Evaluate the skills of your employees

The evaluation of the professional skills of its employees is an obligation that concerns all companies. This approach allows managers to determine the level of skills of their employees for a good management of the latter. This translates into an overall increase in the company’s skills. However, this requires a good methodology as well as good preparation.

Why and how to evaluate the skills of your employees? We take a look at the methods and tools that are useful for your company.

Why assess the skills of your employees?

Accelerated technological development and process changes constantly create new knowledge and competence requirements. In order to remain competitive in their markets, companies and organisations need to have a clear picture of the skills they have available.

This requires proper personnel management, and thus regular assessment of competences. This virtuous routine has benefits for both parties.

For the company :

The aim of the assessment is to find out exactly what skills each employee has. This knowledge will then be useful for optimising the management of skills within the company and for spotting any previously unknown talents. Knowing the strengths of employees also makes it possible to remunerate them at their fair value and to observe an increase in the competence of the teams.

On the other hand, assessing the skills of employees makes it possible to identify training needs within the company. The HRD thus ensures that employees are competent in their positions and in the tasks assigned to them.

For the team :

Evaluating employees’ skills creates a good atmosphere at work. It facilitates collaboration and develops exchange and discussion. In fact, personnel evaluations preserve the anonymity of each participant. It is then possible to identify problems that need to be corrected without pointing the finger at any individual in the team.

For employees :

The system: Diagnosis – Training – Evaluation

Allows the employee to, among other things

• Knowing what employees think about their work
• Demonstrate your talents, performance and professional skills
• Managing your career development in the best possible way
• Knowing your strengths/weaknesses in order to improve your skills through training
• Claiming a fair wage and negotiating a raise or promotion
• Fulfilment in the performance of the tasks assigned to it.

How do you assess the skills of your employees?

Assessing the competences of employees starts with identifying the competences that the company has. It is therefore essential to identify and update each of them. Here are the main steps:

Define evaluation criteria

This crucial stage aims to establish a common reference framework within the company for the evaluation of competences. Management, human resources, managers and employees work together to obtain a reliable and satisfactory result for all. They reflect on: the creation of job descriptions, the distribution of the welcome kit, the sharing of documents presenting the evaluation criteria, etc.

Adopting the right evaluation methods

The most commonly used approaches to assessing employee skills in companies are :

• Self-assessment using a questionnaire.
• The individual interview: the immediate superior assesses the employee in a face-to-face meeting.
• 360° evaluation: all the actors with an upstream or downstream link are involved in the evaluation process (manager, line manager, colleagues, subordinates). This method makes it possible to carry out a complete and precise analysis of the employee being evaluated.

Adopt a skills management tool

Digitalisation overcomes the obstacles associated with paper-based assessment. You can equip your company with competency management software to facilitate the exchange of information. Such a tool also serves as a support for the various assessment interviews.

The Evaluation Grid

A competency assessment grid is an HR tool available to all parties (managers, human resources and employees) to provide the company with a common assessment model. It guarantees a complete and rational assessment. It is most often a Microsoft office file, often Microsoft Excel, consisting of three main competences:

• Managerial and expert skills (know-how)
• Relational skills (soft skills)
• Technical skills (knowledge or hard skills)

Human Resource Management Tools and Platforms

Computer software for assessing employee skills simplifies and supports interviews. Whether it is an HR solution accessible via a platform or dedicated software, you get a complete view of your employees’ career development possibilities. Among the most commonly used tools, most have the following functionalities: :

• To identify the strengths and areas for improvement of employees: Interface accessible on computer, tablet or mobile
• Customisable question templates
• Access to results in real time
• Use of various contents (text, videos, examples of actions…)
• Suitable for 360° assessments

To manage all types of interviews (return to work, professional evaluation…):

• Automated workflow from the employee’s convocation
• Self-assessment by the employee
• Follow-up alerts for managers and HR
• Graphical analyses of the data collected
• Management of objectives and competences
• Ready-to-use data exports

To create better workforce strategies :

• Dashboard management
• Evaluation notifications
• A self-assessment function
• Customised assessment criteriav
• The possibility to export the results in CSV/PD format

When to assess the skills of its employees?

Competence assessment can be done at any time. At the beginning of the collaboration, the job interview allows the basic skills of the future employee to be determined. At this stage, the employer makes sure that the candidate has the right skills for the job.

This assessment can also be done on an annual basis to measure the actual knowledge and skills of the employee. These annual appraisal interviews between the HRD and each employee are necessary to implement a good talent management and competency measurement policy.

It should be noted that evaluation can also be carried out at the beginning and end of a professional training course. It is then a question of measuring the increase in employees’ skills at the end of the training.

However, regardless of the time chosen, the employee must be informed in advance of the date and methods of the assessment. Moreover, the employee can only be assessed against the objectives set.