You’re having a busy week, a project is nearing completion and the last thing you want to do is complete your employee skills assessment… you’re not alone.
The skills assessment process can seem like a low priority when you have a lot on your plate, but it can actually have a huge impact on your training, career progression, keeping your managers and employer honest and it can help give you far greater opportunities to work on interesting projects within your organization.
We’re hoping this article will help you understand the assessment process better, and the benefits you can gain from participating.
Self-Assessment vs Supervisor Assessment
There are many different types of tests that you can perform across your career. Maybe you’re getting recruited into a job where they’re looking for a gun at Python. In this case you might be put through a rigorous online coding exam. Joining a job that requires strong emotional intelligence and empathy? A Psychometric test might be used.
At Skills Base, we focus on the Structured Subjective™ approach to skills assessment. This involves creating a common taxonomy of skills within an organization, and then quickly and efficiently using a numeric rating scheme to determine competency for each and every skill being tracked. This enables you, your manager and your peers to evaluate yourselves in a consistent and objective way.
Let’s say you are getting close to an annual performance review and you’re asked to complete your skills self-assessment. You go through and rate yourself as highly competent in the skill Security Incident Handling & Response. However, your manager rates you as being competent.
What your manager forgot was that last performance review you both agreed to complete an online course to upskill yourself in Security Incident Handling and in recent weeks you have effectively responded to a DDOS attack on your infrastructure.
Having this information allows you and your manager to have an objective discussion and work collaboratively to improve your underlying skill set.
There is a fine line between speed, sustainability, and tangible outcomes that needs to be met in the skills assessment process and that is why Skills Base has adopted this methodology.
The 4 key benefits
Bespoke training programs tailored to you
Often, training and development programs are curated on a role or team basis without understanding your specific skills and competencies. In a lot of cases this means that you are having to complete online courses and training for skills that you have already mastered.
Without having the underlying data, this can be a hard thing to vocalize. But completing your employee skills assessment your manager can see where you sit and better link training opportunities that are bespoke to you.
Dynamic and continued career progression
What happens if someone in your role who is more senior leaves the business? Skills assessment data gives you the opportunity to talk about upskilling, to fill that gap. This works both ways as it means you can move into a more senior role, and it can often be cheaper than hiring from an external source.
By having the skills data readily available, managers and staff can select roles they’re interested in and can progress towards them horizontally and diagonally, giving a lot more freedom and control over your own career journey. Vodafone Retail NZ is just one example of an organization that, through a skills-based approach, has been able to better understand and target the career progression of their employees.
More interesting projects
Let’s say a new project comes in and is focusing on Deep Learning. You might not be a part of the specific department or pre-established team but it’s something you have been really interested in being involved with. If you can demonstrate your skill level and competency in that area, the project manager would have more confidence in being able to deliver with you as part of the team.
Objective employee performance reviews
Skills and competency data found through the act of assessments gives you an objective view of where you currently are and where you could go in your role and career. This data can be used whenever appropriate – most often during performance reviews – keeping managers honest in their investment and dedicated to your continued learning.
Let’s say you’re interested in Statistical Analysis and you see it as being an important skill for the business. By discussing this with your manager, you can set specific upskilling goals around this skill and work collaboratively to track, measure and achieve the desired outcome.
Why does my manager care about assessments too?
Skill assessment data works both ways. For an employee it’s helping you in your role. From a manager’s perspective, it’s using that data to justify their decisions. For example, they may be thinking of the following:
- How can I understand the skill gaps of my employees to create better, more directed training programs?
- How can I use the skills data and trends to justify asking for an increased learning and development budget?
- How can I better use my allocated budget to deliver more effective training programs?
- Do I have to hire a new person, or can I upskill someone within the organization who is close to being able to fill in the spot?
- Do I have the skills within the organization, not just my team to be able to deliver this customer project?
All of these questions can be answered through the Skills Base Structured-Subjective™ approach to skills assessment. The more buy-in your team has, the better this data is for your manager, and the more the whole company can benefit.
So, what are you waiting for? Become the champion in your business and get your team and managers excited about skills self-assessment. Start by checking out the Skills Base skills assessment tool. You can also try Skills Base for free or schedule a demo to see just how powerful skills assessment can be for your team.
