Talent development professionals spend a lot of time talking about skills, but few of them fully understand what skills their employees have. Part of the challenge is that to truly assess an individual’s proficiencies, multiple perspectives and data sources are needed.
Individuals and their managers certainly provide valuable viewpoints on skills, which is why Degreed offers proficiency ratings through Self Ratings and Manager Ratings. Skill assessments are another key source of validation. In Degreed, this happens via our dynamic skill-assessment questionnaire, Skill Review, and integrations with 3rd-party accreditation tools.
A missing piece in our skills rating process was peer perspectives and peer evaluations. Team members who work closely with an individual on daily tasks have unique insights into how that individual uses skills on the job, and those insights should be captured.
Degreed clients have already experienced the benefits of using our skill insights and rating solutions to dive into their employees’ skill data, and they’re looking for more.
“We can start connecting people’s peer-reviewed skill confidence levels with usage and business performance data,” said Peter Manniche Riber, Head of Digital Learning at Novo Nordisk. “We can drive conscious skill development across the company and plan for the right learning interventions based on user preferences, behavior and business needs — automated.”
This is why we’ve created Peer Ratings. Available now, Peer Ratings allows individuals to receive feedback on their skills directly from their peers, providing L&D leaders with a 360-degree view of their people’s skills.
Peer Ratings: A Closer Look
Peer Ratings is the latest addition to Degreed’s offerings that focus on helping organizations understand people’s skill levels. It enables individuals to request feedback from their peers on specific skills.
Similar to Self Ratings and Manager Ratings, Peer Ratings provides a data point about an individual’s level of proficiency in a specific skill, but this time from the perspective of close-working colleagues.
This unique perspective provides valuable data around skill strength, and rounds out an individual’s skill profile to reflect feedback from peers, managers, themselves and assessments, resulting in a 360-degree view of that person’s skills.
How does Peer Ratings work?
Receiving feedback from peers is incredibly simple. Users select a skill then choose a peer whose feedback they’d like. The peer will receive a notification to fill out a rating and, once complete, the user will see the details of the rating.
With Peer Ratings, learners are able to:
- Request ratings from their peers
- Rate their peers when sent a request
- View a summary of their Peer Ratings
- View the details of each Peer Rating
- View their average Peer Rating level
Managers also gain visibility, helping them more fully understand the skills and skill levels within their teams.
Graphic: Peer Ratings + Manger Ratings + Self Ratings + Ratings from Assessments = 360-degree skill profile (AKA – actionable data)
What This Means for the Business
The skill data that comes from Peer Ratings and other sources is essential in tackling the challenges businesses face.
According to a study from Deloitte, 89% of executives say skills are becoming more important for the way organizations define work, but only 18% strongly agree their workforce is using their skills and capabilities to their fullest potential.
How can skills be maximized if individual workers and their organizations’ L&D professionals don’t know what skills they have? They can’t. That’s why robust skill profiles that combine skill assessments with self, peer and manager ratings are key to maximizing workforce potential, and therefore business potential.
Creating the workforce your business needs starts with understanding the workforce you have. Once you uncover that knowledge, you can truly drive impact.
What This Means for L&D
Well-informed skill profiles help L&D professionals tackle common challenges.
For example, learning teams need to make sure the learning opportunities they provide are impactful. By uncovering skill proficiencies and skill gaps, L&D can target development where it matters most. Doing so not only produces better results but also can help identify what learning resources aren’t needed at the moment, so L&D can be more cost efficient.
A full skill profile helps with another core L&D task: leadership development. The data from Peer Ratings and other skill data sources helps L&D uncover where more learning resources are needed so they can support effective leadership at their organization.
Another area of interest for L&D professionals is creating a learning and positive workplace culture. Our 2021 research report How the Workforce Learns uncovered the common attributes found in a positive learning culture. In one interesting discovery, the report found individuals whose skills were assessed by peers were 75% more likely to rate their learning culture as positive.
For L&D leaders to create a positive culture of lifelong learning, it’s essential they create “an environment with psychological safety where individuals receive guidance on their development.” That’s why we recommend L&D introduce 360-degree skill assessments that invite peers to give feedback, in combination with skill assessments, manager ratings, and self ratings.
And of course, all this data supports reskilling and upskilling initiatives, so L&D can develop the workforce the business needs.
What This Means for the Employee
As skills become increasingly important to the way work is defined and opportunities are allotted, it’s vital people showcase their expertise. With a robust skill profile that includes data points like those from Peer Ratings, employees are equipped with the information they need to highlight their strengths and address any areas in need of improvement.
Let’s look at an example:
Marisa works as a data analyst for a software company, which has been hurting for creative new approaches to their product offering. The L&D department is looking internally to upskill or reskill someone into for a Product Manager role, and Marisa expresses interest. She discusses this with her manager and finds out which skills are most important. Marisa then completes a Self Rating and a skill assessment with Skill Review to provide data points that speak to her level of expertise in those skills.
Marisa wants to take it a step further by adding additional perspectives on her strengths, so she asks her manager and a couple of teammates to rate her skill levels.
All these data sources combine to create a 360-degree view of Marisa’s skills.
Now that Marisa has a complete skill profile, she can see she’s strong in certain skills like “Critical Thinking” but weak in “Product Design.” With this knowledge, she works with her manager to identify upskilling opportunities that will increase her proficiency in “Product Design.”
Not only is Marisa closer to achieving her aspirations, the L&D team was able to support the business in a key initiative and the organization is benefiting from developing talent from within.
Bringing It All Together
Peer Ratings is the next essential step in rounding out an individual’s skill profile. A complete view into a worker’s skill data can have a tremendous impact on the lives of your people, the efficiency of your L&D team and the business results you’re working toward.
Want to learn more? Schedule a personalized Degreed demo today.