How to Assess Digital

Competencies in Three Steps to

Build Your Future Workforce
March 2021
 “Assessing and identifying
the key competencies effectively
is now more important for
employers than ever before.”
Tarandeep Singh,
Chief Executive Officer, Aon’s Assessment Solutions

2 How To Assess Digital Competencies in Three Steps To Build Your Future Workforce
How Will Your Organization
Succeed in the Future?

The last year has shown that new ways

of working are already here. How an
organization will succeed in the future will
depend on how it will be able to attract,
retain and motivate the right people
with the right digital competencies.
Resilience, adaptability, flexibility and curiosity are keys to building an agile, digitally
ready workforce and organizations are looking for people with a learning mindset
focused on growth and positivity toward constant change. Assessing and identifying
these competencies effectively is now more important for employers than ever before.

Key Competencies for the Future Workforce

Resilience Adaptability Flexibility Curiosity

Here we look at the three steps employers can take to build the people‑centered
digital workforce of the future through effective talent assessments.

How To Assess Digital Competencies in Three Steps To Build Your Future Workforce 3
 STEP 1

1
Rethink
Your Competencies

We cannot really know what technical skills

will be needed in the future as the pace of
change accelerates. That is where traits
like learnability and humility come in.

Half-Life of Technical Skills

For the average worker, the half-life of technical skills
learned at work has dropped to about five years.

4 How To Assess Digital Competencies in Three Steps To Build Your Future Workforce
Replacing Technical Skills
Learnability allows people to be open to the possibility of making a mistake. It means
they seek constructive feedback and work on continuous self-improvement. Without
this trait, it is difficult for people to see their weaknesses when it comes to their
skills and abilities — and to be open to developing their skills in those areas.

Another highly important aspect in the context of moral leadership, and

somewhat related trait, is humility. Humility refers to the ability to reflect and be
self-aware, acknowledging and trusting that others may know more than them
and welcoming others’ expertise and ideas for the benefit of the business.

Lifelong Learning
This need for lifelong learning also means the traditional education path is no
longer as effective. Learnability becomes a key competency because hard skills
learned in traditional training environments have a short shelf life as technology
is continually evolving. People who will be successful in the future are those
who are primed to learn on a continuous basis. Employers must both identify
workers who rate highly for this trait and support a model of lifelong learning.

Hire for Your Organization, Not Roles

As you fill these roles, it is important to think in terms of hiring for your organization,
not for specific roles. It is also important to focus on upskilling and reskilling
current employees, not just hiring and firing. If you focus too much on recruiting
for the competencies you need rather than talent development, you risk losing
out on the wealth of organizational knowledge and talents of your existing
employees. What is more, hiring and firing is a costly approach to workforce
management — both in terms of employee relations and brand management.

How To Assess Digital Competencies in Three Steps To Build Your Future Workforce 5
 STEP 2

2
Implement
the Right Assessments

Many of these critical capabilities are

viewed as hard-to-capture “intangibles”,
leading hiring managers to rely on gut
feelings or intuition. However, modern
assessment tools drive the smart use of
data and can substantially increase the
odds of hiring the candidates with these
key skills by applying rigor, fairness and
validity in assessing target capabilities.

Meaningful Reports
You need high-quality data so you can make sound decisions.
The reports that come out of your assessment processes
have to be insightful, easy to understand and usable.

6 How To Assess Digital Competencies in Three Steps To Build Your Future Workforce
Connecting Talent Assessments to Value Creation
Applying the right assessments to effectively measure digital competencies requires
connecting assessments back to how employees create value in the new economy.
Understanding how people create value tells you what you need to assess for and what
qualities they need to create even more value. Consider people’s competencies and skills
holistically and adopt a talent model that evaluates the totality of the person’s experience
to determine how his or her skills will translate into business value. The difference
between, for example, an employee who knows how to use Python and an employee who
demonstrates learnability when it comes to programming language can have a significant
impact when it comes to the total value they bring to the organization. Taking a holistic
approach to assessments that measure these capabilities allows you to identify the person
who can figure out a solution and learn the skills they need to implement that solution.

The right assessments offer rigor and objectivity in analyzing where applicants stand on
these nontechnical traits that enhance the likelihood of success. Assessments that use AI
and machine learning can help you identify high-potential team members rapidly and
develop their skills. AI allows for a much more dynamic and responsive assessment process.

Incorporate Technology and Data

Incorporating AI into assessments allows you to completely rethink your talent models by
helping organizations specify what high performance looks like based on key competencies
and use those specifications to help identify high performers in potential talent.

Companies can also assess the expected impact of technology on the current roles
within their organization. With sufficient runway, employees whose jobs will be
automated or changed can be trained in key areas of digital competency and become
an internal talent supply that is future-proofed.

Ultimately, the right assessments can help identify untapped potential, both in new
hires and in our current workforce. They can help create highly individualized pathways
for people that fully identify their competencies and develop their capabilities,
providing immense benefit to both the individual and the company’s bottom line.

