Alignt

Alignt logo
## Inspiration

A company can have a clear strategy and still lack a clear picture of whether its workforce is ready to deliver it. Critical knowledge may sit with just one employee, while people who could grow into new responsibilities remain overlooked.

We built Alignt around a question: **Given where the business wants to go, how can we help its people get there?**

## What it does

Alignt connects business goals to workforce skills, helping leaders understand readiness, identify capability gaps, and plan employee development.

Users can explore employee–skill relationships, identify expertise concentrated among a few people, review potential knowledge-transfer needs, and compare recorded skills against role benchmarks. Its project-matching workflow turns a goal and timeline into suggested capabilities and team recommendations, with remaining gaps made visible.

The aim is to make workforce planning more explainable: show the people, skills, and evidence behind each recommendation.

## How we built it

We built the interface with React, Vite, and React Router, using shared context to connect strategy, workforce data, and derived analysis across pages. A Node.js backend supports workforce APIs and AI-assisted workflows.

We modeled employees, roles, skills, and strategic initiatives as connected data. Interactive visualizations make those relationships easier to explore, while calculation utilities handle readiness, skill concentration, development planning, and financial comparisons.

AI supports role benchmarking, development recommendations, and goal analysis. We added validation and automated tests around these workflows to check calculations, response handling, and failure cases.

## Challenges we ran into

One challenge was defining what “ready” actually means. Having a skill recorded does not necessarily mean someone has the proficiency to work independently or replace an expert.

We also needed to distinguish a development opportunity from a hiring need. A missing skill record should prompt review, rather than automatically become a recommendation to recruit.

Another challenge was presenting interconnected workforce data clearly. We worked to connect summaries with detailed views so users could investigate the evidence behind a risk or recommendation.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We connected strategy, skills analysis, employee development, and project matching in one application.

We’re especially proud of making capability risks traceable to individual skills and recorded holders, and of creating a workflow that helps users consider internal development when planning for future needs.

## What we learned

Useful workforce intelligence requires more than a score. Users need to understand what a metric measures, what evidence supports it, and where information is incomplete.

We also learned that AI recommendations become more useful when paired with structured data, validation, and transparent calculations.

## What's next for Alignt

Next, we want to strengthen browser testing and accessibility, resolve the remaining test issues, and validate the workflows with potential users.

Longer term, we plan to connect live workforce and learning data, track development progress, and improve scenario planning so leaders can explore how training and knowledge transfer could affect future readiness.