What is Capability Assessment?

Capability Assessment is a structured and standardised framework for evaluating the capabilities and competencies of job seekers and your current employees. Capability assessments are carried out regularly—rather than intermittently—to find your workforce's strengths and capability gaps.

You can use the information gained from your assessment to define an action plan, such as potential training opportunities for closing capability gaps and building focus for capability development programs.

Within Acorn LMS, we've broken down your assessment process into four main areas:

Self-Assessments — Evaluating one's own skills and abilities in particular capabilities. This is where users can see their proficiency, view their assessment history and conduct a self-assessment. 

Supervisor Assessments — Supervisors can evaluate their team members and view their team's assessment history.

Assessment Campaigns — The administrator's tool for scheduling and alerting users to complete a self-assessment.

Reporting — Identify capability gaps in teams or business areas. 

Self-Assessment

Capability self-assessment is like putting on your superhero cape and taking a good look at what you can do (and what you need to work on). It's a great way to assess your skills and abilities, but without all the boring stuff. Go on a journey of self-discovery and—who knows? You might even surprise yourself and discover that you're a master at something you never even knew!

Self-assessments are available for any individual under Capability Assessment. They will find everything under the My Learning → My Capability → Capability Assessment Tab. 

This page has two main sections, and here, users can see My Assessment and My Rating.

Self-Assessment | My Assessment

Users can access their pending assessment requests and start a pending assessment. These pending requests are generated by your assessment campaigns, which we'll talk about later on. Additionally, they'll find a convenient button on the right-hand side to Start a Capability Assessment. 

Self-Assessment | My Rating

Users can view a chart that displays their assigned and assessed capabilities, accompanied by a table view. In addition, the My Rating allows users to easily compare their assigned level of proficiency with both their supervisor's assessment and their self-assessment.

It provides a clear and concise overview of their capabilities and helps track their progress.

Supervisor Assessments

With Capability Assessments, Supervisors get to take a peek at their team's superpowers and see how they can help them be even more amazing! This assessment is essential because it allows the supervisor to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each team member and develop a plan to help them reach their full potential. 

Supervisors will find Supervisor Assessments under Capability Assessment - from the Supervisor Dashboard → Supervisor Actions → Capability Assessment. Once here, supervisors will have several tabs. 

Supervisor Assessments | My Team

Supervisors have a dashboard to view pending team member assessments and the assessment history of team members. 

Supervisor Assessments | Assess by Capability

Assessing by Capability allows the supervisor to select a Capability and then view their team's proficiency against the capability. 

Suppose there's an initiative from upper management to understand what their organisational capability is for Change Management. Supervisors can readily Assess by Capability and with a few clicks, assess their whole team! 

Supervisor Assessments | Assess by Team Member

Assessing by Team members is the faster way to view a team member and assess all that team member's capabilities. 

This works great for 1-on-1s where the supervisor can assess the team members' capabilities and sit down with a team member and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. 

Assessment Campaigns

Assessment Campaigns are your most important tool to schedule notifications and request users in bulk to assess capabilities. Then, with just a few clicks, you'll be able to send out a mighty call to action to all your troops.

Administrators will find Assessment Campaigns from the Admin Panel → Capability Dashboard → Capability Assessment tab. 

From here, you can Send Assessment Campaigns and schedule them to be sent out in the future as well as view the progress of your campaigns!

Reporting

Reporting | Capability Assessment Report

One great way to preempt where training opportunities need to be made is with the Capability Assessment Report. Use this report to see whether there are large gaps between proficiency levels. The Capability Assessment Report gives you a distribution of where people are positioned along the proficiency line. 

Suppose I run this report for my Data Management Capability, and find the majority of the workforce sitting at level 2 or 3 with no one at levels 4, 5 and 6.  There might be any roles within the organisation that need 4, 5 or 6 but there are a handful of people at level 7 and we need people at level 7. 

If these few crucial level 7 staff suddenly leave, I have to decide to train a level 2 or 3 all the way up the proficiency line or find talent outside the organisation. 

This report is available for Administrators and Supervisors to see the distribution of their teams. 

Reporting | Capability Gap Analysis Report

The gap analysis report gives you the power to find the strengths and weaknesses of your organisation. This is important for identifying skill and ability gaps within teams and business areas. 

The report will outline, based on the supervisor's assessment of the team member, whether people are: 

• Above the assigned level 
• At the assigned level
• Below the assigned level

This report is available for Administrators and Supervisors to see the gaps within their teams. 

FAQ

Okay, now that you've got the hang of Capability Assessment, you might have questions before sending your first campaign. Well, wonder no more! We've got the scoop for you.

Will users be bombarded with multiple emails when I send a Campaign? 

• Users only receive a single email per campaign. No need to worry about bombarding users with multiple emails, even if they were asked to assess various capabilities or belong to numerous cohorts in the campaign. No overflowing inboxes; it's all about keeping the inbox sleek and stylish, just like you!
• If you are sending multiple campaigns, there is a chance that users will receive multiple emails. This depends on the recent assessment period and when they last assessed those capabilities. Still, one email per campaign.

How does the recent assessment period setting work for my Assessment Campaign? 

The recent Assessment Period is an important setting when setting up a campaign. This setting acts as a grace period for users who assessed the selected capabilities prior to sending the campaign.

As a following example, I've set up a campaign to send out in April with a recent assessment period to cover March. The campaign is asking my team members to assess the following Capabilities:

• Analytics
• Data Literacy
• Project Management
• Resourcing

Sam, one of my team members, had previously assessed all 4 of these Capabilities but let's examine a timeline of when Sam evaluated these Capabilities:

Sam's Project Management and Data Literacy assessments took place during the recent assessment period. Therefore, Sam will only be requested to assess Analytics and Resourcing when the Assessment Campaign goes out.

Alexa, another team member, has yet to assess any of these capabilities before, so she will be requested to evaluate all 4. 

I have yet to send out a campaign. Can users still do self-assessments?

•  Users will be able to do self-assessments at any time. They won't have any "pending" assessments, but they can assess any capability should they wish!