What is the Human Skills Matrix?

Although automation and AI are transforming the workplace, employers continue to look for the essential qualities and abilities that only humans possess, including leadership, self-regulation and creative thinking that are mainly left to the individual to gain by osmosis.

The prefix ‘human’ provides a category for these skills that sit outside of academic and vocational syllabi but which we know are vital, not just for job acquisition and performance, but for life-long personal and career fulfilment.

Human skills, sometimes called soft skills, are the qualities and capabilities that make people effective collaborators, communicators and thinkers: emotional intelligence, adaptability, critical thinking, resilience, teamwork and more. In an increasingly automated world, these are the skills that AI cannot replicate, and employers consistently cite them as the most important attributes they look for in candidates at every level.

We have built an academic frame of reference called the Human Skills Matrix (HSM) which underpins our training programmes.

The HSM is our research-based framework which provides a common language and reference point from which we build our programmes. The Matrix includes 94 competencies across 14 human skills. Our HSM and our programmes consciously delivery the development of a learners human skills.

Evidence of the needs for human skills is sourced from international research such as: The Organisation for Economic Cooperation, World Economic Forum and International Labour Organisation.

The HSM categorises skills into two groups: cognitive and metacognitive, and social and emotional competencies.

Every programme we write and deliver is aligned against one or more of the 94 competencies. Allowing us to track a learners progress.

One framework, many uses

The Human Skills Matrix (HSM) gives everyone who works with human skills a shared language. Educators, publishers, employers and recruiters each use it in their own way.

Schools and educators

• Assess progress. Use the HSM as a rubric to track how students are developing human skills over time.

• Build evidence for the next step. Help students recognise and describe their human skills for CVs, UCAS personal statements and career decisions.

• Support conflict resolution. Give students in conflict specific human skills to discuss and reflect on, so they have a structured way to understand each other and resolve issues.

Students and learners

• Self awareness. The HSM can be used as a reflective tool for students to consider which human skills they already have and which they want to develop.

• Track personal growth. Record examples of human skills in action, at school, at home, in clubs or at work, and watch them build over time.

• Tell their story. Turn evidence into clear, confident statements for CVs, UCAS applications, interviews and apprenticeship applications.

Educational publishers

• Shape curricula and content. Use the HSM to plan and write resources that develop human skills in a structured, consistent way.

• Align across a catalogue. Apply one framework across titles and age groups so learning builds coherently.

Employers

• Write better job descriptions. Set out the human skills a role needs alongside the technical ones, with confidence and precision.

• Understand your team. Map your team's human skills to find gaps and reveal strengths you didn't know you had.

• Plan development. Target training and progression at the specific human skills your people and organisation need.

Recruiters

• Strengthen applications. Help candidates show clear evidence of their human skills.

• Improve matching. Compare candidates' human skills with what a role requires to find a stronger fit.

• Brief clients clearly. Give hiring organisations a common vocabulary for the human skills they are looking for.

Please contact us at Vitruvia to see a demo and find out about a licence to use the HSM.

email: humans@vitruvia.net.