Talent And Skill Assessment In The Workplace | #hrmanagement #hrexecutive

As such, it’s safe to say that your business is only as strong as your employees. So, if those employees lack the necessary talents and skills, it’s easy for your company to fall behind. In fact, statistics show that around 58% of today’s workforce needs new skills to improve their job and productivity. 

That said, how can you measure and assess team members’ talents and skills? This article shares insights into talent and skill assessments and six methods to try.

Understanding Talent And Skill Assessment In The Workplace

Employee talent and skill assessment refer to various strategies that help measure your workforce’s readiness and capabilities to excel at their jobs. Generally, talent and skill assessments come in multiple forms and ranges and may be conducted within the context of a larger HR strategy. 

With a robust talent and skill assessment program, your company can assess the strengths and weaknesses of existing employees while also identifying a potential candidate’s suitability for a role. 

6 Ways To Assess Talents And Skills In The Workplace

1. Take Advantage of Technology

Technology has helped advance and streamline a lot of business operations. Regarding talents and skills assessments, talent analytics software allows you to utilize employee data to provide valuable insights into current skill situations and promote intelligent workforce planning. 

HR managers can also use it to help screen candidates for new hires with the best talent and skill fit and generate employee surveys and skill tests to gauge team member engagement and current job proficiency and competence.

2. Look At The Information You Already Have

Your business’s existing data on your employees can provide a starting point for understanding the basic skill sets you already have. Everything from their LinkedIn profile and resumes when they first applied to feedback and regular performance reviews from the managers can provide valuable insights you can use to assess your current workforce’s talents.

The same goes for assessing potential candidates. You can ask the applicant more about the skills and credentials they indicated in their resume.

3. Use Self-Assessments

Once you’ve scoured the information you already have, the next thing you can do to assess your employees’ competence is to ask them. Such activity allows team members to self-reflect on their skill sets, giving you an idea of which roles they feel confident in and areas in which they would need support. 

That said, self-assessments may provide imperfect information as some employees may not give you honest self-evaluations. Some employees may exaggerate, while others may underestimate themselves. 

Some team members may also consider it a way to identify their weaknesses, which may be seen as liabilities to the company. So, explain clearly to your staff that these evaluations can help you identify potential investment opportunities to improve their skills. 

Self-assessments can be done with one-on-one meetings, providing questionnaires, or both to obtain a more objective assessment. In particular, a one-on-one meeting is beneficial to keeping employees engaged. A study shows that employees who regularly meet with their managers are likely to be three times to be engaged.

4. Do A 360-Degree Review

Once you’re done collecting self-assessments, you should also get feedback from the people around each employee. The 360 reviews allow you to assess employees by asking their peers, managers, and subordinates. This can help you get a detailed, in-depth picture you can use when evaluating an employee’s skills and proficiency in the future. 

Managers can help identify strengths and weaknesses related to specific skills, while co-workers are better positioned to assess a team member’s everyday work and engagement levels. Although, keep in mind that co-worker reviews may come with subjective opinions, so look at general trends and compare individual assessments. 

5. Ask Customers

Customer feedback is another great way to assess employees’ skills, primarily if they work closely with customers and clients. A simple customer satisfaction survey can provide additional insights into an employee’s skills and competence while also helping you measure customer satisfaction levels. 

6. Conduct Assessment Tests

Conducting an assessment test is one of the most effective ways to collect data on employees’ skills. Regular tests can objectively overview your employees’ expertise and proficiency. Utilizing online assessment software like Assess can streamline this process by offering customizable tests and detailed analytics to enhance your evaluation methods.

For highly technical jobs, a written test can help determine an employee’s knowledge and proficiency in their current position. That said, it also makes sense to use business simulations to help you understand how they would act and work in specific situations. Doing so can give you valuable insights into how your team members will handle the task and adapt. This can help you measure their soft skills, including critical thinking, negotiation, communication, and problem-solving skills. 

Takeaway

As the skill gaps widen and the excellent talent shortage continues to plague the business world, businesses need to prepare for jobs in the future. As such, mapping out existing talents and skill sets will become invaluable. With the right employee talent and skills assessment strategies, you can gain critical data on your workforce’s weaknesses and strengths and help you make sound decisions for a more competitive company moving forward.