Prerequisites: This 'Manager Skill Assessment' feature is not enabled by default. To have this feature enabled, please speak to your Learning Pool contact.
Summary: Managers can confirm or reject an employee's skills, and have access to additional feedback options in the form of suggestions, where they can suggest that an employee add a skill, remove a skill, or adjust the expertise level of a skill.
What it is
Manager Skill Assessment (MSA) supports managers in assessing and challenging the accuracy of their employees' Skill Profile. Managers can confirm or reject an employee's skills, and have access to additional feedback options in the form of suggestions, where they can suggest that an employee add a skill, remove a skill, or adjust the expertise level of a skill. When making a suggestion to adjust skill level or delete a skill, managers can also leave an optional supporting comment that will be visible to the employee when viewing the suggestion. A history of all previous suggestions and supporting comments made against a skill is visible to both the employee and manager.
Use cases
- Managers want to confirm the validity/accuracy of their employee's self-assessment.
- Managers who want to have a more active role in addressing employees' skills gaps can suggest skills be added as ‘Learn’ to employees' profiles.
- Managers seeking to improve the overall quality and accuracy of their employees' Skill Profile can suggest amendments to expertise level of skills or suggest removal of skills.
How it works
Confirming / Rejecting employee's skills
Managers can confirm or reject skills on an employee's Skill Profile, signifying whether they agree or disagree with the Employee's self-assessment. The Managers decision is reflected on the employee's Skill Profile within the ‘Status’ column. This is purely visual, confirming/rejecting an Employee's skill will not make any changes to their skills expertise level, and has no impact on top matches, recommendations, the learning algorithm, etc.
- A ‘Status’ column is visible on each users Skill Profile
- The 3 possible statuses are ‘Pending’, ‘Confirmed’ and ‘Rejected’
- When viewing the Employee's Skill Profile, Managers can choose to confirm or reject an employee's skill by clicking the status icon for that skill
- When the Manager’s clicks the ‘Pending’ icon for a skill, a modal will appear asking them to either Confirm or Reject that skill
- For already confirmed/rejected skills, clicking the ‘Confirmed’ or ‘Rejected’ icon again will toggle that skill between confirmed and rejected.
- When a skill is first added to an Employee's Skill Profile, it will have the ‘Pending’ status to signify that the Manager has neither confirmed or rejected the skill.
- When a previously confirmed skill has increased in expertise level the following happens:
- The skill changes from the ‘Confirmed’ status to the ‘Pending Approval’ status, requiring the Manager reconfirm or reject the skill at its adjusted expertise level
- There is a visual indicator alerting the Manager of previously confirmed skill’s that have increased in expertise level and require reconfirmation.
Manager suggestions
Managers can make skill suggestions to their Employees and leave supporting comments against these suggestions. Suggestions are always optional, the Employee can choose to confirm or reject their Managers suggestions. The Manager can suggest that the Employee:
- Adjust the expertise level of a skill
- Delete a skill
- Add a skill
1 - Managers can suggest that the expertise level of a skill on the Employee's Skill Profile is adjusted
- The Manager can make this suggestion by accessing the ‘Employees' page, selecting an Employee, expanding the Skills/Employee Profile section, in the ‘Expertise’ column, click the star representing the expertise level they would like to suggest
a. This suggestion can be to increase or decrease the skills expertise level
b. When a skill has been suggested for an adjustment in expertise level, that skills expertise level is highlighted and the word ‘Pending’ appears below it on the Managers view of the Employee's Skill Profile
c. This suggestion can be deleted by clicking the ellipses (3 dots) for the skill and selecting ‘Delete suggestion’ from the dropdown.Manager making a suggestion to increase the proficiency level of a skill and leaving a note.