You need high-quality data so you can make sound decisions. The reports that come
out of your assessment processes have to be insightful, easy to understand and usable.
And to create a digitally ready workforce, you also need to ensure that all elements
of your process are mobile-optimized, engaging and psychometrically sound.
These are the hallmarks of the leading talent assessment tools around the world.

How To Assess Digital Competencies in Three Steps To Build Your Future Workforce 7
 STEP 3

3
Adopt a Smart Assessment
Process to Guide Your
Digital Workforce

While the “soft” skills associated with digital

competencies may seem difficult to identify
and assess, defining digital readiness as a
mindset allows us to leverage assessments
to measure for it and can yield actionable
data that can then follow the employee
through their full employee life cycle.

Identifying Those With Potential

We cannot define the specific skills required in the future, but we can identify
people who are willing and able to adapt and change. We measure their
potential by focusing on overarching foundational competencies, such as
learnability, agility and curiosity. These behaviors help employees adapt and
thrive in an uncertain and ambiguous environment and allow your talent strategy
to evolve and adjust to the challenges of the future work environment.

8 How To Assess Digital Competencies in Three Steps To Build Your Future Workforce
With the skills and competencies companies need to compete rapidly evolving,
predicting future workforce needs is an increasingly difficult task for employers.
Companies can use AI and machine learning to model different scenarios when
it comes to workforce needs and then design development paths that will allow
people to perform in the jobs of the future that cannot yet be clearly defined.
Algorithms are much better at combining complex data and making predictions
than people are. Machine learning and the self-correcting nature of AI mean
that these capabilities will only improve in the future. But we do not need to
be smarter than the machines to solve these challenges. Machines are simply
better than us at doing that. Rather we need to be smart in how we use machines
to solve the problems we need to solve and to create better solutions.

Career Pathing: Enabling a Flexible Workforce

TODAY THE FUTURE

Climb Y Career Career Career Open

the Ladder Ladder Paths Maps Patterns Market
One-dimensional One- or two- Progression Progress Grouping of roles Movement
upward dimensional within within and that encourage career throughout the
progression managerial a function across functions movements across organization driven
or technical functions to build by the employee
progression depth and breadth

How To Assess Digital Competencies in Three Steps To Build Your Future Workforce 9
 STEP 3

Sharing Data With Employees to Help Them Grow

You can harness the data you gather to deliver a meaningful experience to your
workers that adds value for candidates and employees, as well as your company
overall. Sharing data in every step of an employee’s life cycle helps them continually
develop and refine their skills and competencies over time. Leverage machine learning
to identify an employee’s likely next move. You may even know this before they do.

Assessment should be an ongoing activity. It is not good enough to just assess upfront.
Understanding how people create value tells you what you need to assess for and
what qualities or skills they need to create even more value. Measuring them in a way
that yields actionable data can then follow the employee through their full employee
life cycle and ensure that you build – and retain – a digitally ready workforce. As
career paths become more flexible, employees may not know all the career options
that are available to them. Assessments can help people identify career options
based on their strengths and skill set that they might not have otherwise considered,
simply because they did not know about those opportunities. We can open windows
to a different future for people through the use of cutting-edge assessments.

Keep Your Organization on the Right Track

And while some organizations like to celebrate low turnover rates,
that is not necessarily an indicator that you have the right people
in the right positions. It is important to design an assessment
process that keeps your organization on the right track.

10 How To Assess Digital Competencies in Three Steps To Build Your Future Workforce
Contact

To learn more about Aon’s Assessment Solutions,

please visit us at: assessment.aon.com

Or email us at:
APME.assess@aon.com
EU.assess@aon.com
NA.assess@aon.com

About Assessment Solutions

Aon’s Assessment Solutions provides clients with powerful tools and identifying future leaders, screening for digital skills and agility, and
insights to help them make better talent decisions at every stage of AI-enabled solutions. Aon’s Assessment Solutions undertakes
the employee lifecycle. This includes pre-hire assessments, 30 million assessments each year in 90 countries and 40 languages.

How To Assess Digital Competencies in Three Steps To Build Your Future Workforce 11
About Aon
Aon plc (NYSE:AON) is a leading global
professional services firm providing
a broad range of risk, retirement and
health solutions. Our 50,000 colleagues
in 120 countries empower results for
clients by using proprietary data and
analytics to deliver insights that reduce
volatility and improve performance.

© Aon plc 2021. All rights reserved.

The information contained herein and the statements
expressed are of a general nature and are not intended
to address the circumstances of any particular individual
or entity. Although we endeavor to provide accurate and
timely information and use sources we consider reliable,
there can be no guarantee that such information is
accurate as of the date it is received or that it will continue
to be accurate in the future. No one should act on such
information without appropriate professional advice after
a thorough examination of the particular situation.

C1309US 05.21