Short answer
Hidden skills are capabilities or experience that an organisation’s current records do not reveal. Start with a work problem and invite relevant examples from people who may have encountered it. Then verify the context, ask about interest and availability, and agree a small next step. Discovery creates leads for human discussion; it does not prove proficiency or justify automatic assignment.
Prepare the invitation
Describe the problem in everyday language and explain why you are asking. Avoid requiring people to identify themselves as experts before they can contribute.
- Prompt: have you dealt with this situation, and what did you try?
- Scope: state who can participate, how to respond and when the session closes.
- Access: include relevant shifts, locations and people away from a desk.
- Choice: explain the intended use, who can see the material, and how to decline or correct it.
Capture an expertise lead
For each response, complete a short card. Collect only the information needed to decide whether a follow-up conversation would be useful.
- Problem and setting: what was happening?
- Contribution: what did the person do, with whose help?
- Evidence: what approved example could an appropriate reviewer inspect?
- Transfer conditions: what would differ in the new team?
- Interest and availability: does the person want to contribute, and under what conditions?
- Next step: who will review the example and report back?
Review the missing voices and report back
Check which roles, shifts or locations could not participate. Do not treat silence as lack of skill or lack of interest. Follow up through an accessible route where appropriate. Tell contributors what happened to the proposal, including when no action is taken.
- Choose a small, supported test when an example is relevant.
- Confirm workload and local approval before asking someone to teach or transfer.
- Keep unverified leads separate from any formal talent or assessment record.
Why this guide is useful
Use this session when a team is about to buy training, recruit or reinvent a process without first checking whether relevant experience already exists elsewhere. Its output is a small set of reviewable examples, not a ranked talent database.
What discovery can and cannot establish
An absent profile entry is missing information, not evidence that a person lacks a skill. A confident story is also not proof of proficiency. CIPD’s public guide introduction distinguishes developing skills from deploying existing capability. The discovery exercise here is an original facilitation template, not a reproduction of its member-only tools.
Concrete example
Fictional example: a UK store team needs a clearer returns handover. An invitation reaches colleagues across sites and shifts. A part-time colleague describes a checklist used in a previous role. The operations lead reviews an approved example with them, confirms their interest and available time, and tests an adapted version with one team. No job move or organisation-wide expertise claim follows from the conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How can you find skills that are not in an HR system?
- Start with a specific work problem, invite examples through accessible channels, and review the context with the contributor. Verify the evidence before making a capability claim.
- Should every discovery response become a searchable employee profile?
- No. Decide the purpose, access and appropriate retention before collecting material. A contribution to one problem does not automatically justify wider reuse or an individual profile.