Skills can help you to provide clearly defined up-skilling journeys for employees, helping them advance in key competencies. Through badges and other recognition mechanisms, employees are motivated to engage with learning content and achieve higher skill levels, tailored to meet both individual and company-wide developmental needs.
What are Skills?
Skills can range from technical abilities like "Programming" to soft skills like "presenting". Each skill can be associated with different levels of proficiency, such as novice, intermediate, and expert, allowing for a structured development path. Descriptions for each skill level, written and decided by your organization, are shown on the Skill detail page, making it easier for learners to understand what is expected to achieve at each level.
💡 Skills and proficiency levels are customizable – they can be set up to match your organization's skills taxonomy and career framework
To effectively utilize Skills, it's important to understand when they are most beneficial and when other options might be more suitable.
When to use skills | When not to use skills |
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Best practices
Open access |
AI-enabled auto-tagging |
Gamification |
Gap identification |
Role-specific content |
Skills library |
Use cases for Skills
💡 Up-skilling:
Improving existing skills or acquiring new skills relevant to one's current role.
Example: A software developer might up-skill from understanding basic Python programming to mastering advanced data structures in Python.
Sana's Role: Allows organizations to map out these learning paths.
💡 Re-skilling:
Ensuring that employees' skills stay relevant and effective in the face of rapid technological changes.
Example: Regularly updating the skill sets of employees to prevent personnel obsolescence.
Sana's Role: Supports continuous learning and adaptation
💡 Career Development:
Long-term growth and progression of employees within an organization.
Example: Preparing a junior manager for senior management roles through leadership and strategic thinking skills development.
Sana's Role: Enables alignment of learning initiatives with the organization’s career progression framework.
How to create Skills
Step 1
To set up skills, navigate to Manage > Skills > 
Settings button in the top right.
Here, you will configure a few settings that are applied throughout all of the Skills in your organization
Smart Suggestions (Auto-tagging Skills to content) If enabled this feature helps you effortlessly identify and associate the best skills with your published content. Our AI analyzes the content and suggests which of your created skills would be ideal to assign.
How Does It Work? When a course is published or updated, AI gets to work. It will evaluate all published and recently updated courses in your organization and compare them to the skills you’ve created.
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Sequential unlocking If enabled, learners are forced to complete the previous proficiency level before they are allowed to take courses at the next level. |
Make skills available to learners If enabled, the skill will be visible for learners in your org to subscribe |
Display leaderboard If enabled, a leaderboard of top badge earners will appear on the home page. |
Define levels Here, you define the proficiency levels that are available across all Skills in your organization, such as Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced. |
Step 2
To add new skills you can either import a pre-defined skill from Sana's own library, or you can create a new custom skill based on your company's needs.
💡 If you have external files or systems that handle your organization's skill taxonomy, it's possible to integrate this with Sana. Please contact your Engagement Manager to set this up.
Import skill from library Click Browse skills in the top right of the skills manage page, select a skill you'd like to add then click 'Import skill'
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Create a new custom Skill Click 'New skill' in the top right and enter a name for the skill and descriptions then click save. Descriptions for each skill level is shown for the learner in the Skills overview page. Ensure that skill levels are appropriately defined to reflect the actual competencies required at each stage. Misalignment can lead to confusion and misdirected learning efforts - use level descriptions to align expectations
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Step 3
Now that you have defined your organization's skills the next step is to add content.
To add content, navigate to the skill and click on the Manage button. If Smart suggestions is enabled, Sana's AI engine will start providing suggestions on relevant content for you to approve. To add content manually, click on the Add content button.
Level exam
The level exam allows content to be used as examination steps or placement tests. By default, learners need to complete every content within proficiency level in order to receive the badge of completion for that level. By setting a content as "Level exam", admins can override this behavior so that only the level exam content need to be completed in order for the learner to receive the badge.
Once you enable the level exam for the content by toggling the Level exam, the below pop-up displays asking if you would like to proceed. Click continue to enable.
💡 Keep in mind, that one level exam is permitted per proficiency level.
Subscribe a learner to a skill
As an admin you can subscribe a skill to a learner on their behalf:
Go to Manage > Skills
Select the skill you want to enroll a learner in
Go to Manage and scroll down to Users
Click Add, you can enroll a user or group and have the option to select a target level and achieved levels if applicable
Target level: is an expected level that want the learner to reach |
Achieved level: automatically marks the user as complete up to that level |
Learner view
Now that you have created the skill the learner can access this from their home page and start obtaining badges for their skill.
How to follow a skill
Once a skill has been created, learners can 'follow' the skill by clicking 'Browse skills' on your Sana home.
Learners can select a skill or skills they're interested in following then click 'Save'
Enabled vs disabled leaderboard
In the Skills settings mentioned above, you can choose to have the leaderboard enabled or disabled for your learners.
View for the learner if leaderboard is enabled: The learner will see their own progress and the leaderboard of top badge earners in the organization  |
View for the learner if leaderboard is disabled: The learner will see their own progress and what is needed to level up in those Skills  |
How to obtain badges
Once a learner has followed a skill they can then proceed to click on the title in the skills section of your home. This will open the skill and display the available courses for that skill. Complete the courses within a badge level and to obtain the associated badge.
See the example below of how to follow a skill and then start working towards a badge
FAQ
What does 'Limited access' mean when I add a course to a skill and how do I remove it?
Skills are visible to everyone in your organization and due to this courses that are a part of a skill also require visibility throughout the organization if a learner needs to complete all courses to obtain badges for that skill.
This warning above lets you know that some learners may not have access to this course. The only way to remove this 'Limited access' status is by opening the course manage page and changing the share settings to 'Visible to all'
How can I ensure that the skills defined are aligned with my organization’s needs?
Engage with various stakeholders including HR, department heads, and team leaders to capture a comprehensive view of the skills essential for your organization’s success. Regularly review and update the skills as needed to adapt to changing organizational goals and market conditions.