly surface who needs the most development.
Skill Log Tab
A complete, chronological activity feed for the skill every event from its first appearance in a market signal through to employee adoption. Each entry includes a date and a source tag that tells you where the event originated:
| Source Tag | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Market Recommendation | Change originated from a monthly market signal |
| Admin | Action taken by a Taxonomy Admin |
| iMocha Engine | Detected automatically by the iMocha platform |
| Employee Portal | Employee self-declared the skill |
A typical skill log might show: the skill appearing in a market signal, an admin accepting it into the taxonomy, the skill being linked to job profiles, an assessment being published, and then employees beginning to self-declare or get assessed on it.
The Skill Log is your audit trail and your provenance record.
It answers the question every stakeholder eventually asks: where did this skill come from, and how did it end up in our taxonomy?
How to Use Skills Inventory Effectively
Start with the summary cards
High Skill Gap is where your organisation's readiness is most at risk. Filter to those skills first and identify which ones are also Critical - that combination is where L&D investment has the highest impact.
Use the New Skills tab after each monthly signal
Review what entered your taxonomy this month and from which source. If Lightcast additions are growing your taxonomy faster than your teams can absorb, consider whether all accepted skills are truly relevant to your organisation.
Use the Renamed and Removed tabs for communications
When skills are renamed or removed, employee-facing language and job profile documentation may need updating. These tabs give you the exact list to work from.
Use Skill Detail for development planning
Org Coverage + Skill Gap + the proficiency distribution chart together tell you whether you have a reach problem (few people have the skill), a depth problem (many people have the skill but aren't proficient), or both. Each calls for a different L&D response.
Use the Talent Pool to identify internal experts
Low Skill Gap employees with "N/A skill not in job profile" are hidden experts. They may be candidates for mentoring programmes, cross-functional projects, or roles that formally require the skill.
Use the Skill Log for stakeholder accountability
When a taxonomy decision is questioned, the Skill Log shows exactly who acted, when, and on what basis - whether it was a market recommendation, an admin decision, or organic employee activity.
