Suggest, Claim and Assess Skills in a Team
Teams are one of the primary means by which you and the people you work with can recognize each other for the skills that you have, and assess those skills in the context of real work that you have done together.
Benefits for Individuals
As you collect feedback from your team members in the form of skill assessments, your SkillRank becomes an increasingly reliable and recognized measure of your proficiency in that skill. This offers a couple of key benefits:
You can become more aware of how others view your proficiency in a skill-based on their aggregated and weighted feedback (our system does this automatically). Often, we are better than we think we are. Sometimes we’re not as good as we think we are.
You can become increasingly recognized in your organisation for the skills at which you truly excel!
Provided skill self-assessments are not hidden in your Skill Profile, SkillRank for each skill will be displayed alongside your self-assessment on a skill by skill basis once three or more peer assessment of your skill have been collected. To learn more about how SkillRank works, visit our general FAQ.
Benefits for Managers
In addition to collecting peer assessments for your own skills, as a manager you can use the Claim, Suggest and Assess features in Teams to improve team performance in the following ways:
Gain a better understanding of the Skill Profile of the overall team and the individual team members. Knowing this, you can answer the question, ‘which skills might be missing on the team’? Or, ‘is there a key team member who can transfer critical skills to others?’ You can accomplish this simply by having team members claim the crucial skills they are using and building through their contributions to the team.
If your organization is focussing on a strength-based approach to professional development, suggesting skills for team members to claim in the context of your work together allows you to let employees know what you think they’re doing really well, and that they are collecting peer assessments for those skills in the context of the Team.
In the course of their contributions to the team, team members may be developing skills without even realizing it. You can help team members build their skill profiles, and their SkillRank by suggesting these developing skills, as well.
How It Works
Claiming Skills in a Team
Team members can claim skills in a team at any time. If these skills don’t already exist in their skill profile with a self-assessment, the skill will be automatically added to the profile and the team member will be prompted to self-assess at the time they claim the skill.
When you claim a skill in a team, everyone on that team will automatically get an invitation to assess your proficiency in this skill. Team members can also select ‘I don’t know,' if they don’t feel qualified to assess a particular skill, or if they haven’t had enough experience working with you directly.
To claim a skill in a Team:
Go to the ‘Team’ tab of the Team’s page, and click the arrow to the right of your name. This will open the drawer and show you any skills you’ve already claimed, along with your Skill Rank. If Skill Rank is not available, your self-assessment will be displayed.
NOTE: When other team members look at your skills, they will see their own assessments for those skills, provided they have given one. Other team members can change those assessments of skills you’ve claimed in a team at any time. If you remove a skill from a team, all the associated assessments from that team are also removed from the calculation of your SkillRank.Click ‘Claim More Skills’.
Type the name of the skill you wish to claim, and click ‘Yes’ next to the skill when it shows up in the search results. If there is no search result that matches, simply press ENTER after you’ve entered the name of the skill.
Self-assess your proficiency in the skill.
Claimed skills in a team show up on the Team’s ‘Skills' tab. If there is no Skill Rank yet for any given skill, Ibbaka Talent will rely on self-assessments to build a Skill Map for the team (the horizontal bar graph at the top of the page). Opening the drawer for any given skill will show you the people on the team who have that skill, and the highest level of proficiency as reflected by either the self-assessment or the SkillRank, depending on whether or not SkillRank is available for that particular skill.
Claiming Suggested Skills from the Notifications Menu
When someone has suggested skills to you in the context of a team, these will show up under your notifications menu.
When you see any positive number in your notifications menu, click to see if you have any skill suggestions under the group, ‘Skills You May Be Using.’ Here you’ll find the list of one or more people who have suggested skills to you.
Click the name of the person whose skill suggestions you would like to review.
You’ll see the list of skills, along with a label for each skill indicating the context in which it was suggested. In this case, it will be the Team name.
Click yes to accept a skill, and self-assess. You can ‘go back’ to accept skill suggestions from other team members.
Suggesting a Skill to a Teammate
When you suggest a skill to a teammate, they receive a notification on the Ibbaka Talent platform, with your name, in the notification group called ‘Skills You May Be Using’. To suggest skills to a teammate:
Go to the Team tab on the Team page.
Open the drawer for the teammate for whom you want to suggest skills.
Click ‘Suggest New Skills’.
Type the name of the skill in the search box. If the team member has already claimed the skill you want to suggest in the context of the team, it will show up in the search results with a checkmark by it.
Don’t worry about whether or not the skill might already exist in the person’s profile. Suggesting skills in the context of a team is about giving team members the opportunity to receive peer assessments, as well as to build the overall skill profile of the team.
Assessing Skills from the Team’s Page (and Updating Your Assessment)
As an alternative to assessing skills one at a time through the notifications menu, you may want to assess a person’s skills for a given team all at once. This is also how you can update your assessment of someone’s skills as you become more familiar with their work and you decide you want to change an assessment.
Go to the Team page for any team where teammates have claimed skill.
Click the Team tab.
Open the drawer for the person you wish to assess by clicking the arrow at the far right-hand side of the drawer.
All skills the person has claimed on the team will be displayed under their name. If this is the first time you are assessing those skills, you will see a ‘CONFIRM’ icon next to each skill.
If you are assessing these skills having already done so at an earlier time, you see your previous assessment for the skill.
Assessing Skills from the Notifications Menu
Whenever one of your teammates claims a skill, you’ll automatically receive a notification to assess skills for that person. If the person has claimed skills in more than one team of which you are members, all of these notifications are grouped together in the notification menu, under that person’s name.
There are two ways to approach a notification to assess skills:
You can simply decline to assess skills for that individual by choosing ‘No’ next to their name when you see their invitation(s) presented in the notifications menu.
You can say ‘Yes’, and offer an assessment only on those skills for which you feel qualified to do so. You’ll need to choose, ‘I don’t know' for those skills which you do not wish to assess.
To do this:
In your notifications window, you will see a notification group that reads ‘x skills to confirm for y colleagues’.
Click ‘Yes’ to assess skills.
When you see the list of skills, the context in which the skill was claimed will appear. In this case, it will be a team, but it could also be a job or a role.For each skill, click ‘Confirm’.
Choose your assessment.
Move on to the next skill.
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