Employee Surveys vs. Skill Assessments: Which Are Better for Training?

Employee assessments are an essential tool for improving employee training, developing leaders, and boosting employee retention rates. In fact, the Institute for Corporate Productivity found that these tests can lead to a 26% increase in job performance.

When businesses want to maximize employee training and achieve these results, they often face a choice between employee surveys and skill assessments. But do they understand the benefits and use cases and which one is better for their context?

Surveys can gather feedback on employee satisfaction, training gaps, and development goals, while assessments objectively measure actual skills and competencies.

This blog post will explore the key differences between employee surveys and skills assessments, how to determine the best approach to training based on your context, and how ScoreApp can help you streamline both to improve employee development.

What are employee surveys?

Employee surveys collect self-reported feedback on workplace experience, training needs, and engagement. They gather employee opinions and perspective, rather than objectively assessing knowledge.

Employee surveys are designed to:

1. Identify employee satisfaction with training programs.

By hearing directly from your employees, you’ll see how helpful and engaging they find your training programs. This is crucial for employee retention, as companies that regularly conduct feedback see a 14.9% decrease in turnover rates.

2. Highlight perceived skill gaps.

When you ask your employees for their feedback, you gain an insight into their perception of their skills. This will highlight any gaps between what they feel and their actual skill level, allowing you to speak into areas where they lack confidence. You can then tailor training accordingly so they feel better equipped to perform their role.

3. Gather qualitative feedback for improving training.

This second point of feedback lets you see if your training programs are meeting employee goals. This is important as it shows employees that you are taking their feedback seriously and acting on it. This is likely to increase employee engagement and lead to more effective training. This also lets you see how your team learns best so you can adjust accordingly.

Employee surveys are best used to:

• Evaluate employee engagement and how helpful they find the training programs in place.
• Identify areas for professional development based on what employees are recognizing and asking to improve on.
• Gather insights into workplace culture so you can spot and target issues early on. This will also help you highlight and develop leaders, ensuring a sustainable development pipeline.

What are skills assessments?

In contrast, skills assessments objectively measure employee knowledge and competencies. They check their retention and understanding and provide data on strengths and areas for improvement.

Skills assessments aim to:

1. Evaluate knowledge and job-related skills.

This lets you see where more training is required and where your employees understand and excel. This data is useful in performance reviews, especially in conversation with employees who are skilled but lack confidence. It can also be used as part of the hiring process, with 78% of companies reporting an improvement in the quality of candidates they’re hiring.

2. Identify gaps in leadership, technical, or soft skills.

By seeing an overview of each employee’s skills and weaknesses, you can identify any areas for improvement early on. This helps address gaps in objective rather than pressured environments.

3. Benchmark employee progress over time.

Skills assessments allow you to track employee progress and celebrate development. You can create personalized learning and development plans based on your findings, which can result in a 34% increase in employee engagement.

Employee skills assessments are best used to:

• Measure job readiness and performance. This is beneficial when it comes to hiring or promoting the right candidate.
• Design personalized training programs which target employee weaknesses and improve engagement.
• Assess leadership potential, for an insight into your team’s skills and personality traits. This allows you to test their abilities in a lower stake environment.

How ScoreApp enhances both approaches

Rather than forcing you to choose between employee surveys and skills assessments, ScoreApp combines the two to give you a holistic training strategy. You’ll get insight into what your team know and how they perceive their abilities.

With ScoreApp, businesses have the power to:

• Create surveys to collect employee feedback, including customized templates, saving you time.
• Build skills assessments to evaluate competencies and address any knowledge gaps.
• Automate data collection for better insights so you can track and measure employee progress.
• Segment employees based on responses to tailor training and increase engagement.

Choosing between employee surveys and skills assessments

When deciding whether to use an employee survey or a skills assessment, it’s important to know what, how, how often, and why you’re using these tools. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What do you want to measure?

If you want to understand how your employees feel, surveys are best as they capture how your team perceives training needs through qualitative data. However, if you want to measure knowledge, skills assessments are better as they provide quantifiable skills data you can track.

2. How will the data be used?

How you intend to use the data can determine which method you use. Surveys are great if you want to assess how engaged and satisfied your employees are—to reduce employee churn rate. On the other hand, skills assessments identify gaps, meaning you can shape training programs around them.

3. Do you need qualitative or quantitative data?

Surveys give you qualitative, subjective feedback. This is good for understanding how employees feel and why. In contrast, skills assessments are designed to deliver measurable insights via qualitative data. This means you can track progress and get objective data for ensuring every team member is in the right role.

4. How frequently do you need assessments?

Surveys are best used as ongoing feedback tools. You get results you can take action on, which will show your employees that you’re listening and acting on their feedback. Assessments are better for monitoring long-term skill progression. These are excellent sources of data for annual performance reviews, but they won’t give you data you can immediately improve. 

ScoreApp: The best tool for surveys and assessments

With ScoreApp, businesses can create and automate surveys and assessments. Customizing templates and scheduling reminders or when the assessments should be sent out will save you time.

ScoreApp also lets you capture real-time insights into how your employees feel about their roles and abilities. You can use these findings to adapt your training to their expectations and needs.

You can then segment employees based on the data and their perceptions, creating better learning paths tailored to their skills and weaknesses. Segmenting also shows whether your training programs are effective at addressing the issues identified.

Both employee surveys and skills assessments play a key role in training and continuous development plans. Surveys gather employee perceptions while assessments are designed to test knowledge skills.

So, what is the best strategy for growing businesses that want to improve their training programs? Use both employee surveys and skills assessments. ScoreApp helps you do this quickly and easily, giving you actionable insights you can apply right away.

Try ScoreApp for free to create custom employee surveys and skills assessments that drive real results.