Selon le LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report, more talent developers emphasize evaluating employees’ competency and eliminating skill and knowledge gaps. In fact, 74% use internal skill gap assessments to identify which skills are lacking.
In today’s article, we’re going to explain what a competency assessment is and what are the benefits and risks of running them. We’ll also tell you how to approach competency assessment measures and evaluation for your current and future employees.
Table des matières
- Qu'est-ce qu'une évaluation des compétences ?
- Why are competency-based assessments important?
- Comment aborder l'évaluation des compétences
- Résumé
Qu'est-ce qu'une évaluation des compétences ?
Competency assessment, also known as competency evaluation, it’s the process of looking into the current skill levels of employees and determining the potential competencies they could acquire or enhance. If done for the entire team and against a specific standard, it reveals the skills gaps that need to be filled if a company wants to reach its strategic goals.
Source : Unsplash
Based on competency assessments, businesses can decide whether they need to recruit new team members with core competencies or are better off developing skills internally by la formation des salariés.
Types of competency assessments
There are several types of competency assessments that organizations can utilize to evaluate employee skills and abilities:
Test-based assessment
This involves administering standardized tests or quizzes to measure specific knowledge or skills. For example, a coding test for software developers or a language proficiency exam for translators.
Observation-based assessment
This method involves observing employees as they perform tasks in their actual work environment. It can provide insights into practical skills and on-the-job behaviors.
Interview-based assessment
Structured interviews with specific competency-focused questions can help assess an employee’s knowledge, experience, and approach to work situations.
Project-based assessment
Assigning employees a project or task that requires them to demonstrate multiple competencies can provide a comprehensive view of their abilities in a real-world context.
Why are competency-based assessments important?
Competency-based assessments are an extremely powerful method used by HR to evaluate strengths and weaknesses on a per-employee and team level. Let us shed light on the benefits of running competence tests, and assess the risks associated with the lack thereof.
Avantages des tests de compétences
Créer un inventaire des compétences
Supposons que vous soyez une société de conseil en informatique et que votre objectif soit de devenir le fournisseur #1 de services de développement Python sur le marché de l'emploi. Capterra dans les deux prochaines années. Par où commencer ?
You can conduct a self assessment and skills audit to check how proficient each employee is in the technology. This way, you’ll have hard data on how far from reaching this business objective you are so you can design a complete plan to get there.
Understanding lacunes en matière de compétences and strengths at a granular level is crucial, with a focus on behavior-based assessments to target specific proficiency improvements. This approach allows organizations to create a comprehensive skills inventory that accurately reflects their workforce capabilities.
Identifier les lacunes en matière de compétences
Les tests de compétences révèlent souvent que votre équipe manque non seulement de compétences techniques, mais aussi de compétences non techniques comme la communication et l'esprit d'équipe. Par exemple, l'un de vos employés peut avoir tout ce qu'il faut pour devenir chef d'équipe en ce qui concerne les compétences physiques. Cependant, ses compétences en matière de communication peuvent être inférieures à la norme requise. En sachant cela, vous éviterez de confier un poste à responsabilité à une personne qui n'a pas l'endurance nécessaire pour diriger une équipe. À partir de là, vous pourrez décider en toute connaissance de cause si vous souhaitez que cette personne travaille sur cette compétence ou si vous optez pour une autre solution.
Soft skills, such as innovation, critical thinking, strategic thinking, and design thinking, are growing in importance due to automation, digitization, and AI. Competency assessments help identify these crucial skill gaps, which is a global issue costing organizations significant amounts in lost productivity and competitive advantage.
Créer de meilleurs plans de formation
Une erreur fréquente que commettent les entreprises qui ne procèdent pas à une évaluation des compétences est d'envoyer toute l'équipe suivre la même formation. Le problème est que tous les membres de l'équipe n'en ont pas besoin, car ils peuvent déjà avoir des connaissances sur le sujet.
With competency assessments, you can not only save your employees’ time but also direct them to a better-tailored training that fits their skillset. Another advantage of the competency model? If you conduct competence tests continuously, you’ll be able to evaluate whether the training has, in fact, enhanced your employees’ skills.
