Industries throughout the world are rapidly evolving and being reshaped by technology. Building skilled teams in today’s environment of remote work and globalisation presents unprecedented challenges.
Many HR and Learning & Development (L&D) professionals are still making decisions about hiring, upskilling, and performance, without access to the right data to guide them.
Too often, it’s a guessing game.
Psychometric Assessments are a powerful way to change this. This data-driven approach helps HR teams to measure what knowledge, competencies and traits are actually held by current and future employees -instead of just believing what their CVs or job titles suggest.
Assessments provide the insights that are needed for teams to make smarter decisions at every stage of employee development.
Skills Gaps Aren’t Always Evident
Employers may not be able to identify skills gaps. In fact, they often only become obvious when there are performance issues like missed project deadlines, poor quality outputs, communication breakdowns, or other
performance challenges. In many organisations, it becomes difficult to consistently produce results and execute on business strategy with these shortcomings.
However, the cost is even greater if skills gaps are ignored. According to a study by the SCIKEY job site, 70% of professionals have noted that skills gaps are one of the major contributors to poor productivity. It is important to ensure that people don’t just fill roles, they need to have the right capabilities to meet each job description.
The problem is that many HR and L&D teams don’t have access to the information that would help them identify these gaps.
Guesswork is Costly
With smaller teams, it is of paramount importance that every hire can carry out their duties efficiently. One ill-prepared employee could have a significant impact on the business as a whole. Errors with hiring don’t just cost the company time and money, they also affect the culture of the business and its relationship with its clients. Unfortunately, not all companies have a training budget, and not all can leave little room for trial and error.
That’s where assessments like those within Alison’s LMS+ Psychometric Suite come in.
Assessments measure the competencies, knowledge, aptitude and traits that people have, including their effectiveness in key areas like business acumen, technical capability, digital skills, and the maturity of critical soft skills such as communication.
For example, using assessments during the recruitment process means that employers can make better decisions in the hiring stages, as they don’t just rely on intuition or what the candidate is telling them, they’re backing up these answers with validated insights. The Department of Labour in the US estimates that a bad hire can cost a company 30% of an employee’s first-year earnings. (Source: HBK)
Psychometric Assessments Are a Smarter Way to Plan Training
L&D is most effective when it is specifically targeted, as opposed to being generic or ‘one-size fits all’. Training must be relevant to each individual based on their needs, current role, future potential career trajectory, and more. This will improve training effectiveness and ultimately, the organisation’s ROI, as skills gaps are identified early and can be managed properly over a schedule that aligns with the business’s needs and the learner’s work commitments.
Assessments make this possible by:
- Evaluating the skills throughout the organisation
- Identifying specific areas for upskilling or reskilling
- Automatically matching training content to the needs of employees
- Tracking progress and improvement over time, with reassessment
In other words, psychometric assessments give leaders the data they need to make informed decisions about upskilling, reskilling, and career development, ensuring that both individual aspirations and organisational objectives are met.
This proactive, personalised, data-driven approach is what differentiates strategic L&D and HR teams.
Changing the Game
Most HR and L&D teams don’t currently have access to resources like this. They spend time piecing together training plans with incomplete data and make hiring decisions with little verification
The good news is that the strategic L&D approach is no longer exclusively for those with vast budgets to procure enterprise-level tools . With psychometric assessments integrated into Alison’s LMS+, it’s now available to all.
For those that are stretched thin or just starting to formalise their learning strategy, LMS+ eliminates hours of manual admin, guesswork, and fragmented tools.
You don’t need to be a data analyst to understand and help your people; you just need the right platform. That platform is LMS+.
Alison is Making Data-Driven, Proactive L&D Accessible to All
With Alison’s assessments and LMS+, organisations big and small will now be able to operate with the kind of intelligence that was once only available to large corporations.
Alison’s English Language Test, though simple, is a powerful tool for aligning communication standards. For companies wanting to hire remote staff from around the world, infiltrating new markets, or managing multicultural teams, English proficiency is a definite must-have with both personal growth and organisational goals. Measure. Develop. Transform—with the Alison Assessment Suite.
LMS+ includes Aptitude Tests which cover three major areas: numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning and abstract reasoning. These focus areas were designed to ensure that a person’s skills are fully evaluated: problem solving, comprehension and analytical skills. You can screen job candidates or identify high-potential employees with Alison’s reliable, data-driven insights into existing skills and those that still need to be developed.
As a business leader, it is imperative that you understand how your employees work, the strengths they possess which you can utilise, and the weaknesses you need to support them to overcome. LMS+ has integrated Workplace Personality Assessments that make it easier to understand their behavioural traits, communication styles, and what motivates them to ensure your teams are always on top of their game. Identifying personality profiles will assist HR managers and team leaders to improve worker relationships, reduce conflict and help them find out how to manage each employee.
Bridge the Gaps
You can match individuals to personalised learning paths with the help of accurate assessment data from Alison. This will assist you in bridging skills gaps, improving performance and supporting each employee at the point of their need. Progress can be tracked in real-time, and reports are also generated to help improve skills.
With Alison’s LMS+, you’ll know exactly where your team stands, where they need to go, and how to help them get there.
Ready to transform your L&D function from reactive to proactive? Set up a quick demo to see how quickly you can adopt a data-led approach to training.