- Employees can view these suggestions within their ‘Skills’ page, where they can choose to accept or reject them
a. When a skill has been suggested for an adjustment in expertise level, there is a visual indicator to inform the Employee
b. To confirm/reject this type of suggestion, click on the stars, a modal will appear asking whether they want to Reject or Confirm the suggested skill removal
c. If an expertise level adjustment suggestion is confirmed by the Employee, that skill automatically changes to the Managers suggested expertise level and its status becomes ‘Confirmed’
d. If a suggestion to adjust the expertise level of a skill exists, the Employee cannot manually adjust the expertise level of that skill until that suggestion is resolved (accepted/rejected by Employee OR delete by Manager)
Employee viewing a suggestion made by their manager, reading the note and accepting the suggestion.
2 - Managers can suggest that an Employee's skill is removed from their Skill Profile
- The Manager can make this suggestion by accessing the ‘Employees' page, selecting an Employee, expanding the Skills/Employee Profile section, clicking the ellipses (3 dots) for a skill and selecting ‘Suggest Removal’ from the dropdown.
a. When a skill has been suggested for removal, the skill becomes greyed out on the Managers view of the Employee's Skill Profile
i. This suggestion can be deleted by clicking the ellipses (3 dots) for the skill and selecting ‘Delete suggestion’ from the dropdown. - Employees can view these suggestion within their ‘Skills’ page, where they can choose to accept or reject them
a. When a skill has been suggested for deletion, there is a visual indicator to inform the Employee
b. To confirm/reject this type of suggestion, expand the skill, click the ‘See Managers Suggestion’ button, a modal will appear asking whether they want to Reject or Confirm the suggested skill removal
c. If a skill removal suggestion is confirmed by the Employee, that skill is deleted from the Employee's Skill Profile
3 - Managers can suggest that a skill is added to an Employee's Skill Profile
- Managers can make this suggestion by accessing the ‘Employee’s page, selecting an Employee, expanding their Skills/Employee Profile section, and clicking the ‘Suggest Skills’ button
a. In order to make the new skill suggestion, an expertise level must be set, or the skill must be set as ‘Learn’
b. The Manager cannot suggest a skill if;
i. That skill has already been suggested by a Manager
ii. That skill is already on the Employee's Skill Profile
iii. That skill is already in the Employee's Validate skills area
c. When a skill has been suggested and is pending confirmation/rejection by the Employee, the Manager will see that skill in the 'Pending skills' section when viewing the Employee's Skill Profile
i. This suggestion can be deleted by clicking the ellipses (3 dots) for the skill and selecting ‘Delete suggestion’ from the dropdown - Employee can view these suggestion on their ‘All the Latest’ page, within the ‘Manager Suggested Skill’ section of the ‘Validate Skills’ widget, where they can choose to validate or delete
a. A proof point can be added and the ‘Like’ status of the suggestion can be toggled before validating the skill
i. The expertise level and ‘Learn’ status of the suggestion cannot be altered before validating the skill
b. Validating a suggestion adds the Skill to the Employee’s Skill Profile, and the Skill is automatically confirmed
c. If a suggestion to add a skill exists, the Employee cannot manually add the skill until that suggestion is resolved (accepted/rejected by Employee OR delete by Manager)
Suggestion history
The manager and employee can view a history of all previous suggestions made against a skill. To view a skills suggestion history, access the Employee's Skill Profile, click the ellipses (3 dots) for the skill and selecting ‘Suggestion History’ from the dropdown. This will open a sidebar containing records of all previous suggestions. The following information is available for each suggestion:
- Date suggestion was made
- Name of manager who made the suggestion
- Type of suggestion
- Managers comment (if a comment was left)
- Whether the suggestion was accepted or rejected
Employee viewing the suggestion history for a skill.
Consideration: As an Employee can have multiple Managers, all Managers will be able to make suggestions and view suggestion history.
Consideration: Only one type of suggestion can exist against a skill at a time. If a suggestion to delete has been made, that suggestion must be resolved (accepted/rejected by Employee OR delete by Manager) before a new suggestion can be made against that skill.