Set up and use Skills

Use the Skills feature to ensure that only employees with specific abilities can work on certain shifts.

Saad Saeed avatar
Written by Saad Saeed
Updated over a week ago

🎯 For Schedule admins who need more detail in their scheduling or further breakdown of employees' roles. Read more about the basics of scheduling.


What are Skills?

Employee groups allow you to define the roles of your staff in Planday, while Positions and Sections will enable you to distinguish between subsets of these groups and where they should work in your schedule. With Skills you can define the skillset, expertise or special abilities needed for specific Shifts and limit those Shifts only to employees with those skills.

As an example, you can use Skills for certifications. If your work requires employees to have different courses or certifications, they can be assigned Skills to clarify their responsibilities.

Please note:
If a shift requires a specific skill, only employees who have that skill can work during that shift.


How to set up Skills

To create one or more Skills, go to Settings > People > Skills > Create.

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  • Give a name to the Skill. This will be visible on the schedule.

  • You can choose to make the Skills Time-limited. This can be useful if your employees obtain certifications that expire on a specific date. The dates are added individually for each Employee, and the same Skill can be re-assigned to another employee.

  • You can choose whether seniority can be specified when a skill is assigned to an employee by selecting the option Show seniority.

  • Choose to which Employee groups the Skill relates to. You can create and choose a category for these skills if you use many. Write a description if necessary to help you remember the Skill and its criteria. Remember to press Save.


How to assign Skills to employees

Assign Skills to your employees by clicking the plus icon (+).

Clicking the number of employees under Employees in the image will show you the list of those already assigned the competency.

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You can also assign Skills to your employees directly by editing their profiles. Go to Employees > select employee > Edit > Employment > Skills > Add.

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Use Skills on the schedule

To use Skills on the schedule, you must use the Positions view. To learn more about Positions, see Scheduling with Sections and Positions. Remember to turn on Skills under Schedule > View settings > Skills otherwise, they won't be visible on the schedule.

Once you have set up Positions, you can add the Skills to those Positions. You can do this by going to the Schedule under the Positions view. You then need to tap on Manage Positions and Sections and edit the Position to which the Skills will be linked.

When you create shifts in the Positions view with a Skill attached, only employees with the correct Employee group and Skills can be assigned to that Shift. You can also add and remove skills directly when editing a shift.

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You can also filter your schedule view by Skills using Schedule filters.

​When applying Skills, it is essential to distinguish whether the Skill will be applied to the employee, the shift, or the position.


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