How Better Skill Assessments Remove the Stigma from Test Taking

Good design turns employee skill assessments from a sticking point into an empowering tool.

Culture change might be one of the most difficult feats to accomplish in the workplace. While it’s often simply an outgrowth of new leadership, shifting norms, or advances in technology, culture change can nevertheless feel scary for employees who are accustomed to the way things have always been done.

Developing a culture of learning is essential for today’s AEC & Manufacturing businesses, but the process faces the same challenges as any other kind of culture change. And one of the most intimidating aspects, particularly for long-standing employees, is skill assessments.

While skill assessments can reveal a lot about your workforce, it’s also not hard to understand why they might be a tough pill for employees to swallow. If you’ve been at your job for a while, you’re probably proud of the abilities and experience you’ve built up over that time. To have those called into question by an anonymous system that you don’t understand and didn’t have a say in can feel like a real slap in the face.

The problem, however, isn’t with skill assessments themselves. In fact, employees have a great deal to gain from them as a yardstick to demonstrate expertise, as well as a stepping stone for valuable growth and development. But when skill assessments are poorly designed and implemented, it’s difficult for employees to connect the tool with the value that it provides.

By contrast, when skill assessments are targeted, functional, and well-integrated with larger training processes, it’s much easier to get buy-in from employees. The way we see it, a great skill assessment has a few key characteristics that shift it from an intimidating chore to a tool that employees are enthusiastic to use. Here’s what we think a successful skill assessment needs to be.

1.    Relevant

Above all, employees need to be able to draw a clear line between skill assessments and goals—whether their own job performance goals, their career goals, or even broader business goals. A well-designed skill assessment will make those connections clear.

To do so, skill assessments should precisely target job-related skills that employees agree are relevant to their performance. Closely integrating skill assessments with associated course materials helps to highlight these connections. In addition, involving employees in the development of skill assessments, both during initial setup and as part of ongoing refinement, can help ensure that you’re capturing the elements of job performance that really matter.

That way, employees know that their abilities will be accurately reflected in their assessments, and appropriately valued in the results. They can take pride in their assessment outcomes as an objective recognition of their contributions to the organization.

2.    Streamlined

Efficient design and seamless integration into additional learning are key to increasing employee engagement with skill assessments. If assessments are clunky or confusing, employees may see them as a waste of time—or they may worry that if they don’t understand how to use the assessment tool correctly, the results will reflect badly on their actual job skills.

If assessments are quick and easy to use, however, the barrier to using them drops considerably. The more straightforward assessments are, the more confident employees can be that they’re an accurate representation of what they claim to measure. Employees are less intimidated, more likely to use them, and more likely to trust them.

3.    Actionable

Admitting that you don’t know something is hard. In fact, it might be the single hardest part of creating a culture of learning. Lack of knowledge is a vulnerability, especially in a professional scenario where your knowledge is often synonymous with your value.

This can make skill assessments a difficult sell, since their purpose is to identify knowledge gaps. But when those gaps are precisely defined, and the assessment connects employees to the tools they need to fill the gap, assessments become a straightforward stepping stone to professional growth.

A detailed assessment, properly framed, is an opportunity to pinpoint actionable next steps in developing your personal skills. If the assessment can then direct employees straight to the course content they need, there’s much less room for any sense of embarrassment or insecurity. Instead, it’s just one stop along the way to efficient upskilling.

4.    Customizable

Skill assessments are rarely one-size-fits-all. If an assessment doesn’t reflect the unique needs and goals of your business or your team, employees will notice—and they won’t be motivated to engage. Without a connection to personal and business outcomes, assessments—as we said above—become a stressful chore.

Fully customizable skill assessments allow you to shape testing to match the content your employees are learning, the roles they fill in your organization, and the overarching goals of your unique business. The more relevant you can make your assessments, the easier it will be for employees to see the benefits.

In addition, you can leverage customizability to involve employees in refining the assessments, and demonstrate that you take their feedback seriously. Implementing employee suggestions shows that you value their expertise on their roles and the skills needed to be successful in them. It also goes a long way toward building trust in the accuracy of the assessments.

Pinnacle Series gives you the tools to make skill assessments a success.

In addition to Pinnacle Series’ extensive content library and customizable courses, the platform also includes our KnowledgeSmart skill assessment tools. KnowledgeSmart is fully integrated into Pinnacle Series, which can use the information from assessments to intelligently route users into appropriate courses, track results and progress over time, and create detailed reports that offer you valuable insights into your employee training initiatives.

A culture of learning is more important than ever for AEC & Manufacturing businesses facing a shortage of skilled workers. Pinnacle Series provides the foundation for functional, relevant, and actionable employee learning that meets your business goals and energizes your workforce. To learn more about how Pinnacle Series can boost your skill assessments and help you build the training tools your business needs, contact us today.