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Frequently Asked Questions

Find the answers to commonly asked questions about Kahuna’s skills and competency management platform, which is built to help organizations with frontline, technical workforces validate skills, ensure compliance, and improve workforce readiness.

Understanding Skills and Competency Management Platforms

Kahuna is a purpose-built skills and competency management platform designed for complex, high-stakes environments in industries like energy, field service, manufacturing, and healthcare. 

Unlike general HR platforms, Kahuna is tailored for frontline, technical workforces, helping organizations track, manage, validate, and optimize workforce skills. Kahuna provides leaders with real-time visibility into employee qualifications, skills gaps, and role readiness, enabling a more strategic and proactive approach to safety, compliance, productivity, and workforce planning.

With validated assessments, audit-ready certification tracking, and proficiency-based assignments, Kahuna helps organizations turn frontline workforce skills data into a strategic advantage. 

To learn more, visit our “What is Skills Management?” blog, or explore Kahuna Skills Manager, our flagship product.

Kahuna gives organizations a single place to track, manage, and validate the frontline skills and competencies their workforce needs to operate safely, efficiently, and in compliance. Key capabilities include: 

  • Define and manage role-specific skills with flexible structures that reflect real operational needs. 
  • Confirm proficiency through structured assessments, on-the-job observations, and certifications. 
  • Manage certifications and regulatory requirements across roles and sites with automated reminders and audit-ready reporting. 
  • Gain real-time visibility into who is qualified, where gaps exist, and how to prioritize training and development activities. 
  • Connect with key HR and operational systems, such as the HRIS, LMS, LXP, scheduling, and more, to keep all skills and compliance data current, validated, and actionable.

Kahuna provides industry-specific solutions and is trusted by organizations in high-stakes, operations-driven industries where frontline proficiency directly impacts safety, compliance, and performance. The core industries Kahuna serves are: 

These industries benefit from managing complex skill frameworks, staying compliant, and ensuring frontline teams are job-ready.

Skills validation platforms such as Kahuna go beyond tracking training completions by capturing proof of applied proficiency through real-world validation methods.

Organizations can structure this process based on their own workflows and priorities, leveraging supervisor or SME sign-offs, peer reviews, on-the-job observational assessments, or experience-based skill recognition. This approach ensures organizations don’t just know who attended training, but who is actually qualified to perform critical tasks safely and effectively in their role.

Technology Functionality and Integrations

Yes. Kahuna integrates seamlessly with HRIS, LMS, and various operational tools, including scheduling and dispatch, compliance, HSE, ERP, and more. These integrations break down data silos by connecting frontline skills to employee records, training history, certifications, and job assignments, enabling a centralized hub of workforce data that is both validated and actionable for leaders across the organization.

Kahuna Workforce Solutions enhances workforce capability with real-time analytics and industry-specific applications, built for frontline and technical roles in energy, manufacturing, field service, and healthcare. Unlike general-purpose platforms like Workday, Cornerstone, iMocha, TalentGuard, or Docebo, which focus on training delivery, human capital management, or generalized skills assessments, Kahuna validates skills on the job and connects them directly to role readiness, compliance, and operational performance. 

Kahuna delivers audit-ready reporting, real-time readiness dashboards, and gap forecasting aligned with OSHA, ISO, HSE, and Joint Commission standards. Kahuna’s product suite, including Skills Manager, Insights, and Ladder, integrates with HR, learning, and operational systems to deliver precision workforce planning.

Kahuna helps organizations transform static records into validated, role-specific skills intelligence, ensuring the right person, with the right skills, is in the right role, at the right time.

While a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Learning Experience Platform (LXP) focuses on training delivery, skills and competency management platforms, such as Kahuna, ensure that employees can demonstrate these skills on the job. Kahuna isn’t a replacement for an LMS or LXP, but rather, it complements these systems by managing the validation and real-time application of frontline workforce skills and competencies, embedding assessments into the daily flow of work, and serving as a system of record for workforce readiness, rather than serving as a learning content hub.

Compliance, Safety, and Readiness

In regulated, high-risk industries, Kahuna plays a critical role in reducing operational risk by ensuring only qualified, compliant workers are deployed. With Kahuna, leaders can:

  • Track certifications and proficiencies against standards like OSHA, ISO, HSE, and API.
  • Receive real-time alerts and dashboards for expiring qualifications and skill gaps.
  • Support audit readiness with validated, time-stamped competency records.
  • Prevent safety incidents by embedding skills validation into job assignments and work processes.


