What is the objective of this assessment?

  • Assess what your learners know and do not know
  • Match the identified skills gap with your intended learning objectives

Why is it important?

  • A skills assessment for training and support is an essential step for members of your initiative.

How to perform this assessment?

There are different ways to carry out a skills assessment for an individual or for a group. It can be as simple as having a one-to-one conversation with someone, or it may involve organising a group meeting , or conducting a more formal survey of a large group.
 
1. Identify what skills, knowledge, experience and support are needed for a particular involvement role.
 
2. Ask people to reflect on the skills, knowledge, experience and support they have that help them to fulfil this role, and aspects of the role they may find challenging – this includes asking people about the activities they carry out, how important they feel these are and how confident they feel in this role.
 
3. Identify training and support needs – ask people to identify specific areas where they would like to increase their confidence and/or build on their skills or knowledge to help them become more effective.
 
It can also be helpful to ask about people’s learning styles, for example whether they would prefer in-house training, attending external courses, e-learning, books, or shadowing as a method of learning.
 
It is likely that a skills assessment will identify more than one training and support need and different preferences as to how this is provided. Making a decision about what training and support to provide and in what format will then require a dialogue between all the stakeholders involved – training managers, budget holders and potential trainees.
 
This can help to prioritise training and support based on the:
  • urgency / timeliness of the need
  • extent of the need – how many people need training and support
  • the resources available and potential sources of training and support.

When is the best time to carry out a needs assessment?

Carrying out a skills assessment is not a one-off event. It is best carried out after people have had time to learn about their role, and then repeated regularly in parallel with the individual’s (or group’s) personal development.

It is important to be realistic about training and support opportunities and not to raise expectations too high. If you ask about people’s needs, then you need to be prepared to respond relatively quickly. For example, if people are asked about training and then don’t receive any, they can get disenchanted. Think about the availability of funding and possible sources of suitable training and support when carrying out an assessment – you may need to limit what you ask about/offer.

Formal approach to assessing skills needs

If you are intending to raise the capacity of a large group of stakeholders, developing an online survey could prove useful. In that respect, questions should address 1) the level of competences associated with a specific list of skills; 2) the level of importance the target group believes this competence should be mastered.

In the context of the Reflow project, the following survey was designed to assess the skills gap of stakeholders among pilot cities:

Download the survey example

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