What is a skills assessment

A skills assessment is a survey or interview measuring skill and knowledge. We recommend a 1-5 Likert scale where 1 is emerging, and 5 is mastery. Skill assessment reports help leaders visualize who knows what and identifies gaps where training may be needed to maximize the growth and potential of the individual.

Why skill assessments matter

Skill Assessments are an ideal way to collect data to inform and guide training investments. Addressing skill gaps helps the organization but also energizes the staff who can better meet the demands of their work. Benefits include a more capable, energized and productive staff. Skill gaps found in many people may be hurting your organizational morale and performance.

How to do a skill assessment

There is a simple four-step process to running a successful skills assessment:

  1. Inventory the skills to be measured – These can vary by role, and they’re in your job descriptions. Ideally, you’d interview a few top performers to confirm that your list matches what they do for you.
  2. Communicate your positive intentions – State your purpose to help staff build plans to close skill gaps. Encourage honest responses. Gain trust by assuring them that results are confidential and will be used to help them.
  3. Collect the data – One on ones, spreadsheets, and survey tools can be used to collect the data from your team members. Make sure someone is available to answer questions that may arise.
  4. Analyze the data – There is a great value to be leveraged from one-on-one coaching discussions based on the data. Looking at trends in departments and locations can help prioritize training investments, staff augmentation, and hiring plans.

If you’d like to learn more about skills assessments, please get our free ebook and reach out to our team. Our technology was purpose-built to automate the skill assessment process and includes valuable reports to analyze the data. We can also automate a learning path uniquely designed for each person based on the gaps found in their assessment.

Solve Skill Gaps

We’re in a Skill Revolution where Skills are the new currency

According to a McKinsey study, “Sixty percent of global executives expect that up to half of their organization’s workforce will need retraining or replacing within five years. 

More than a third said their organizations are unprepared to address the skill gaps…”

SkillNet has developed a proven 5-step process to help your organization conduct a Skill inventory to identify and solve skill gaps. This approach is backed up with years of data from hundreds of organizations trying to pinpoint and cure their organizational skill gaps.

There are dozens of reasons to focus on skills because skills are the building blocks to improving staff performance, regardless of role. Any organization in search of higher performance can follow our approach and accomplish major progress in a few short weeks.

Step 1. Define your key organizational knowledge, skills and abilities, (KSAs)

While constructing the required KSAs for your organization, start with what’s expected from all positions. General KSAs like company culture and communication standards work well. Longer term, it’s useful to get into specific KSA’s for each role, but it’s not possible to do this quickly, particularly when trying to imagine future KSA requirements. It’s also useful to establish proficiency targets on each KSA to set a baseline expectation for different role levels.

Step 2. Inventory your staff with a KSA survey

An accurate database of KSA capabilities and insights are vital for organizational agility. For most firms, skills, knowledge and workforce capabilities are difficult to measure and even harder keep current. We recommend using a 5-point Likert scale and starting with self-assessments. Manager assessments are very important because they observe staff performance. People are complicated and constantly learning and adapting, so data needs to be refreshed more than once a year. Ideally data is refreshed at the time a new skill or capability is ready.

Skill data accuracy depends on who and how you ask, so take care defining questions and the rubric.

Step 3. Analyze data and study gaps between self-ratings and manager ratings

Determine how you want to view the data. Study gaps between self-perception and manager ratings which are key ingredients for alignment, feedback, and goal setting. Transparency is the only way to drive improvement. We suggest one-on-one meeting to review results within weeks.

Step 4. Expand your KSA Survey to include specifics for each job and re-inventory

By this point, you’ve built a definition for the common organizational skills. You’ve also populated the database with accurate data and have plans to keep it current.

The next step is to evolve the database to include KSAs for key roles which requires clarity on what’s expected from each role. It’s often useful to work in teams to define the KSA model for each role and structure topics carefully as this exercise will set role expectations for staff.

This can be a difficult step because there can be many different roles and each role may have different requirements or expectations. For example, a junior salesperson has a similar role as the senior salesperson, but the senior has higher proficiency expectations. Despite the challenge, it’s important to build a clear understanding of staff matches against their job requirements.

The results from detailed individual gap assessments are well worth the extra effort.

Step 5. Create personalized development plans, PDPs, to solve the gaps.

The final and most important step in the process is to construct personalized development plans for each person to solve their unique gaps. An effective PDP lists gaps, defines improvement steps, links to learning resources, sets target dates, and monitors progress. 

KSA Examples

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities are an organization’s fundamental expertise in specific subject areas. KSAs define organizational capabilities and distinguish an organization from competitors.

