Do you need to measure and improve the skills of your people?
Great people make great organisations. People who have the skills they need to in order to perform their jobs well invariably advance both themselves and the organisations they work for.
Capturing the skill set required to carry out a particular job is not a straightforward task. As well as identifying the skills required, you also need to define a standard of excellence in order to inspire people to improve, and against which you can measure both individual and organisational performance. The very process of defining the skills, knowledge and behaviours you require of people to excel in your workforce will also offer staff a greater understanding of their personal development and opportunities for progression.
Why use our Skills Self Assessment Tool?
The Rocket Science Skills Self Assessment Tool (SSAT) is an interactive, easy-to-use IT-based scorecard that individuals work through to assess themselves against the required skills, knowledge and behaviours to excel at their job. We first developed the Tool with London's voluntary sector. The SSAT we devised has since been used to map the skills gaps and training requirements of individuals, teams, departments and whole organisations up and down the country.
We design each SSAT for the specific needs of each client, working with them to define the competencies that are required of each job role. Where appropriate, this may reflect National Occupational Standards or core competencies that have already been developed. The design process itself has proved powerful in giving individuals time to reflect on their own development needs.
How does it work?
The SSAT works in two ways. It enables individuals to benchmark and regularly assess their development over time against the skills required for their role. Organisations are able to use the data generated to assess and pinpoint strengths as well as gaps within particular roles, across a team, department, the entire organisation or sector.
Rocket Science organises the skills and knowledge sets required of each role within the organisation into categories (eg. project management; communication; fundraising, partnership working; self awareness). We then produce a set of statements against each aspect of the role, ranging in each case from articulating what limited capability looks like in practise, right through to performance excellence. Individuals using the SSAT are asked to work through each category, selecting the statement that best reflects their perception of their own level of skill or knowledge.
We also ask people to articulate how they learn best, in order to help organisations devise delivery methods for workforce development that will be most effective for their staff.
In addition, we can include up-front 'information' sections in the SSAT, designed to capture information about the characteristics of the survey participants, by which the responses to individual questions may be cross-cut. This is designed to reveal trends, differences or similarities between participants. These characteristics might include:
- Age group
- Gender
- Length of time in that role
- Employment status
- Geographical area focus of work
- Ethnic origin
- Prior learning
- Disability
We can include comment boxes; free-answer areas to give people an opportunity to supplement their scores with comments, or articulate personal aspirations around future learning. Using the SSAT over a period of time enables individuals, managers, and organisations to assess whether the learning and development designed to improve employees' skills and abilities are bearing fruit in terms of achieving performance improvements.
Reporting
The tool can present findings and feedback in a way that enables the client to grasp the key issues quickly and easily.
Read our SSAT case study. If you would like more information on this Skills Self Assessment Tool please contact John Griffiths at Rocket Science on 020 7253 6289.