Build the skills language your organisation actually needs
MuchSkills gives you the platform to map, measure, and act on skills. Skills Strategy & Design gives you what goes inside it – the foundation for becoming a skills-based organisation, where your goals and strategy connect directly to the skills and competencies required to do great work.
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Every taxonomy we build begins with your mission, strategy, and competitive position – so the skills foundation reflects how you actually create value, not just how your org chart is drawn
What Skills Strategy & Design covers
Skills taxonomy design
Skills taxonomy design gives your organisation a structured skills language – built from the ground up around what makes your organisation distinctive, using globally understood skill names your people and the wider market will immediately recognise.
- Collaborative workshops with leadership, HR, and key stakeholders – designed to produce a taxonomy that reflects your strategy, not generic industry categories
- Skill names defined using our database and global sources including Lightcast – specific to your organisation and naturally understood outside it
- 4-layer taxonomy with skill names, descriptions, and category structure
- Delivered as an import-ready file with a Taxonomy Summary Document
- Includes governance documentation and presentation materials ready for internal communication and stakeholder alignment
- Includes a review and iteration cycle
- Typical scope: 50-500 skills across 3-8 categories for mid-market; enterprise engagements may exceed 1,000 skills
A workshop methodology that starts with your mission, goals, ideal customers, and competitive position – and insight built across hundreds of implementations that ensures your taxonomy reflects what actually works, not just what your job titles suggest.
2-4 weeks (mid-market) / 4-12 weeks (enterprise)
Workshop design and facilitation · 4-layer import-ready taxonomy · Skill names and descriptions · Taxonomy Summary Document · Import instructions · Governance documentation · Internal communication and stakeholder alignment materials · Review and iteration cycle
Great work profiles
Great work profiles turn your skills taxonomy into a decision-making tool – defining the skills and proficiency levels required to do excellent work across every role, job family, competence area, or practice area that matters to your organisation.
- Profiles designed for roles, job families, departments, competence areas, practice areas, or any structure relevant to your organisation
- Calibrated using our three-tier proficiency framework: Beginner (1-3), Intermediate (4-6), Expert (7-9)
- Seniority-stacked versions where applicable – distinct profiles for junior, senior, and lead levels
- Every profile becomes a benchmark for gap analysis, development planning, staffing decisions, and career progression
- Typical scope: 5-50 profiles, each containing 10-100+ skills
- Delivered as an import-ready file compatible with MuchSkills and other platforms
- Sequenced after taxonomy design – most clients scope both together to go live without delays
Proficiency expectations calibrated using a framework built across hundreds of implementations – so the benchmarks your managers work from are grounded in what excellent performance actually looks like across organisations like yours, not internal assumptions.
1-3 weeks (focused set) / 3-6 weeks (organisation-wide coverage)
Great work profile files (skill, skill category, top skill, skill level, new skill columns) · Role mapping guide · Implementation guidance · Ready for import into MuchSkills or any other platform
Emerging skills intelligence
Emerging skills intelligence keeps your taxonomy current as your organisation grows and changes – a regular scan of organisational developments, market signals, and industry trends, mapped directly to your existing taxonomy with specific update recommendations.
- Organisational change as the primary trigger – new goals, acquisitions, restructures, and strategic shifts reflected in your taxonomy
- Skills entering relevance identified and scored on a maturity index (0-100)
- Obsolescence watch list so your taxonomy reflects what your organisation values now
- Role resilience assessment and sustainability skills monitoring
- Specific recommendations for taxonomy additions, updates, or retirements – not a generic list of trends
- Optional review call included with each update
- Cadence scoped to your organisation – from every six months to every two years depending on pace of change
The same methodology that builds our taxonomies, applied continuously – so your skills data stays meaningful as your organisation evolves, without your team needing to become skills researchers.