Source : Unsplash
When individuals take ownership of closing their skill gaps, the organization’s overall skill gaps close, leading to higher engagement and satisfaction among employees. This approach to training and development fosters a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
Concevoir des parcours de carrière
Si vous connaissez les compétences de vos employés, vous pouvez concevoir des parcours de carrière pour eux. La motivation s'en trouvera renforcée, les employés ayant le sentiment d'avoir un but dans l'organisation. En ayant une idée claire des compétences de votre équipe actuelle, vous pouvez également commencer à planifier des parcours de carrière pour les nouveaux employés. Cela vous aidera à établir une marque d'employeur attrayante.
Économiser sur le recrutement
Enfin, si vous pouvez combler un déficit de compétences avec vos employés actuels, vous économiserez sur le recrutement. N'oubliez pas que dans le secteur des technologies de l'information, les coûts d'embauche d'un seul employé peuvent atteindre la somme astronomique de $32,000!
Les risques d'ignorer les tests de compétence
Giving up on the competency assessment system can have serious business consequences. We’ll now discuss some of them.
Taux de rotation élevé
The main aim of conducting a competency assessment is to make sure that you hire the most suitable candidates. Those who possess the technical skills to perform the job to a certain standard. If you fail to incorporate a competency assessment data-based assessment in your recruitment, you might end up with underqualified or overqualified candidates. Both of which will most probably decide to leave your organization shortly after being hired. According to the Nouvelles sur les avantages sociaux, it costs employers 33% of a worker’s salary to hire a replacement for them, so there is a lot at stake here.
Baisse du moral des employés
Revenons au scénario mentionné ci-dessus. Un taux de rotation élevé a généralement un impact négatif sur le moral des employés. Non seulement les autres membres de l'équipe sont contrariés de perdre leurs collègues, mais ils sont également surchargés de travail, car ils finissent souvent par prendre en charge certaines de leurs responsabilités. En outre, le fait que de plus en plus de personnes quittent leur emploi peut entraîner un effet boule de neige, c'est-à-dire que d'autres employés suivent leurs traces.
Mauvaise réputation
Le monde de l'entreprise n'est pas aussi vaste qu'il y paraît. La question d'un taux élevé de rotation du personnel y est fréquemment débattue. Cela peut nuire à la réputation de votre entreprise et à la volonté des candidats de postuler pour un emploi dans votre organisation.
Manque de possibilités de développement des talents
Your employees are the driving force behind organizational growth. If you don’t regularly conduct skills assessments to check what abilities you have and which are lacking, you prevent employees from developing new skills. This can not only lead to less employee performance and demotivation, as talented employees want to learn continuously, but you’ll also inhibit business growth.
Processus de recrutement plus long et plus coûteux
As mentioned in the previous section, recruitment is a time-consuming and expensive process, as you have to verify both soft and hard competency-based interviews and skills. You have to involve a lot of people like HR, developers, team leaders, etc. If you spend a lot of time conducting in-person interviews to check the culture fit without verifying candidates’ tech skills first, it’s time wasted. Start with competency assessments and only invite suitable candidates to in-person interviews.
Components of a competency framework
A well-designed competency framework typically includes:
- Core competencies: Skills and behaviors essential for all employees across the organization.
- Functional competencies: Specific skills required for particular roles or departments.
- Leadership competencies: Skills and behaviors expected from those in management positions.
- Technical competencies: Specific knowledge and skills related to job functions.
- Behavioral indicators: Observable actions that demonstrate proficiency in each competency.
These components provide a structured approach to assessing and developing employee skills aligned with organizational goals.
Comment aborder l'évaluation des compétences
Now we can move on to discussing how to conduct competency evaluation. Let’s start with your current employees.
Évaluer vos employés actuels
Inventaire des compétences
Begin your skills gap analysis by running a skills inventory with HR – remember to evaluate both technical and soft skills. This will show you what skill gaps your team has. It’s a great starting point to see which skills can be developed inside the organization and which must be acquired externally.
Évaluation/analyse des lacunes en matière de compétences
Use a solution like TalentBoost to get a bird’s eye view of your company skills – either on a team or per-employee level. Based on your findings, you can decide how to proceed. Whether to conduct training, design the right career paths for your current employees, require additional training, or decide on hiring for the skills you currently lack.
