Assessing someone's skills works best when it happens alongside the rest of their review, not as a separate task. The skill assessment question lets you evaluate an employee's proficiencies right inside a review, using the same skills and expected levels that show on their profile.
This guide covers how to set it up, who can participate, and how the results end up on the employee's profile.
Note: This article covers the skill assessment question in new reviews. If you're still running classic reviews, see Assessing skills in classic reviews near the end of this article.
How skill assessment works in reviews
The skill assessment question is a question type you can add to a review. When respondents answer it, they are presented with a list of skills to be assessed for that employee, grouped by area of expertise. For each skill, they can select an option from the list of proficiencies displayed, or pick 'do not wish to answer' if that option was made available.
Two choices determine what shows up on that question:
Which skills get assessed, based on the sourcing method you choose (see Choosing what skills get assessed below).
Who assesses them, based on the participant configuration you choose (see Choosing who participates below).
Once the review reaches a final summary, the assessed skills are compiled into a skill evaluation summary, and that summary represents what skills and proficiencies will be applied to employee's profile upon completing the review (see What gets saved, and when below).
Setting up the skill assessment question
You add the skill assessment question the same way you add any other question to a review.
Open the template you want to add it to, or create a new one. See Create and manage review templates for the general template builder.
Use a questionnaire for your feedback step or review meeting step including a Skill assessment as the question type.
Choose the sourcing method and the participant configuration for this question, both covered below.
Save your template.
Tip: You can add the skill assessment question to a dedicated skill assessment template, or include it inside your regular performance review template alongside your other questions.
Choosing which skills get assessed
Every skill assessment question needs a source: where the skills, areas of expertise, and expected proficiencies come from. You can select this from the review template builder when your questionnaire contains a skill assessment question.
Note: If your review uses multiple questionnaires, each with a skill assessment question, that setting will apply to both questionnaires.
Default method: positions and skill mappings (recommended)
This is the recommended method for all reviews. The skills shown are the ones connected to the employee's position, either directly or through a skill mapping, the same skills that appear on their profile. See Assigning skills to employees for how to connect skills to positions and mappings.
Legacy method: reuse classic reviews assignment
You can also source this question's skills the way classic reviews do: through skills individually assigned to employees, groups, or custom fields in the skills library. Choosing this method doesn't change which review type you're running. It only changes where this particular skill question pulls its skills from, and it won't include an expected proficiency to compare against.
Note: This exists mainly to support customers who haven't moved to positions and skill mappings yet. It isn't the recommended path for new setups. See Assigning skills to employees for how classic assignment works.
Choosing who participates
The skill assessment question supports several participant configurations, so you can match how you already run reviews.
Manager assessment
Only the employee's manager assesses the skills. This is the simplest setup, with no self-assessment and no meeting to schedule.
Self-assessment
Only the employee assesses their own skills. Use this to build awareness of where they stand against the expected level for their position.
Manager and employee (performance review)
Both the manager and the employee assess the skills, each writing their own preparation first. During the review meeting, they agree together on a final assessment, which becomes the version that saves.
Manager and skip-level manager
The employee's manager and their skip-level manager (their manager's manager) assess the skills together. Use this when you want a second, more senior perspective on the same employee.
360 skill assessment
Peers, along with the manager and employee, each assess the skills independently. A designated person, usually the manager, then reviews everyone's input and decides on the final assessment.
Tip: If you're rolling out skill assessment for the first time, start with manager assessment only. It's the easiest to explain to your team, and you can add self-assessment or peer input in a later cycle once everyone's used to it.
What gets saved, and when
The skill assessment question can appear in three different steps: as part of feedback, preparations, and in the final summary.
Answers given during feedback and preparations stay inside the review.
If someone assesses skills as feedback, or as part of their preparation for the meeting, that input is visible within the review but doesn't save to the employee's profile on its own.
Only the final summary promotes to the profile.
The summary is written during the review meeting, after preparation (if enabled), and it's the only version of the skill assessment that updates the employee's profile.