KSAs can be grouped into categories such as:

  • Professional skills: The skills needed by all staff to be successful regardless of role.
  • Leadership skills: The skills needed by those in leadership and management positions.
  • Occupational skills: Job-specific skills like finance, customer service, engineering, manufacturing, sales and marketing.

Conclusions

Defining, measuring, and solving skill gaps is critical for organizational performance. We’d like to hear from you, discuss your situation, and demonstrate how our platform automates the 5-step process described in this post.

About the author

Mike Kritzman – Founder and CEO at SkillNet Technologies, is a serial entrepreneur, sought-after expert in skill management, microlearning, and trends that transform organizations. 

Skill Management and Talent Development should start with a Skill Definition and leverage Skill Assessments

What is a skills assessment

A skills assessment is a survey or interview measuring skill and knowledge. We recommend a 1-5 Likert scale where 1 is emerging, and 5 is mastery. Skill assessment reports help leaders visualize who knows what and identifies gaps where training may be needed to maximize the growth and potential of the individual.

Why skill assessments matter

Skill Assessments are an ideal way to collect data to inform and guide training investments. Addressing skill gaps helps the organization but also energizes the staff who can better meet the demands of their work. Benefits include a more capable, energized and productive staff. Skill gaps found in many people may be hurting your organizational morale and performance.

How to do a skill assessment

There is a simple four-step process to running a successful skills assessment:

  1. Inventory the skills to be measured – These can vary by role, and they’re in your job descriptions. Ideally, you’d interview a few top performers to confirm that your list matches what they do for you.
  2. Communicate your positive intentions – State your purpose to help staff build plans to close skill gaps. Encourage honest responses. Gain trust by assuring them that results are confidential and will be used to help them.
  3. Collect the data – One on ones, spreadsheets, and survey tools can be used to collect the data from your team members. Make sure someone is available to answer questions that may arise.
  4. Analyze the data – There is a great value to be leveraged from one-on-one coaching discussions based on the data. Looking at trends in departments and locations can help prioritize training investments, staff augmentation, and hiring plans.

If you’d like to learn more about skills assessments, please get our free ebook and reach out to our team. Our technology was purpose-built to automate the skill assessment process and includes valuable reports to analyze the data. We can also automate a learning path uniquely designed for each person based on the gaps found in their assessment.

What makes a great manager

A great manager comes from many things but a key theme is bringing out the best in their people. Great managers tune into issues, listen and coach, and guide success with a trusted relationship. One of the most important and easiest activities used by great managers are to run well organized and frequent one-on-one meetings.

Why one-on-one meetings are so important

One-on-one meetings are places for staff to bring up things that don’t fit into status reports or email. They provide an excellent forum for information and ideas to flow up the organization. They’re also a time for conversations about family and other non-business topics that build trusted relationships and make people feel valued.

Benefits include a more engaged, capable, and productive staff.

The simple formula for great one-on-ones

A best practice is to make this the employee’s meeting. To reinforce this, have them send you the agenda in advance. Have a set of categories that you cover every single time. Managers should try to spend most of the meeting listening. When offering feedback, make sure to give praise first and try to hold back on criticism. If a course correction is necessary, be constructive. Take notes.

Start the meeting by reviewing progress from the last meeting. Finish the meeting with short-term plans and ways you can help. Listen much more than you talk.

Key and recurring topics 

Here are some themes you’ll want to cover each time such as:

  • Current events and workload
  • Accomplishments and progress
  • Challenges and obstacles
  • Personal development goals and progress

This is your time to be an advisor, guide, and coach. Help staff with their struggles, suggest solutions, promote reflection, and advise on new skills and how to build them. Have empathy and coach them to meet the demands of their work.

Have questions on hand

While it’s not the manager’s job to set the agenda or do the talking, the manager may need to facilitate the conversation. This is very important for introverted staff. Drawing out issues is a key management skill.

Here are eight good questions for your one-on-ones:

  1. If we could improve in any way, how would we do it?
  2. What’s the biggest problem with our organization? Why?
  3. What’s not fun about working here?
  4. Who do you admire in the company?
  5. If you were me, what changes would you make?
  6. What don’t you like about the product?
  7. What’s the biggest opportunity that we’re missing out on?
  8. What are we not doing that we should be doing?

If you’d like to learn more about delivering great one-on-one meetings, please reach out to our team. SkillNet technology was purpose-built to bring key employee data and progress to your fingertips so you can run excellent one-on-ones and be a great manager.