FAQ17 questions
Privacy, consent and employee trust
Who sees your profile
YouYour whole profile
Your managerYour team in more detail
ColleaguesYour profile, unless switched offNo reading of messages, email or calendars
What can my employer see about me in MuchSkills?
Your employer sees your MuchSkills profile: your skills and levels, certifications, work and project history, education and development goals, plus the HR basics imported from your HR system, such as name, title, department and manager. Managers see their own team in more detail, including skills history and availability, and administrators see the whole organisation's account. By default colleagues can see your profile too, which keeps claims honest, and organisations that prefer otherwise can switch colleague visibility off. MuchSkills holds nothing about you that did not come from you, your manager, an administrator or your HR system.
Will our skills data be used in performance reviews?
That is your organisation's decision, and MuchSkills never runs or scores a review. MuchSkills is built for development conversations: managers bring it into one-to-ones to talk about current skills, certifications and progress towards a role, and employees see their own fit to a role and what they need to reach it. Some organisations also use it as one input in formal yearly reviews, alongside KPIs and manager or peer judgement. Whatever you decide, tell employees plainly before launch.
Do employees have to fill in their own MuchSkills profile?
No. Your organisation decides how skills data comes into MuchSkills. Employees can add and rate their own skills, managers can add their own assessment alongside, administrators can enter skills and certificates for people, and existing data can be imported through the API or from Excel. A common pattern is to import the certificates you already hold and then ask employees to complete the rest. We still recommend self-assessment at the core, because the person knows their own skills best and is the one who keeps the profile current; a first profile usually takes less than half an hour.
What do we tell the works council about MuchSkills?
Start with what MuchSkills does for employees. Every employee can see which skills their role needs and where they stand, which skills lead to the role they want next, and can build a personal development plan with AI guidance on the next steps. Development talks improve because the employee can say what they can do and want to do, and the manager sees strengths and potential clearly. Then cover what MuchSkills cannot do: no passive monitoring, no access to messages or email, no productivity scoring and no automated ranking. The most convincing step is to give the council two test logins on sample data, one employee and one manager, so they can check for themselves what appears on whose screen.
Can an employee dispute or remove something on their MuchSkills profile?
Yes. In MuchSkills an employee edits their own skills, levels and goals directly, so updating or removing a skill they added takes seconds. Exclusive skills are the exception: only the organisation can add them to a profile. Changes are logged with who made them and when, so nothing changes anonymously. Records a manager has validated, and certificates kept as audit evidence, follow your organisation's rules, so ask your MuchSkills administrator before removing one.
Does an employee keep their MuchSkills profile if they leave?
No. A MuchSkills profile belongs to the organisation's account and stays with it when the person leaves. While employed, a person can share a public profile link if their organisation allows public profiles, but nothing transfers automatically to the next employer. As the data controller, your organisation decides how long a leaver's records are kept, for example certificates needed as audit evidence.
Will people inflate their own skill ratings?
Some will, and MuchSkills is designed for it. Profiles are visible to colleagues by default, and people tend to rate themselves more carefully when someone who really holds the skill can see the claim. Managers can add their own assessment next to the employee's without overwriting it, and validate the skills and certificates that carry consequences. The 1 to 9 scale helps too, because claiming a 7 is more specific than claiming "advanced". Organisations that switch colleague visibility off lean more on manager assessment.
What personal data should never go into MuchSkills?
MuchSkills is built for skills, certifications, goals, experience and role information, and its terms prohibit sensitive data unless an order expressly allows it: special category data under GDPR Article 9, such as health or trade union membership, criminal offence data, protected health information, payment card data, government identification numbers and personal data about children under 16. If sensitive data turns up by accident, for example inside a CV, remove it promptly. The full position is in the MuchSkills Trust Center FAQ.
Can companies outside the EU use MuchSkills, and what about the CCPA?
Yes. The MuchSkills Data Processing Agreement includes United States privacy terms, under which MuchSkills is your service provider under the CCPA and acts as a processor under other state privacy laws, plus international terms covering the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Canada including Quebec, Brazil and Australia, so no separate agreement is needed. Customer data is stored at rest in the EU. MuchSkills does not sell personal data and is not a data broker in any state.
What do employees get out of MuchSkills?
A clear view of their own development. Each employee sees which skills their role needs and where they stand, what the role they want next requires, and a development plan with AI guidance on the next steps. Their skills and certificates are visible to the people who staff projects and fill roles, so they are considered for work that fits them, and expiry reminders keep their certificates current. Development talks with their manager start from what they can do and want to do.
How does MuchSkills handle bias and errors in its AI features?
By keeping a person in charge of every output. MuchSkills' AI features produce suggestions and indicators, such as suggested skills, a draft development plan or an indicative level, and outputs can be inaccurate or reflect biases in language or input data, so each one is there to be reviewed, changed or set aside. Smart search shows what it searched for, AI role suggestions are accepted or rejected by an administrator, and the terms forbid using an output as the sole basis for a decision about a person. The AI Addendum's fact sheet documents known limitations, including bias.
Can skills data be used to decide redundancies?
The decision always stays with people in your organisation. MuchSkills does not rank or select anyone, and its terms forbid using an AI output as the sole or determinative basis for a decision about a person, including redundancy, promotion or pay. If skills data will play any part in a restructuring, agree the rules with employee representatives before the data is collected, and say so to employees at launch; trust in the data depends on it.
What roles and permissions does MuchSkills have?
MuchSkills has three main roles. Employees see and edit their own profile and see colleagues' skills, certificates and work history. Managers also see their team's skills history, changes, goals and availability, validate certificates and build teams. Administrators see and manage everything. An Analyst role gives people such as HR business partners organisation-wide reporting without admin rights, and only managers and administrators see absence details.