Note: This means a skill assessed only in the feedback step, with no meeting summary covering it, never reaches the employee's profile. If you want the assessment saved, make sure it's included in the meeting summary.
Completing a skill assessment during a review
If you've been asked to assess someone's skills as part of a review, here's what you'll see and how to answer.
Note: For the general mechanics of giving feedback, preparing, and writing a meeting summary, see Employee and Manager Guide to Participating in Reviews.
This section covers what's specific to the skill assessment question.
For each skill, you'll see its name, its area of expertise, and the proficiency scale to choose from. Select the level that best matches the employee's current proficiency.
You can also choose Prefer not to answer for any individual skill, if the option is enabled. Use this when you don't have enough insight into a specific skill, rather than guessing.
Example: A manager who just took over a new team doesn't yet know how strong one of their reports is at a niche technical skill. Instead of guessing, they select Prefer not to answer for that skill and assess the ones they're confident about.
Reading the skill evaluation summary
Once a skill assessment question is completed in a review meeting, participants see a skill evaluation summary. It's only available in the meeting note, not in feedback or preparation.
The summary shows the percentage of the employee's skills that are above, at, or below their expected proficiency:
Above expected: the employee exceeds the level expected for their position.
At expected: the employee meets the level expected for their position.
Below expected: the employee is below the level expected for their position.
You can also open the full detail for any individual skill to see its expected level, its current assessed level, and what each participant said during preparation. If the assessed level increased since the last assessment, the summary shows that progress too.
How results save to the employee's profile
Once a review is completed in full, the skill evaluation summary saves to the employee's profile as their latest assessment for each skill.
Note: This save only happens once, when the review is first completed. If a review supervisor reopens the review afterward, any changes made at that point stay inside the review and don't save to the profile again.
Handling position or skill changes during a review
Positions and skills can change while a review is already running: an employee moves to a new position, HR adjusts which skills or proficiencies apply, or the wording of a skill changes. Here's how the skill assessment question handles that.
A step uses the setup that existed when it started.
Once a step, like a feedback step or a meeting, is started, it uses the position and skills as they existed at that exact moment, including their wording.
Reopening a step surfaces what changed.
If HR reopens a step after a change has happened, participants see a notice explaining what's different, such as a renamed skill, a changed position, or a new proficiency level. Nothing is applied automatically.
Nothing already submitted changes on its own.
Applying a change is a deliberate action. A completed step, or a completed review, never updates itself just because a position or skill changed elsewhere.
Note: We generally don't recommend changing positions, skills, or proficiencies while a review is in progress, since it can create confusion for participants. Small corrections, like fixing a typo, are fine. For bigger changes, it's usually better to wait until the review is complete.
Assessing skills in classic reviews
If you're still running classic reviews, you can assess skills there too, using the classic skill assignment method instead of the skill assessment question described above.
Turn on the scale evaluation question for the skill you want to assess. See Assigning skills to employees for how classic assignment works.
Add the skill question to your classic review. The manager and the employee each write their own preparation.
During the review meeting, the manager writes a final summary together with the employee. This becomes the version that saves to the employee's profile.
Note: This method is intended for customers who haven't moved to positions and skill mappings yet. We don't recommend it for anyone setting up skill assessment for the first time, since new reviews with the default method give you an expected level to compare against.
Examples
Scenario: Rolling out a company-wide skill check-in
HR wants to check every employee's skills against their position's expected level once a quarter. They set up a dedicated skill assessment workflow using the default method (positions and skill mappings) with manager assessment only, and launch it as a campaign across the whole company.
Scenario: A senior engineer's 360 skill assessment
An engineering lead wants a fuller picture of a senior engineer's skills before a promotion decision. They set up a 360 skill assessment with the manager, two peers, and the employee all assessing independently, and the manager decides on the final assessment based on everyone's input.
Scenario: A skip-level check on an expected level
A manager and their skip-level manager assess an employee's skills together as part of an annual review. The skip-level manager's broader view across teams helps confirm the expected level is set correctly for the employee's position.