The benefits of skills assessments

Half of Australian businesses are restructuring to keep up with changing business needs and the main driver of this is the change in required skillsets.

As the rate of technological change accelerates, the challenge to keep the skills of employees relevant so that your organisation can remain competitive intensifies. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is reshaping how every industry and profession operates via digital transformation and technologies such as AI.

So how do you ensure your employees have the skills to achieve your organisational goals?

The answer is probably a combination of firstly hiring in active learners with the right skills profiles, while secondly identifying gaps and upskilling existing employees.

Benefits of skills assessments in the recruitment process

In the first instance, a skills assessment can help you identify and hire in active learners. Often used to differentiate between candidates that present similar on paper, skills assessments provide an additional angle on someone’s suitability and cultural fit.

They’re not only used at an entry-level to ensure graduates are job-ready and the right fit, but increasingly they are used in the recruitment of middle and senior management roles. 

The results can help add weight to the selection process and ensure confidence in your hiring decisions. It allows employers to conduct a full 360 assessment covering qualifications, skills, EQ, leadership and any other areas they wish to assess – including an upskilling mindset – based on what is essential and crucial to the role and business.

Benefits of skills assessments for your existing workforce

According to a recent survey of ours, just 18% of employers conduct an assessment before deciding on what training to offer each employee. A further 36% do so only for select staff.

In today’s rapidly evolving world, employers need to drive skill building to not only sustain their organisation’s competitive advantage but help employees understand their options to upskill no matter their age or career stage.

Conducting a skills assessment can be an astute first step to understand what kind of training, learning or development initiatives are required in your organisation as a result of business transformation, digital transformation, a restructure or a merger or acquisition.

More and more organisations are utilising skills and personality assessments to identify the strengths, weaknesses and gaps within their workforce as well as aid succession planning.

Other reasons organisations come to us to assess their existing workforce include:

• A workforce with long tenure: To assess where employees’ skills sit at the present time and gain an understanding of further training required or diversification of skill sets into other areas of the business.
• SMEs: Who are looking to effectively shape a team that can operate with lean resources.
• Restructure or reform: When organisations restructure, assessments can help identify where they may be heavy in one skillset and lighter in others.
• Executive appointments or executive team evaluations: Many organisations conduct assessments with existing executives to better understand how they can support and develop their skills growth.

Types of skills assessments

We work in partnership with our clients to craft and deliver skills assessment testing according to your bespoke requirements and organisational needs. These include but are not limited to:

• Psychometric testing: To assess candidates based on the role duties and specific outcomes that need to be achieved. This could be testing for problem solving abilities, stress resilience, an analytical mindset, leadership skills or numerical reasoning.
• Personality testing DISC or Myers Briggs: We create personality assessments to determine personality or character which assists employers with shaping and building teams to work effectively by drawing upon the different strengths that people bring.
• Blend of psychometric and DISC testing: With a balanced approach to skills assessments, you can simultaneously test for soft and strategic skills to gather well-rounded insights into candidates.
• Leadership assessments: We create assessments to illustrate the leadership style that senior candidates demonstrate. Your leaders are critical and so is the need to understand what their contribution will be according to your requirements, be they strategic, cultural or outcomes focused.
• Management teams: We have assisted clients with various forms of testing when hiring an entire new management layer. We can assess all new managers against each other to help you build an effective managerial team that brings out their best.

Contact us to learn more or discuss your needs with one of our local teams.