Request a skill assessment

What this achieves

A request asks a named person to formally evaluate somebody’s level in one skill. It is what puts an item into an assessor’s queue, so the assessments waiting to be done exist because somebody asked for them.

Required role: Administrator or Manager.

Steps

Open the employee’s record and go to their skills.
Find the skill and open the request.
Search for the Assessor by name or email and choose them.
Choose the Assessor type.
Add context for the assessor.
Select Send Request.

Assessor type

Option	Description
Manager	Assessed by the person who manages them.
Peer	Assessed by a colleague who works alongside them.
External Assessor	Assessed by somebody outside the usual line, where independence matters.
Self Assessment	The employee assesses themselves.

The type is a statement about whose judgement this is, and it stays with the result. A level recorded by a peer and one recorded by an external assessor carry different weight later, and the record is what lets anyone reading it tell which they are looking at.

Example: a senior engineering skill at HC Corp UK Ltd assessed by Olivia Bennett is a manager assessment. The same skill assessed by another engineer who has worked on the same system is a peer assessment.

Write the context for the assessor

The notes field asks for context for the assessor, and it is the difference between a considered assessment and a guess.

Say what prompted the request and what you want assessed. An assessor who knows the skill is being checked ahead of a role change will look at different evidence from one who assumes it is a routine refresh.

One request, one skill

A request covers a single skill. Where somebody needs several assessed, that is several requests, and they can go to different assessors.

That is usually what you want. The person best placed to judge one skill is often not the right judge of another.

Requests and endorsements are different things

Both involve asking a colleague about somebody’s skills, and they are not interchangeable.

Option	Description
An assessment request	A formal evaluation. It goes to a named assessor, carries an assessor type, and produces a recorded level.
An endorsement	Given freely by a colleague, with a level and a comment. No request, no due date, no queue.

Ask for an assessment when the level has to be defensible. An endorsement is a colleague’s opinion offered voluntarily, and it is recorded as such.

What happens next

The request appears in the assessor’s pending queue with its context, and they record a level and any evidence when they work it. The assessed level then updates what the company knows the person can do, which feeds gap analysis, readiness, and any internal opportunity they are matched against. Assessing a skill also resets its freshness clock, which is why a request is the usual answer to a skill flagged as ageing.