In this blog, we look into five frequently asked questions surrounding a fundamental aspect of employee skills management: skill levels. Skill levels form a crucial part of your skill inventory, a comprehensive record of all the skills possessed by your employees.
However, merely listing these skills isn’t sufficient. It’s essential to assign a specific level to each skill for every individual. Doing so enables you to pinpoint skill gaps within your workforce and strategize effectively for upskilling or reskilling initiatives. Let’s explore the questions in our minds.
Read more: Skills management strategy: All you need to know
1. What is a skill level?
A skill level represents the measure of competence and proficiency that an individual has achieved in a specific domain. It’s a way to categorize and quantify the stages of learning and mastery one undergoes when acquiring new skills. These levels range from complete novice, where the individual is just starting to learn the basics, to mastery, where the individual has a deep understanding of the skill. Skill levels help to frame an individual’s current capabilities and highlight the next steps required for advancement.
In practical terms, skill levels can be assigned using various scales. Common scales are 1-5 or 1-10, with each step on the scale signifying a deeper level of knowledge. Understanding one’s skill level aids in setting realistic goals, identifying areas for improvement, and fostering an approach to professional development. For organizations, it provides a standardized framework for assessing employee capabilities and facilitating targeted training. Skill levels, therefore, serve as a critical tool in the continuous journey of learning and improvement.
2. What are the 5 skill levels
1: Beginner
At the beginner level, everything is new. It’s all about getting familiar with the basics, e.g. tools and terminology. Beginners often rely heavily on instructions and guidance from more experienced individuals. They make mistakes, and that’s part of the learning process.
2: Intermediate
Intermediate learners have moved past the basics. They have a good grasp of the fundamentals and are now applying their knowledge to perform more challenging tasks. Intermediates are more confident in their abilities but still have plenty to learn, and they can not yet perform independently.
3: Advanced
At the advanced level, individuals have a deep understanding of their skill areas. So, advanced practitioners can work independently, with regular work tasks. They have a good degree of proficiency and often contribute to advancing the knowledge or practice of their skill.
4: Expert
Experts have achieved a high degree of proficiency in their skill area and have also gained significant experience and often formal recognition or certification. At this level, individuals can perform tasks independently in more complex environments, demonstrate innovation, and oversee the broader perspective
Being an expert also means having the capacity to mentor others. With their depth of knowledge and experience, experts can guide beginners and intermediate learners. Therefore, they serve as role models, imparting wisdom and fostering the next generation of practitioners.
5: Master
Masters distinguish themselves by their ability to perform tasks with exceptional proficiency. They are dedicated to teaching and leading within their field. They share their knowledge, guiding others by setting an example of continuous engagement with the latest developments in their industry. Above all, a master is on the pulse of “hot topics” and trends and advises others on what they need to know to stay ahead. Their leadership is characterized by a commitment to advancing their field.
3. How do you accurately assess employee skill level?
Determining skill levels can sometimes be challenging. However, companies must understand the importance of an objective evaluation of these skill levels. This raises a question: is self-evaluation sufficient, or should there be an approval process or peer review incorporated? Let’s look into each of these options.
Self-assessment of skill levels
Self-assessment demands that you take a close look at your experience. This means you need to look into your knowledge, the tasks you can perform, the obstacles you encounter, and your approach to complex situations. This exercise enhances your self-awareness, compelling you to honestly evaluate your abilities and identify areas of development. Above all, it requires significant diligence and honesty on your part. After thoroughly examining your skills, you can better devise personalized development plans that align with your growth needs.
Self-evaluation is a critical component of personal and professional development. However, it’s not without its challenges. The most significant hurdle is maintaining objectivity; it’s tough to assess oneself with the same impartiality that someone else might. Humans have a natural tendency toward biases, even when we’re trying to be objective. This includes both the tendency to view ourselves more favorably than others (self-enhancement bias) and the opposite – being overly critical of ourselves (self-diminishment bias). These biases can cloud our judgment and make it challenging to assess our skills accurately.
Juniors and seniors may be influenced by the so-called “Dunning-Kruger effect”. This means that individuals with limited knowledge in a particular area tend to overestimate their abilities, while experts tend to underestimate theirs. Beginners may lack the awareness to recognize the gaps in their knowledge or skills, leading to overly positive self-assessments. Conversely, those with more expertise are more aware of what they don’t know, which can lead to undervaluing their competence.
Additionally, effective self-evaluation often requires comparing your skills to others whose performance levels might be unknown to you. It’s hard to measure your skill level if you don’t have a clear idea of what “beginner,” “intermediate,” or “advanced” actually looks like in practice.
Manager approval
In many large companies, it is not uncommon for managers to be responsible for approving the skill levels of everyone in their team. Having a broader perspective allows managers to make more objective assessments because they can compare skill levels across the team. This process can involve the employee providing an initial rating, which is then discussed and, if necessary, adjusted during a conversation with the manager, or it can simply be the manager approving the employee’s skills based on their evaluation.
The manager’s approval reduces the risk of biased self-evaluations and ensures that assessments align with the company’s expectations and needs. It also guarantees that all employees are held to the same standards, fostering a sense of equity and transparency within the workplace. Moreover, with a clear understanding of the skill levels within their teams, managers can make informed decisions about workforce planning and resource allocation in the company.
The process of managerial approval creates opportunities for constructive feedback, where employees can learn about their strengths and areas for development from their manager’s perspective. This ongoing dialogue enhances mutual trust and encourages employees to take an active role in their professional development.
