Common Questions about My Skills

• Why are these two Skills available?
  • Power Skills are more important to organizations than ever. Core skills including communication, cultural and social intelligence, and collaboration top lists of what employers are looking for in employees. Cultural Agility and Team Collaboration have always been core pillars of the learning offered by Aperian. They are also two skills that people at any level of an organization can work on. No prior experience or knowledge is necessary to achieve these Skills. My Skills will help learners develop the skills required in today's workforce. 

• What is the behavioral science behind this feature?
  
  • The activities that contribute to My Skills are designed to balance quick wins (which encourage further participation) with longer-term, more challenging engagement.
  • Many of the activities that contribute to My Skills are things that many learners already do, for example take the GlobeSmart Profile survey. Unexpectedly receiving a “reward” for this action can provide strong motivation.
  • Social learning can also be a strong motivator. The Team Collaboration Skill includes creating a GlobeSmart Profile team, encouraging colleagues to learn together. Our next iteration will include sharing completed Skills, which provides further social proof to learning and encourages accountability. 

• How can my organization benefit from using My Skills?
  • There are several benefits to both learners and Organization Owners:
    • With My Skills, learners now have an illuminated pathway within the Aperian platform guiding them to key experiences. Completing the Cultural Agility Skill is the perfect way to start your learning journey.
    • Learners can take small but meaningful steps towards achieving larger goals. They have a clear path to deeper engagement and building momentum.
    • Organization Owners now have a concise way to gauge learners' progress on the site, and what skills their users are achieving. 

Aperian Recommendation

We recommend embedding the Cultural Agility Skill as part of your new hire onboarding process as it provides a thorough introduction to understanding one's workstyle and the importance of working cross culturally.

• What kind of tracking or metrics do you offer related to My Skills?
  • Learners can keep track of their progress from the My Skills page or the header of any page. Completed activities receive a checkmark, and progress towards the Skill is measured on the circular chart. Once a Skill is complete, the Skill badge activates and the completion date is displayed.
  • Organization Owners can track their learners' Skill completions from the usage dashboards available in the Admin Center, or from the User Directory csv file. In addition, Organization Owners can view the aggregate number and percentage of employees that possess a skill.

• I attended Understand Your Work Style with the GlobeSmart Profile, but I haven't received credit yet on the My Skills page. What's going on?
  • Our system connects to the Zoom API once per day to gather the attendance for every program that occurred in the past 24 hours. For learners, this means that it can take up to 24 hours for their attendance to be credited towards the activity on My Skills. If it has been over 24 hours, please reach out to [e-mail] and we can look into specific situations.

• Can I share my Skill on social media?
  • While this feature is not available today, our development team is actively working on it now. Soon, learners will be able to click one button to share their completed Skill. It can be shared on LinkedIn, Slack, Microsoft Teams, or anywhere the learner chooses.

• How does this relate to Certifications offered by Aperian?
  • The purpose of Aperian Certifications is for practitioners to understand our products in depth and be able to facilitate sessions using them. Certification focuses on the foundations of a product, the mechanics of it, and prepares the facilitator to be able to answer difficult questions and facilitate productive discussions.
  • My Skills, on the other hand, is designed for all platform users to engage with, no facilitation experience necessary! Anyone can get started completing activities and achieving Skills. It's a great way to begin learning about cultural agility and more.

• What's coming next?
  • As mentioned above, we're actively working on the functionality to share completed Skills on other sites. Beyond that, we'd love to hear your feedback! What Skills would you like to see added? What would make My Skills most helpful to your organization? You can share here or reach out to us at [e-mail].