Ron speaks to Skills Assessments offered by Learning Without Scars.

Five things that were a pain to do. And five things that, if they could change, would make their lives easier. And we went through this with many, many classes. And the conclusion I came to is that there was an awful lot of items that were on all three lists. It would improve operations, it would make their job better, and it was a pain for them to do them. And I always ask the same question. If that's the case, why don't you go back home and change it? Well, change is difficult. In my work life, when I was working with dealers and supervising teams of employees, I would ask three questions about twice a year of everybody. What am I doing that you like that I do and you want me to continue? What am I doing that you don't like that I'm doing and you want me to stop? And what am I doing that doesn't really matter to you? And from those answers, I got a pretty good idea of what was going on.

If they liked it and they wanted me to continue with it, it might be something that I could pass off to someone else. If they didn't like it and didn't want me to continue doing it, then I had to evaluate whether it was necessary or not. And at times, performance reviews that were a little difficult, they wanted me to stop that, but that's not fair to anybody. You need to point out where there's opportunities for an employee to grow and to improve. And where there was work that they didn't think that I needed to do, I had to evaluate whether it was necessary for me to do it at all. When we started Learning Without Scars, A lot of my clients came to the conclusion that they wanted to find out before they spent money on some employees in training whether it was worth it or not. In our classes, we have a pre-test that's 10 questions.

We don't really grade it, but we want to have an understanding of the knowledge and skills of the person before they start a class. And then at the end of each class, we have a final assessment of 20 questions, multiple choice, that gets more serious. And we require them to get 80% score in order to be able to move out of that particular class. Now, we're not completely brutal. We allow them three tries to get it done. And it's interesting watching the students come in. The company has made the determination that George should take this class. Well, George has worked on this job for 20 years. He knows the job. Why are they wanting me to take this class? Typically what happens is George would skip over all of the program and go right to the final assessment. And surprise, surprise, he didn't get 80%. Well, that surprised them, so they go back and they go through the program.

The program consists of a reading list, a pre-test, about a 90-minute to a two-hour film clip that we create that consists of slides and audio tracks for the slides. film clips that we embed in it at specific locations and quizzes, and then a final assessment. After the final assessment, if they pass out of it, then we ask them to complete a survey so that we get a status report. What would they like us to do better? What would they like us to stop doing? What are some of the things that they're making suggestions? After all of that, then they can get their certificate. Well, after going through the program, and getting less than 80%. He's going back, and now he's going to listen to the video. He's going to watch the film clips. He's going to read the material. But in many cases, he skims and scans it. It's a term we use around the family a lot when we're in a hurry. And then they do the final assessment, and guess what?

They still don't get 80%. So now it gets serious. And that employee goes back, and they pay attention, and they do the assessment properly, and they... do the assessment and come up with 80% and they pass out of the program. And it's interesting for us to note that that never has to happen again. From that point forward, that employee is going to, if they've been around for a while and they're experienced at the job, they're going to follow the program. They're going to get 80% the very first task. Sometimes the employee doesn't hit 80% in three tries, and then they have to go back to the boss and say, hey, I wasn't able to get the score, and they locked me out, at which point the company can call us, we open it up again. But there's a little bit of an ego problem here now. The employee had to go tell the employer I wasn't able to do it. And for that group, again, it never happens again. So we have these assessments.

In one case about late fall of 2020, after we'd redone our website, we wrote a blog on how you use the assessment. And the assessment is intended for several different things, one of which is to help you in the hiring process. It's very difficult in an interview to determine... the knowledge and skills that the employee has relating to the job. So you have an interview and somebody from the company talks with the prospective employee and they chat back and forth. And one of the things that happens in an interview is it's very easy for somebody to fool me. In fact, you can fool me for three months or six months on the job, but rarely can you fool me for a year and hide the fact that you don't really know what you're doing. which is why I like to have a one-year probationary period. But using the assessment program in conjunction with an interview, we've minimized an awful lot of the problems that you have in hiring.

Similarly, we suggest you use the assessment program in your annual employee reviews. Perhaps you don't need to do it every year, but every second year would help. Sonia Law, one of our guest bloggers, wrote a wonderful... blog post on annual performance reviews, how critical they are. And, you know, if you have a moment and haven't read it, go backwards through our blogs and search for it. You'll find it and it'll help you a lot. One of the other things that we use the assessment for is paying wages. There's an objective measure of the skills and knowledge of the employee. And that's a good way to determine what their value is, what the pay package should be for an individual employee. The final thing is allowing the company and the employee to develop a career path. We believe strongly in the fact that everybody has a potential beyond what they're actually producing. We can all be better at what we do.

And what we strive to do, our purpose, part of our purpose at Learning Without Scars is to be able to help the employee identify what their sense of purpose is. what their potential is, and then we create learning paths for them, which is what the learning management software people call a program that will allow them to fill in the gaps with classes. We do the same thing, and that's how we score the assessment. We have four different levels on the assessment. It comes as a foundation from the education community. They call it developmental, beginning, intermediate, and advanced. And we do the same thing. And we've done that for job functions. In the parts department, we looked at the functions of counter and telephone sales, the parts office, the warehouse, inventory management, purchasing and expediting, and management and supervision, the leadership group of the department.

In service, we added two for There's the construction industry technician assessment, and there's a rental industry technician assessment that goes along with the lead hand, the inspector, the foreman, the service office, the technical communicator, and also the management team, supervisors and managers. We also have selling and marketing that we wrapped in together so that we've got four different job functions for product support sales and office support, marketing, and the management function. So those 18 assessments are all available in three languages, English, French, and Spanish. So wherever you are in the world, you can take this assessment as long as that's one of the languages of your country. These assessments have worked out tremendously well for us. We've had hundreds of people take them. and have been able to evaluate with their supervision how closely this resembles the actual knowledge and skills of each employee.

That's our skills assessment program. Thanks for your time. I'll talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to our podcast. We appreciate your support. Should you have any thoughts or comments, please don't hesitate to contact us at www. learningwithoutscars. com. The time is now. Mahalo.