Collecting feedback from peers
Collecting skill-level feedback from peers is a dynamic approach to understanding an employee’s abilities from multiple perspectives. This collaborative evaluation method enriches the assessment process, offering a well-rounded view of an individual’s competencies. However, effectively gathering and integrating this feedback requires a structured approach.
Choose a range of colleagues who interact frequently with the individual in different capacities—those who work alongside them, collaborate on projects, or benefit from their output. A diverse selection ensures that you capture a comprehensive picture of the employee’s skill levels across various contexts and relationships.
There are several benefits to peer-review of skill levels. Peers often see sides of our work that managers or we might miss. This variety of viewpoints ensures a more comprehensive assessment of skills and performance. By gathering feedback from multiple sources, peer review helps to balance out individual biases, whether overly positive or negative.
Peer review processes can strengthen team relationships by involving team members in each other’s development. It creates a sense of shared responsibility for the team’s success and encourages a more collaborative and supportive workplace environment.
However, there are also challenges in this approach. Conducting thorough peer reviews can be time-consuming, requiring significant investment from both the reviewers and the organization to ensure the process is meaningful and constructive. Without proper guidance on how to give constructive, actionable feedback, peers might provide comments that are vague or difficult to interpret. This can lead to misunderstandings, diminishing the effectiveness of the review process.
The success of peer reviews heavily relies on a workplace culture that values honesty, support, and continuous improvement. Without this foundation, implementing peer reviews can be difficult, as employees may not feel comfortable enough to participate fully and openly in the process.
Direct measures of skill levels
Direct measures such as tests and exams are designed to objectively evaluate an individual’s proficiency in a specific domain. Unlike subjective assessments, which rely on personal judgments and observations, direct measures provide tangible, numerical scores that offer a clear indication of where someone stands in their learning journey.
Language skills serve as a prime example of how tests and exams can effectively measure skill levels. For language learners, several recognized tests benchmark proficiency according to common frameworks. These include for example the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
However, while tests and exams are good tools for measuring specific aspects of skill levels, they may not capture all individual’s abilities. Therefore, they are most effective when used as part of a broader assessment strategy that includes other forms of evaluation.
4. How do you assess skill levels of soft skills
Soft skills are tricky to assess
While we’ve already talked about skill assessment in the previous chapter, the evaluation of soft skills deserves a detailed perspective of its own. Assessing soft skills is inherently challenging due to their subjective and intangible nature. Unlike hard skills, which can be measured through tests and tangible outcomes, soft skills encompass the interpersonal and cognitive abilities that dictate how we interact with others and approach problems—making their assessment complex.
Soft skills include a wide range of competencies such as communication, teamwork, adaptability, problem-solving, and leadership. Assessment of soft skills requires a diverse approach that goes beyond conventional testing methods to capture the depth and breadth of an individual’s capabilities.
Methods to assess soft skills
Soft skills are often evaluated by a combination of methods and tools. Here are some strategies that you can use:
- Behavioral interviews: This approach involves asking candidates to describe past experiences where they’ve had to use specific soft skills. By focusing on real-life examples, interviewers can gain insights into how individuals have applied their interpersonal and cognitive abilities in various situations.
- 360-degree feedback: This comprehensive feedback method involves gathering insights from an individual’s supervisors, peers, and subordinates, providing a well-rounded view of their soft skills.
- Psychometric tests: Certain tests are designed to measure personality traits, emotional intelligence, and other indicators related to soft skills. These can help in identifying underlying attributes that contribute to an individual’s soft skill set. These kinds of tests include for example personality tests such as the DiSC model of behavior, or the MBTI questionnaire.
- Simulation and role-play: Simulations or role-playing exercises can place individuals in scenarios that require the use of specific soft skills. Observers can then evaluate how effectively these skills are applied in real time, providing concrete examples of an individual’s competencies.
- Performance reviews: Regular performance reviews can be structured to include an assessment of soft skills, based on specific examples and achievements. This ongoing evaluation allows for the tracking of development over time.
5. What other metrics are related to skill levels?
While direct measures of skill levels provide valuable insights into an individual’s current capabilities, several other metrics play a crucial role in understanding and leveraging this information, especially in organizational settings. These include the skill target level, metric to measure the employee’s willingness to learn certain skill, and skill gap metrics. Each of these metrics offers a different lens through which to view skill development.
Skill target level
The skill target level refers to the proficiency goals set by a company for specific roles or projects. This benchmark is crucial for aligning individual capabilities with organizational needs and ambitions. By defining skill target levels, companies can identify what skills are essential for their current operations and future growth, enabling them to focus their development efforts more effectively. These targets also help in creating a roadmap for employees, guiding their learning and development toward achieving the competencies that are most valued by the organization.
Employee willingness to learn
Understanding an employee’s eagerness to learn is vital for fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation. This metric measures an individual’s enthusiasm to acquire specific skills and knowledge. By assessing employees’ learning interests and aspirations, companies can tailor development opportunities that fill existing skill gaps and align with each employee’s professional growth goals. This personalized approach to learning and development can significantly enhance engagement, motivation, and job satisfaction, driving individual and organizational success.
Skill gaps
Skill gap metrics are used to identify and quantify the difference between current skill levels and the target levels required for specific roles or projects. By systematically measuring these gaps, organizations can identify critical areas where skill development is needed. This metric is instrumental in workforce planning, allowing companies to strategize on training, recruitment, or restructuring to address skill shortages.
Conclusion
We have elaborated here on the five commonly asked questions related to skill levels. As we saw, there are many perspectives on this topic. Hopefully, you have gained more insight into this important topic to take your company to the next level of employee skills management.
Read more: Skills data update: How often is sufficient?