In the past we’ve struggled with how to best assess our new hires to make sure they have the skills needed to be immediately successful. In 2011, a job skills assessment system called Work Keys transformed our process. I’ll tell you how it helped our workforce drastically improve their knowledge and skills in less than a year, directly benefitting our company.
Work Keys helped us select, hire, train, develop and retain a high-performance workforce. A part of ACT, the same company that performs admissions testing for colleges and universities, Work Keys has three basic steps:
Based on scores for each of the three areas, employees or applicants are awarded certifications of bronze, silver, gold or platinum. Most of Our Workforce in August 2011 “Did Not Qualify.” After having profiles conducted for our machine operator, maintenance, lead person, and supervisor positions in 2011, we tested all of our employees to see how well our workforce was prepared to succeed.
We were surprised to see that 48 percent of our workforce did not qualify (DNQ) for the minimum scores needed to receive a bronze CRC rating. In most cases applied math scores were the main cause of the low rating, but we also saw some employees who needed help with reading and locating information.
We launched a major employee education and training initiative to develop our workforce with the help of Richmond Community College . Through a combination of grants and company funding, we developed an individualized training plan for our employees to help them improve in the critical skills areas.
In July 2012 we retested our employees with these remarkable results:
Using the objective Work Keys/CRC assessment as the basis for our hiring, pay scale, and job placement has changed our company culture into one that fosters and encourages employees to improve, even beyond the basic requirements, for their position.
With incentive pay increases based on the Work Keys test, every employee has the ability to receive higher wages through score improvement, and as the chart above indicates, the employee response has been overwhelmingly positive.
This is what we are doing to build and develop our work force, and this approach can work for any business looking to increase employee involvement and improvement. What do you do to hire, train, and develop a high performance work team?