How competency requirements, holdings, and gaps fit together
People's competency views can look like several separate screens, but they all rest on one simple idea: compare what a role requires with what a person actually holds, and the difference is the gap. Once you see that, every view makes sense.
The four pieces
What a position requires: the job capsule
A job capsule is the set of competencies a position needs. Rather than list the same requirements on every position one by one, you define a capsule once, for example "requirements for an ROV Pilot", and attach it to the positions that share those requirements. Each requirement can carry a level, so a capsule can say not just "holds this competency" but "holds it to level 3".
Because requirements live on the position through its capsule, changing a capsule updates every position and every person measured against it at once. This is the same reason positions sit at the centre of People. See How positions and the org structure work.
What a person holds: their competencies
A person competency is something an individual actually has, recorded against them. It might be a certificate with an expiry date, such as a survival or medical certificate, or a skill held to a certain level. This is the real, evidenced state of that one person, independent of any role they happen to hold.
The two, side by side: the matrix
The competency matrix is the cross-tab of those two ideas. Every person is a row, every competency is a column, and each cell shows what that person holds: a certificate, a level, or nothing yet. It turns thousands of individual records into one grid you can read across a whole team.
The difference: the gap
A gap is where a person's holdings fall short of what their position requires: they do not hold a required competency, hold it below the required level, hold an expired certificate, or lack an attachment when the competency requires documentation. The matrix makes missing and low holdings visible, the certificate-expiry view surfaces lapsing records, and Missing Documentation isolates holdings that are present but lack required evidence.
How they connect
Read it as one sentence: the job capsule sets the bar, the person's competencies say where they stand, the matrix lays the two side by side, and the gap is what is left to close. Requirements are defined once on the position, holdings are recorded once on the person, and every view is just a different way of comparing the two.
Where People ends and Skills begins
People gives you the status and reporting view. It shows what people hold, what their roles require, and where the gaps are, so you can plan, report, and stay compliant. It does not run the training that closes those gaps.
Closing a gap, enrolling someone on a course, running the assessment, and issuing the certificate that then appears against them, is the job of the Skills module. Skills is where competencies are produced; People is where their status is read. If your organisation uses Skills, a certificate issued there flows back into these People views automatically. Skills may be a separate purchase, so it is not part of every organisation's Markular.
What you can do
- Use the competency matrix to read holdings against requirements across your workforce.
- Track certificate expiry to catch gaps before a certificate lapses.
- Track missing competency documentation when selected competencies require an attachment.