Global Skills Assessment: Four Years On

Helping Organizations Understand People’s Behavior at Work

It is hard to believe that it has been over a decade since SHL’s Science team created Apta, our patented measurement framework directly aligned to the Universal Competency Framework (UCF).

The UCF is an evidence-based competency framework that provides a basis for understanding people’s behavior at work and their likelihood of success. Over the years, clients used Apta in many custom and standard products, helping them find the most talented and best-aligned candidates for roles across job levels, industries, and countries. Apta was a stride forward in allowing SHL to offer powerful, customizable solutions to clients—but we did not stop there!

SHL Universal Competency Framework

Two years ago, we wrote about the unlimited possibilities contained within the Global Skills Assessment (GSA), an evolution of Apta that measures all 96 skills in the narrowest level of the UCF, SHL’s Skills Taxonomy.

A lot has happened in that time, and the Science team has been hard at work, implementing the GSA in more and more places and uncovering new and exciting use cases. In this blog, we’ll summarize all the developments we’ve made and show where the GSA is now—and how it can help skills-based organizations maximize the value of their talent strategies.

What can the GSA do?

The GSA is an incredibly versatile assessment. It allows clients to bring a data-driven approach to their talent initiatives, allowing them to:

• Administer a single assessment and assess fit for the skill requirements of various roles within an organization (skills-based hiring)

• Administer at multiple points in time to track an individual’s skill development at various stages in their careers (skills-based development)

• Map to client frameworks

• Combine skills to measure any broader construct of interest, such as SHL’s AI Skills Framework

• Quantify an employee’s skills profile for talent mobility, giving a more comprehensive understanding of their behaviors and their fit for open job roles in the organization

• Use in validation studies – measuring a wide range of skills to determine which are the best predictors of performance

The GSA is included in a variety of standard offerings from SHL, including our suite of Job Focused Assessments. It also forms a key part of SHL’s Talent Management offering, where it supports talent management and shines a light on the skills that an individual may have outside of the job role that they currently occupy.

The GSA is a key to unlocking greater insights into an organization’s workforce, allowing companies to maximize the value of the employees they already have, and identify high-fit candidates for incoming roles.

While SHL has been busy employing the GSA in our newest talent management solutions, the Science team has been hard at work behind the scenes. We are thrilled to announce that the GSA has been certified and granted Registered Test status by the British Psychological Society* and has been certified by the Health Professions Council of South Africa. These certifications reflect the high quality of the science behind the GSA’s construction.

SHL’s talented teams will continue to identify new, innovative, high impact use cases for the GSA. Here’s to the next four years!

Visit our Skills Development page to learn more.

* The British Psychological Society has certified the English (International) version of the GSA, the version most used. SHL has rigorous translation and localization effort processes that ensures other language versions of the test meet the same standards.