The Skills section of the Sana Home page helps you create clear up-skilling journeys for employees to advance key competencies. Through badges and recognition, employees stay motivated to achieve higher skill levels tailored to individual and organizational needs.
What are Skills?
The Skills section on the homepage highlights learning paths tied to specific competencies.
It lets learners follow skills, complete related content, and progress through levels.
Progress is tracked with badges and visible achievements.
A leaderboard may appear, showing top learners and adding a layer of friendly competition.
Descriptions for each skill level, written and decided by your organization, are shown on the skill detail page. This makes it easier for learners to understand what is expected to achieve at each level.
💡 Skills and proficiency levels are fully customizable to match your organization's skills taxonomy and career framework.
Why use Skills?
Skills help incentivize self-directed learning and align employee growth with organizational goals:
Upskilling incentives: motivate learners to acquire new skills and manage their own development.
Career growth: track skill level advancements directly tied to career progression.
Strategic alignment: support broader company initiatives by targeting specific competencies.
Content discovery: help learners easily browse and access relevant learning resources.
When to use skills vs. other options
To effectively utilize Skills feature, 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: ensure content connected to Skills is accessible to everyone to promote self-development. |
AI-enabled auto-tagging: enable auto-tagging to receive AI-driven suggestions that seamlessly connect the right content to the appropriate skill and skill level.
Pro tip: use keywords in your skill level description that you expect to find in the content. |
Gamification: leverage leaderboards and organize competitions to boost engagement and motivation. |
Gap identification: set up your skill taxonomy to help admins identify organizational knowledge gaps. |
Role-specific content: provide role-specific content alongside general development topics. |
Skills library: to swiftly configure your skills in Sana, import pre-defined skills from Sana's 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: allow 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: support 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: enable alignment of learning initiatives with the organization’s career progression framework.
How to create Skills
Step 1: define settings
Navigate to Manage > Skills.
Click the
Settings button in the top right.Configure settings that will be applied throughout all of the skills in your organization.
Smart suggestions (auto-tagging skills to content) When enabled, this feature automatically highlights and links relevant skills to 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 organization to subscribe. |
Display leaderboard If enabled, a leaderboard of top badge earners will appear on the homepage. |
Define levels Here, you define the proficiency levels that are available across all skills in your organization, such as beginner, intermediate, advanced. |
Step 2: add skills
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 these with Sana. Please contact your Engagement Manager to set this up.
Import a skill from library
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Create a new custom skill
Descriptions for each skill level are 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: add content
Now that you have defined your organization's skills, the next step is to add relevant content. If Smart suggestions is enabled, Sana’s AI will provide content recommendations for you to review and approve. You can also add content manually.
To add content:
Go to Manage > Skills.
Select the skill you want to update.
Click the Manage button on the top of the skill's detail page.
Go to Edit content section below Smart suggestions.
Click Add content on the right.
Use Search and Filter to identify suitable content.
Tick the box next to the content to be added.
Click Save.
💡 Use the Manage tab to review, approve, or manually add content that aligns with the skill and its proficiency levels. This ensures learners have access to the right resources as they progress.
Set a level exam
The level exam feature allows content to be used as examination steps or placement tests. By default, learners must complete all content within a proficiency level to earn its completion badge. Admins can override this requirement by setting a piece of content as a level exam. Once designated, learners only need to pass that exam to earn the badge.
To set content as Level exam:
Go to the Edit content section of the skill's detail page.
Click three-dot menu next to the content you want to set up as Level exam.
Turn on Level exam.
In the Set as level fast track pop-up click Continue.
💡 Keep in mind, that one level exam is permitted per proficiency level.
Assign a skill to a learner
As an admin, you can assign a skill to a learner on their behalf:
Go to Manage > Skills.
Select the skill you want to assign and click Manage button on the top of the skill's detail page.
Scroll down to Users and click Add learners.
Select the Target level (the expected level for the learner) and Achieved levels (automatically completes preceding levels).
Click Add.
Target level is an expected level that want the learner to reach. |
Achieved levels automatically marks the user as complete for all preceding levels. |
Learner view
Now that the skill is created, learners can find it on their homepage, Skills section and start earning badges.
How to follow a skill
Once a skill has been created, learners can follow it by taking these steps:
Go to Home and scroll down to Skills.
Click+ Browse skills.
Check the boxes next to the skills you want to follow.
Click Save.
Leaderboard
The Skills section includes a leaderboard that shows the top badge earners in your organization, so you can see who’s progressing fastest in skills. It’s a real-time ranking of top badge earners across the organization.
Whether you see it depends on your organization’s settings: if the leaderboard is enabled, you’ll see your own progress plus the leaderboard; if it’s disabled, you’ll only see your progress and what you need to level up.
View for the learner if leaderboard is enabled: The learners see their own progress and the leaderboard of top badge earners in the organization.  |
View for the learner if leaderboard is disabled: The learners see their own progress and what is needed to level up in those skills.  |
How to obtain badges
Once you followed a skill, you can start earning badges as follows:
Go to Home page and scroll to the Skills section.
Click the skill you want to work on to view its assigned courses.
Complete the required courses for a badge level to earn your badge.
FAQ
What does 'Limited access' mean when I add a course to a skill, and how do I fix it?
Skills are visible to everyone in your organization. If earning a skill badge requires completing all of its courses, those courses must also be accessible to the entire organization. The 'Limited access' warning means some learners might not be able to view or complete this course.
To make a course accessible to everyone:
Go to Manage > Content.
Open Settings > General.
Select Visible everywhere in the Visibility in organization drop-down list.
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.