Source : TalentBoost
Implementing competency assessments in the workplace
Creating transparency in the process
It’s crucial to communicate clearly with employees about the purpose and process of competency assessments. This transparency helps reduce anxiety and increases engagement in the assessment process.
Developing personalized training plans
Use the results of competency assessments to create tailored development plans for each employee. This personalized approach ensures that training resources are used efficiently and employees feel supported in their growth.
Évaluer les candidats
Exemples de tests de codage
Les tests de codage par échantillonnage vous permettent d'évaluer les compétences informatiques des candidats lors de la phase de sélection. Grâce à la solution TalentScore de DevSkiller, vous pouvez filtrer les candidats dont les compétences sont insuffisantes et concentrer le reste de votre recrutement sur les meilleurs candidats.
For the candidates you do decide to hire, you can use the skills assessment data and the information gathered at the recruitment stage to keep track of what they bring to the organization. One way of doing so is to merge your technical screening data with your gestion des compétences solution to create data-rich profiles.
Source : DevSkiller
Évaluation des compétences non techniques
Pour les candidats dont les résultats au test de l'échantillon de travail sont élevés, prévoyez une évaluation des compétences non techniques avec les RH et le responsable du recrutement. Vous pourrez ainsi vérifier si le candidat semble convenir à l'équipe.
Interviews techniques
Une fois que vous avez présélectionné vos candidats, organisez un entretien technique. Vous pouvez mener un la programmation en binôme au cours de laquelle le responsable du recrutement et/ou le responsable technique travaillent avec le candidat sur une tâche concrète. Vous pouvez utiliser TalentScore pour organiser la programmation en binôme à distance.
Source : DevSkiller
Discuter des objectifs de carrière
Before you decide to extend a job offer, schedule a quick call or meeting to discuss your candidate’s career objectives. You need to ensure that their interests and long-term goals align with the growth opportunities at your company and see how you can tap into them to keep the candidate engaged. While you might lose highly skilled candidates at the last stage, it might be for the greater good as you’ll prevent l'attrition du personnel.
L'intégration des employés en fonction de leurs compétences
Last, but not least, focus your employee onboarding and training programs on skills that are either most important for the job from ‘day one’ or those that you want them to eventually develop.
Measuring the effectiveness of competency assessments
To ensure that your competency assessment program is delivering value:
- Track improvements in individual and team performance over time.
- Monitor changes in key performance indicators (KPIs) related to the assessed competencies.
- Gather feedback from employees and managers on the assessment process and its outcomes.
- Regularly review and update your competency framework to keep it aligned with evolving business needs.
Competency assessments for career development
Competency assessments can be powerful tools for career development:
- They help employees identify their strengths and areas for improvement.
- Assessments can guide employees in selecting appropriate training and development opportunities.
- They provide a clear roadmap for career progression within the organization.
- Regular assessments can track an employee’s growth and readiness for new roles or responsibilities.
Using competency assessments for rapid onboarding
Competency assessments can significantly streamline the onboarding process:
- They help identify new hires’ existing skills and knowledge gaps.
- This information allows for tailored onboarding plans that focus on areas needing development.
- Assessments can be used to match new employees with appropriate mentors based on complementary skills.
- Regular check-ins using competency assessments can track a new hire’s progress and integration into the team.
Résumé
Les évaluations de compétences aident les organisations à prendre conscience des compétences et des lacunes de leurs employés. Ces informations sont extrêmement précieuses d'un point de vue stratégique pour le niveau C, la direction et les ressources humaines. Tout d'abord, elles leur permettent de planifier la manière dont ils peuvent améliorer les compétences de leurs employés afin d'éviter les coûts de recrutement. Deuxièmement, s'ils doivent recruter en externe, les évaluations des compétences les aideront à définir les exigences des candidats pour obtenir des résultats optimaux.
Competency assessments are also beneficial when it comes to rapid onboarding and additional training. Assessing a new hire as soon as they start or using the data obtained at the recruitment stage, will help you quickly establish the areas that need development. Furthermore, you can also use competency assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of training and tailor it for each employee.
Last, but not least, aligning the goals and specific competencies of the company with those of the individual will benefit both groups and boost employee satisfaction and retention rates. If you’d like to see how competence assessments can support your talent management strategy, give TalentBoost un essai !
