The goal of this blog is to convince you that there is a tremendous value in assessment, whether seeking to make a career change or not. Never forget, when you’re planning your life, your future career, or a new business venture…you have to have a clear understanding of what your skills are today, as compared to what will be required three years from now when you are fully integrated into your next occupation or profession.

There’s a famous quote by Albert Einstein,

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Albert Einstein

The same can be said about assessment.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. The Fish wouldn’t understand that the reason for your laughter was because it’s never seen anyone climb a tree before and if you told the fish the world would end tomorrow, it would die without knowing the meaning of life. We often forget this simple truth when working with people. Unless they can see that they can improve their situation and how they feel, they won’t change anything.

How many times have we had to tell someone something as simple as ‘’they need to brush their teeth twice a day’’ or ‘’they shouldn’t eat so much sugar’’ yet they don’t change their behavior? It’s because their expectations are different. If we could simply understand that everyone has different levels of understanding and differing ideas about what normal is, then we would see positive changes in people’s lifestyle choices.

In the professional world, it is important to stay creative, innovative, and knowledgeable. We think we can all agree that in order to learn how to do something, we need feedback on our attempts. In many cases (and all cases in which the participant or instructor wishes to improve) assessment is a vital part of the learning process.

This means you need to keep learning new things, trying out new strategies, and pushing yourself to your limits. The first step to making a change toward an improved professional development training program is determining the problem area. That is where an assessment can be invaluable.

What is the point of Assessment?

Why an assessment, why not just train myself? That’s the question we get a lot. The answer is simple: You see, there are two types of training, hard skills training and soft skills training. Hard skills training takes the form of courses and certifications that help you improve a specific skill that you can learn in a matter of hours or days. Soft skills training takes the form of assessments that can help you figure out if you even have what it takes to build the career you want. In short, it can be said that hard skills are self-gained, soft skills are self-assessed.

Assessment and Formative Evaluation for Training and Development has become an important topic in today’s learning environment—and it should be. Educators at all levels are required to provide accurate and crucial information to determine if their programs are effective or not. Without this valuable data, they are prone to make assumptions (and mistakes) as to whether or not their participants were successful. In order to provide a solid foundation for program improvement, educational professionals need to establish consistent practices that will produce credible evidence of success. A common misconception is that assessment is only effective if it can predict performance in current or future contexts; however, this ignores the fact that assessment helps us learn about our learners and determine what modifications might be necessary for improvement. When used as a strategy for reflection on instruction practice, assessment can help instructors identify ways to improve their teaching, which leads to improved learning outcomes for learners.

The purpose of assessment should be to help you understand how well the training is being absorbed and how effectively the objectives are being met. In essence, assessment is critical in training and professional development because employee performance needs to be measured. If it’s not measured, it’s impossible to tell if an individual is performing well or not. By implementing regular employee performance assessments, companies can effectively track the progress of their current employees as well as potential employees who are currently seeking employment elsewhere.

Use your assessment results to improve the training, not to punish learners. Whether that means changing an activity, adding a new one, or expanding on an existing one depends on what the assessment has shown you.

If you have a clear, evidence-based foundation for utilizing assessment to assist training and development, you should be able to incorporate a variety of criteria in one location, such as:

• Carefully chosen assessment tools to fulfill the needs of certain training objectives,
• A thorough grasp of how to use the assessment instrument’s data (s),
• Acceptance at all organizational levels, as well as a right combination of informal (such as discussion) and formal techniques (such as assessment),
• The capability of professional instructors and coaches to conduct an effective training needs analysis
• Design relevant learning interventions
• Encourage high-quality learning, produce relevant, constructive, and valuable feedback.

To conclude, without question, assessment is a crucial component of any training or professional development program. The point of assessment should always be to help provide data that you can use to make altering your training objectives, and even your approach, a possibility. In addition, you should also be incorporating some sort of measurement system for tracking the performance of the employees and determining how effective the training was.

Leex’s Assessment Process:

You have to trust the training company you work with. You need to be convinced they have the experience and expertise in problem-solving that your company needs. We make sure this is the case from the very beginning of our collaboration.

Our assessment process is systematic and completely included in our course fees. At each stage, we’re dedicated to delivering you a solution as quickly as possible. Keeping in contact with us is also a part of this process – it’s how we keep you informed about progress on your project.

Pre-questionnaire phase:

This phase is crucial because it allows us to know the needs of our trainees on point. We check with you to see if we understood everything correctly, and based on that analysis, we can improve the training’s design if necessary.

It’s important to remember that the goal of a pre-questionnaire is not to identify who will and will not be a good fit for the training. Rather, it’s intended to provide us with the information we need to design an effective curriculum. Matching an employee to a training is an art, not a science. We rely upon our pre-questionnaire and subsequent conversations with you to help us tailor the training around your needs and goals, as well as potential instructor biases or preferences. Once we receive your pre-questionnaire answers, we’ll then work closely with you every step of the way during the planning phase to ensure that your training meets or exceeds your expectations.

As early as possible during our collaboration (in the quotation phase), we’ll send you a questionnaire that will let us both ensure that the training you’re considering is a good fit for your employee(s). It questions their professional experience (if any) and lateral fields linked to the training’s field (e.g. contact information, expectations, specific needs).

During the Training Program:

As is the goal of all training, the assessment process was designed to highlight areas where additional attention and training are required as well as areas where standards of professionalism can be reviewed. The results will lead to Leex’s representatives working together with each participant to help ensure that they can consistently deliver high-quality work products in accordance with our high standards.

Each participant is present for the whole session. At the start of each day slot, all participants sign the attendance sheet, which may be provided on paper, as an annotated PDF, or through the use of a special-purpose online tool (that may compile a consolidated attendance sheet) provided by Leex’s designated representatives.

The course assessment at the end of each is an important time for focused feedback on your LEEX experience and what you have learned. It’s also a chance for us to hear your thoughts and your suggestions so that we can tailor our courses accordingly. 

Assessment feedback is a powerful tool that can be used by the organization to improve their programs by gaining valuable insight into what delegates feel has worked well during their program. It also provides an assurance to the delegate that they have obtained maximum value from the program and have obtained all of the learning objectives from the course. The feedback form will provide great insight into specific aspects of the program including delivery, attendees finding it interesting, the content was relevant, presentation style, good mix of group work and individual work. The course conclusion rating is an indication of the success of the program and provides the opportunity for benchmarking performance against other curriculum-based programs offered within your organisation.

Assessment is kept informal from the start to the finish of the learning process, providing for significant learning possibilities. Some assessments are conducted in groups, allowing for problem-solving collaboration. At the end of each program, delegates evaluate the course, the instructor’s presentation, and their overall experience on the accompanying feedback form with the results shared with your organization.

Despite the informal, collaborative nature of assessments, we do realize that our courses are very important to you and your organization. That’s why we take pride in assessing every module so that it will effectively prepare delegates for their future duties. However, please note that the presentation, delivery, and course content may vary from instructor to instructor and from venue to venue.