Ongoing – cadence scoped per engagement
Emerging skills briefing document · New skills with maturity scores · Obsolescence watch list · Role resilience assessment · Sustainability skills monitoring · Taxonomy update recommendations (additions, updates, retirements) · Optional review call
Ideal for
Skills Strategy & Design is the right starting point for any organisation building a skills foundation in MuchSkills, or refreshing one that needs to reflect how the organisation works today. It is particularly well-matched to:
- HR and L&D teams building a skills framework from scratch – where the taxonomy will underpin development planning, internal mobility, and L&D investment decisions
- Consulting and professional services firms that need great work profiles across their consultant workforce – so skills data can drive staffing, RFP response, and bench management from day one
- Organisations migrating from spreadsheet-based skills tracking or a previous platform – where the existing taxonomy needs to be rebuilt to reflect how the organisation actually creates value
- Large enterprises with complex structures – multiple business units, functions, or geographies – where taxonomy design needs to account for variation across the organisation without fragmenting into incompatible frameworks
- Any organisation planning to implement Professional Onboarding – Skills Strategy & Design typically runs before or alongside platform implementation, and most clients scope both together to avoid delays at go-live
What this looks like in practice
A 700-person IT consulting firm – taxonomy built, integrated with ServiceNow
A 700-person IT consulting firm needed a taxonomy that could work not just inside MuchSkills but across their entire operational stack. We built the full taxonomy and connected it to their ServiceNow environment – so skills data flows directly into resource allocation and project staffing workflows. Skills are not a separate HR dataset; they are part of how the business operates day to day.
A global non-profit working with governments across 10 countries partnered with MuchSkills to move from spreadsheets and PDFs to a structured, data-driven skills foundation. Working with their leadership team, our specialists co-created a bespoke taxonomy integrating their existing competency framework – covering functional roles, leadership competencies, and mission-specific areas. Great work profiles were established for every job family, giving every employee an objective benchmark and a clear development pathway. A shared skills language now spans 10 countries and feeds directly into job evaluation, performance cycles, and strategic planning.
FAQs
Do we need Skills Strategy & Design if we already have a skills framework?
Our specialists will assess your existing framework and advise on whether to build fresh or adapt what you have – so you go live with skills data you can trust. If your framework uses language that no longer reflects your organisation's direction, or if it has not been reviewed in more than two years, a structured review before importing into MuchSkills will significantly improve the quality of your data from day one.
What is a skills taxonomy and why does it matter?
A skills taxonomy is the structured list of skills your organisation uses to describe what its people can do – and it is the foundation for every skills-related decision, from gap analysis and development planning to staffing, succession, and hiring. A well-built taxonomy uses clear, consistent language, covers the skills relevant to your work, and is organised in a way that makes analysis meaningful and decisions straightforward.
What is the difference between a taxonomy and a great work profile?
A taxonomy is the full library of skills available in your organisation. A great work profile is a curated set of skills from that library – the ones that matter for a specific role, job family, or competence area, with proficiency level expectations attached. The taxonomy is the library. The great work profile is the reading list for a specific job. Both are needed for skills gap analysis to work well.
How do you make sure our taxonomy stays current?
Emerging skills intelligence keeps your taxonomy aligned as your organisation evolves. The most common triggers are internal – a new strategy, an acquisition, a reorganisation – and we scan for those alongside broader market and technology trends. Each update is mapped to your existing taxonomy with specific recommendations, so your skills data reflects where your organisation is going, not just where it has been.
How long does it take to build a taxonomy?
For mid-market organisations (50-500 people), typically two to four weeks. For enterprise organisations (500-5,000+), four to twelve weeks depending on complexity and scope.
Does Skills Strategy & Design work alongside Professional Onboarding?
Yes – and for most new customers, the two run concurrently or in immediate sequence. Taxonomy and great work profile design typically completes before platform implementation begins, and we scope both services together to make sure there are no delays at go-live. See Professional Onboarding for details.
Ready to move forward?
Tell us about your organisation and we'll scope a Skills Strategy & Design engagement that fits. Not sure which service you need? See the full services overview.
