The Importance of Employee Skills Assessments

Employee skills assessments are critical tools for closing skills gaps, ensuring safety and compliance, and increasing productivity in the workplace. But what exactly is included within a skills assessment? And what tools and resources are available to conduct one? In this blog, we’ll break down the importance of employee skills assessments and provide resources to evaluate employee skills in your own company.

What is an Employee Skills Assessment?

An employee skills assessment is a process that evaluates and identifies the strengths, weaknesses, competency gaps, and training needs of employees within an organization. They help companies evaluate, develop, and support the diverse talents within their workforce.

Top Three Uses for Employee Skills Assessments

Employee skills assessments are beneficial in a wide variety of scenarios. Here are the top three ways you can utilize a skills assessment:

1. Evaluating job applicants. Pre-screening new hires allows organizations to determine an individual’s current knowledge, what skill sets they still need to acquire, and whether they’re a good fit for the role.
2. Pre-training assessments. Research shows that companies who utilize pre-hire assessment tests report a 39% lower turnover rate. Additionally, hiring managers who use pre-hire assessments report 36% more satisfaction with their final decision compared to those who don’t.
3. Post-training assessments. Competency assessments should be used to validate that your employees have learned the intended job skills from their assigned training. If they haven’t, that gives you the opportunity to assign new training, microlearning, or refresher courses.

How to Complete an Employee Skills Assessment

Before implementing an employee skills assessment, it’s important to understand the necessary framework. Here are five helpful steps:

1. Understand the skills being assessed. Each job requires different skill sets, so consider employee job role requirements and tasks to ensure the right skills are being evaluated.
2. Choose the right assessment methods. Utilizing digital solutions such as our integrated LMS Competency Assessment Tool and creating curated employee learning pathways to help your organization gain a competitive edge.
3. Develop an effective assessment plan. This involves establishing clear objectives, providing straightforward guidelines, and ensuring that all employees have access to necessary skills, safety, and professional development resources.
4. Conduct the assessment. Begin by evaluating knowledge and skills, automate training assignments to address any gaps, and verify retention of essential information.
5. Follow through consistently. Maintain ongoing workforce development by regularly re-administering assessments and assigning the necessary training to address any employee skill development needs.

Benefits of Using a Competency Assessment Tool

Using a skills assessment tool is a great way to seamlessly evaluate an individual’s knowledge specific to their job roles and responsibilities.

Here at Vector Solutions, our Competency Assessment Tool is part of our Learning Management System (LMS). Benefits of utilizing this tool include:

• Saving time and resources while maximizing productivity. Our pre-built questions and automated training assignments swiftly identify skills and knowledge gaps, ensuring employees focus their time where upskilling is needed most—without redundantly taking courses they’re already proficient in.
• Customized training plans. Shape training plans to suit each employees’ respective skills and needs, therefore making assessments more meaningful and relevant. Leverage Vector’s courses and quizzes to automatically create role-specific Competency Assessment that align with employee and organizational goals.
• Streamlining workflows and reporting. Save time on assigning training and reporting by tracking assessment results in real-time, and eliminating the need for manual measurement processes to ensure you recognize and nurture employee growth and development.
• Improve learning outcomes. Ensure that skill gaps are bridged, and knowledge is retained with effective, regularly administered knowledge checks.

Employee skills assessments help determine current abilities, but they are also essential to continuous workforce development. This tool allows you to deliver the right training to your employees in the most efficient and effective way possible.

Eager to learn how Vector Solutions’ Competency Assessment Tool can work for your company? Download our free product brochure below:

Tips for Taking Action After Assessments

After completing an employee skills assessment, it’s essential to guarantee that your workforce retains their knowledge. In this section, we’ll dive into some tips for taking action after assessments.

Conducting Regular Skills Assessments

Did you know that employees forget up to 70% of their training within only 24 hours? Critical information can be lost quickly, and it’s your job to prevent this from affecting workplace productivity.

To reinforce your focus on being a learning organization, it’s essential that you continue assessing your employees at various intervals after their first assessments. Keep these assessments succinct but impactful to effectively identify knowledge gaps and pinpoint opportunities for future growth within your workforce.

Providing Constructive Feedback

Providing constructive feedback is crucial to boosting the success rate of employee skills assessments. Steps toward accomplishing this may look like:

• Establishing a feedback mechanism
• Highlighting areas for improvement
• Acknowledging and reinforcing employees’ strengths

By employing these techniques, you can effectively encourage a culture of continuous learning and development in the workplace.

Why Companies Choose Vector LMS for Skills Assessments

“Interested in becoming a Plant Manager? Great! Let’s start with an assessment quiz to see if you’re ready for this new role. It’s important to understand where they are at with the responsibilities and skills required. Think you’re prepared? Excellent, prove it with this quiz.”

– Training and Development Manager, Construction & Trade Services

Here at Vector Solutions, we specialize in delivering quality training and safety management solutions to fulfill all your company needs. Our award-winning LMS provides organizations with an effective employee Competency Assessment tool, which supports:

• Agile workforce development. Skills assessments help organizations streamline employee evaluations and follow-up actions for more targeted development efforts, ultimately making them more adaptable and agile.
• Informed decision-making. Organizations can use information from skills assessments to make informed decisions on training initiatives, skill development programs, and strategic workforce planning.
• Strategic evaluation. Employee skills assessment tools effectively assess the proficiency of employees within an organization. They also offer a continuous monitoring mechanism to track individuals’ growth over time.

Improve your organization by conducting pre-screening, pre-training, and post-training employee assessments with our Competency Assessment Tool. Request a demo and learn more today.