{{variable.Company Name}} uses {{glossary.Skill}} and {{glossary.Topic}} as powerful tagging mechanisms to help personalise the learning experience, organise {{glossary.Content}}, and improve content discovery for users. While both serve to categorise content, they cater to slightly different aspects of a user's development and interests.

About Skills and Topics

Skills

A Skill is a tag applied to content designed to help users personalise their learning and discover relevant content specifically for professional development and growth. Users select skills they want to develop (either personally or as assigned by a manager or role), and content tagged with those skills becomes more visible to them on their Learn Page, Explore page, and in search results. Skills highlight content that supports continuous development and improvement in specific areas.

Beyond individual selection, Audience Skills provide a powerful way for administrators to assign specific skills and target proficiency levels to entire groups of users. This ensures consistent skill development across teams and streamlines the process of assigning relevant skills at scale.

{{variable.Note}}
For more information, see Audience Skills.

Topics

A topic is a type of content tag, identified by a hash symbol (#), that serves as an alternative to skills. Topics are primarily designed to help users explore and discover content based on their broader interests and areas of focus. When content is tagged with a topic, it enables individuals to "follow" that interest, resulting in more relevant content suggestions tailored to them. Content associated with topics will appear in relevant sections on their homepage, making discovery intuitive and aligning with their chosen areas of interest.

Key Differences

While both enhance content discovery, the main distinction lies in their primary focus:

Skills: Focus on specific capabilities a user wants to develop or improve for personal or professional growth. Content tagged with a skill is often directly related to formal learning and progress {{glossary.Tracking}}.
Topics: Focus on broader areas of interest that a user wants to explore or stay informed about. Content tagged with a topic helps with general content consumption and personalised suggestions.

Examples

Category	Examples	Description
Skills	Effective communication, Teamwork, Leadership, Presentation delivery, UX Design, Decision Making, Sage, Excel, Salesforce, Objection Handling, Upselling, Conflict Resolution	Specific, measurable abilities or competencies that an individual develops or improves through learning and practice.
Topics	About Us, Onboarding, Our Systems, Working With Us, Our Products, EDI, Mental Wellbeing, LinkedIn Learning, Anders Pink, Get Abstract, Q3, New Year, Senior Leadership, Join The Movement	Broader areas of interest or organisational categories that help in content organisation and general discovery.

Viewing Your Skills

To see all your skills and associated learning content:

From the Thrive Menu, go to Learn > Skills.
You'll see a list of all your skills.
Click on any skill to view content associated with it.
Scroll down to see any completed learnings related to that skill.

You can precisely filter your completed learnings using the date dropdown menu. The filter defaults to the current month, and you have the option to select any month that contains completed learnings.