By aligning workforce capability with regulatory and operational requirements, Kahuna helps reduce non-compliance findings, rework, and safety-related downtime.

Kahuna provides real-time reporting and advanced analytics through Kahuna Insights, the platform’s skills and workforce intelligence engine. Leaders can see workforce readiness, compliance status, and skills and competency gaps at the individual, team, or enterprise level.

With Kahuna Insights, organizations with frontline, technical workforces gain:

  • Readiness dashboards that instantly show who is qualified for critical roles and where coverage exists.
  • Audit-ready compliance reports that align with standards like OSHA, ISO, and the Joint Commission, reducing audit prep time and risk of penalties.
  • Gap analysis tools that highlight where upskilling, redeployment, or succession planning is needed.
  • Trend analysis and predictive analytics that help track progress over time and forecast future skill needs to support proactive workforce planning.
  • Role-based views and custom dashboards that make skills insights actionable for every stakeholder, from frontline supervisors to executives.

For industries like healthcare, energy, field service, and manufacturing, Kahuna’s analytics connects validated workforce capability directly to operational performance. This gives leaders a clear line of sight to take action and make data-driven decisions that improve safety, efficiency, and long-term productivity.

Learn more about Kahuna Insights.

Kahuna closes skill gaps by giving leaders validated, real-time visibility into workforce proficiency levels that turn skills data from insights to actionable metrics. Unlike HR systems that rely on outdated records or self-reported skills, Kahuna uses supervisor assessments, on-the-job observations, and operational data to establish a trusted baseline of capabilities across individuals, teams, and the enterprise.

With this foundation, Kahuna helps organizations:

  • Pinpoint gaps quickly through readiness dashboards and gap analysis.
  • Align training to close skills gaps, rather than spending time and resources on learning that isn’t necessary.
  • Forecast emerging gaps as roles, technologies, and regulations evolve.

For industries with complex and technical workforces, this proactive approach reduces risk, improves compliance, and accelerates readiness, ensuring the right people, with the right skills, are available at the right time.

Dive deeper in our blog: Identify, Analyze, Close, and Overcome Skills Gaps with Skills Management.

Implementation and Support

Implementation timelines for skills management platforms like Kahuna vary based on organizational complexity. This implementation period includes defining a skills framework, configuring the platform, integrating with systems like HRIS, LMS, or ERP, and setting up workflows for assessments, assignments, and development plans.

Our customer success team at Kahuna is top-notch and plays a critical role in helping our customers accelerate time to value and guiding them through each phase with domain expertise and responsive collaboration. 

Kahuna also has a robust partner network that can be leveraged to provide supplemental technical resources when needed, ensuring a smooth and scalable rollout that is tailored to each organization’s unique operational environment and business needs.

Kahuna is designed for real-world usability across all levels of the organization. Frontline employees can update skills, complete assessments, and view progress directly in the flow of work. Managers and supervisors can access real-time dashboards that highlight team readiness, training needs, and compliance status to make faster, more strategic decisions. Whether on the bedside, in the field, on an oil rig, or on the plant floor, Kahuna ensures users across the organization can engage with the platform quickly and effectively.

Kahuna offers comprehensive customer support and services led by an experienced team that guides organizations through every phase, from implementation to ongoing optimizations, ensuring the platform continues to drive success. 

Customers benefit from a dedicated customer success manager, access to implementation specialists, and training resources tailored to their industry to guide adoption and ensure ongoing compliance. Kahuna also provides responsive technical support, role-specific enablement resources, and access to a peer community for shared best practices. 

For more complex deployments, customers can take advantage of Kahuna’s extensive partner network if additional integration or technical support is needed to scale effectively.

Strategic Transformation and Next Steps

Kahuna helps organizations move to skills-based strategies by providing a clear, real-time view of frontline, technical, and operational skills across the business. By integrating with HR, learning, scheduling, and operational systems, Kahuna pulls in critical data and becomes the single source of truth for skills. This makes it easy for HR and operational leaders to stay aligned, close skill gaps faster, and make better staffing and development decisions, while supporting a more agile, connected, and responsive organization.

Read more about how Kahuna supports digital transformation and skills-based strategies for the frontline workforce in our joint white paper with Mercer.

Organizations evaluating skills and competency management platforms like Kahuna can request a fully personalized demo or explore interactive demos tailored to healthcare, manufacturing, field service, or energy.