The Performance Management area of your platform contains many powerful features that can be used to track, appraise, confirm, and report on skills that your users have.

The article is broken up into several different areas:

Employees: This area shows you all of your platform users and their current Status, such as whether they are below or meeting expectations in terms of skills acquired and shown, as well as allowing you to quickly access their dashboards for more in-depth information.

Skills: This area allows you to create different skills that you can track across your platform. Skills can be assigned to courses, learning paths, assessments, and more, and will award customizable amounts of points upon the assigned item's completion.

Competencies: This area allows you to create competencies that will be awarded once users have accrued a set number of points in different skills.

Jobs: This area allows you to specify jobs or roles in your platform and assign skills and competencies to each. Users will be tracked in terms of their performance and status in each of the assigned areas and an overall status will be assigned based on the graded performance.

Performance Reviews: This area allows you to have create Performance Reviews where users can review the performance of other users in your platform, whether it's their own performance, their peers', or someone they manage.

Skills Matrix: Provides quick, at-a-glance overviews of which users have achieved a certain skill level or competency.

This article will also cover Grading Performance Reviews.

To get started, click on Performance Management then on Skills.

Click Set Skill Levels in the upper-right to customize the different skill levels users can achieve.

To add a skill, click on the New Skill button.

Give it a name and description. If you want to specify what is required for each skill level in the particular skill, click on the Rubric button to expand the fields. When you're done, click Create Skill.

Once a skill has been created, you can edit its name and description, and view the point leaderboard and rubric. Clicking on the trash icon will delete the skill.

Once you’ve finished creating your skills, click on Performance Management then on Competencies. Click the New Competency button.

After giving it a name and description, click on Edit Skills Required.

You’ll be shown a list of all of the skills you added. In the list, use the checkboxes to select the ones that should count towards this competency, then set the skill level required. A user will need to meet the required levels for all of the selected skills in order to earn the competency. Once finished, click on Create Competency to save your changes.

Now all that’s left is to assign Skills to your assessments, checklists, courses, and learning paths. We’ll be using a Course as an example, but the feature functions the same way for all of the other elements and will be found in the respective Settings tabs.

After clicking on the course you want to add skills to, click on Course Settings and scroll down until you see the Skills Acquired area. Click on the Manage Skills button.

You’ll be able to use the checkboxes to specify which skills are earned, as well as the number of points that will be awarded for each of them. Once you’re finished, click on Save Skills.

To create a job, click on Performance Management, then on Jobs. Click on Create New Job.

After naming your Job, use the Skills Required dropdown to specify which skills are required, if any, along with their Skill Level. You can also use the Competencies Required dropdown to specify which competencies are needed for the Job. Both dropdowns allow you to select multiple items.

Click on Add User Rules. Rules determine which users will be assigned the Job.

Click on Add User Rule to add your first rule.

In the list on the right, choose the parameter you want to base the first rule off of.

Use the dropdown to select the style of filter, and enter the value you want to filter against in the text box. Once done, click Apply Filter.

Once you've created a rule, you can click on Add Filter to add additional rules. At the bottom, select whether any or all filters must be met in order for users to be added to the Job. Once done, click Confirm.

You will see your rule set added to the page. If you want to add additional rule sets, click on Add User Rule again and repeat the process until you have all of the rule sets you require — users who match any of the rule sets will be assigned to the Job. Clicking on Preview Users will show you a list of users who currently match the rules.

Click Save once you're done.

Finally, click Create Job to add the job to your SkyPrep platform and add it to the list of Jobs in your platform.

Clicking on the name of a Job in the list will take you to the overview page. On this page, you'll see an overview of which Skills and Competencies are required, a list of users who are assigned the Job and whether they are below or are meeting expectations, as well as any Performance Reviews which include the Job as one of its components.

Performance Reviews tie everything together and allow users to appraise the skills of others or themselves, all within the platform.

To get started, click on Performance Management, then on Performance Reviews. Click on New Performance Review to create your first one.

Give your Performance Review a name and an optional description. Next, use the Based On dropdown to select which Skills, Competencies, and/or Jobs the Performance Review will be based on. These will be graded using the Skill Levels you created, along with text comments. You can also use the Open Ended Evaluation option to add additional areas that users will be appraised in — the text you enter will be the appraisal area title.

Click Next once done.

Next, use the Add User Rules under Employees to determine who will be appraised using the Performance Review.

The Reviewers toggles determine who will be doing the appraisals. For both Peer and Manager, you will need to add rules to determine who the reviewers are.

After adding a rule, you can click on Add Filter again to add an additional rule, and set whether any or all rules must be matched using the toggles at the bottom. The Preview Users button will show a list of users who match the rules.

Once you're done with the rules, click on Save.

Click Next to move to the next section.

Set the Start Date — this will be the first date that a Performance Review is available for completion.

The Due Date specifies how many days users have to complete the Performance Review. You can use the Due Date Reminder to automatically send reminder emails for incomplete Performance Reviews. This field is comma-separated, so entering "3,5" will send emails five and three days prior to the due date.

Finally, set how frequently the Performance Review should be run. You can choose between a one-time review with Not Recurring, Annually, Semi-Annually, Quarterly, and Manual which allows you to specify the frequency in either days, months, or years.

Click Next once finished.

On the next page, you can choose to enroll users into courses if they do not meet expectations if Jobs are assigned. The expected levels are the levels you specified in Jobs during the creation process.

You can also add Recommended Courses that will always be shown regardless of the appraisal outcome.

Click Next once finished.

Confirm that all of the settings are correct, then click on Create Performance Review.

To complete a performance review, you have two methods. You can click on the Pending Performance Review number, then on the number in the list of available Performance Reviews.

Click on the User you wish to appraise.

Alternatively, you can click on Performance Management, then on Performance Reviews.

Next, click on the Performance Review you want to complete.

Navigate to the My Reviews tab then click on the user you want to appraise.

Both methods will lead to the next screen. Click on the Skill Levels to choose the appraised level, and enter any comments if necessary.

You can use the Save Progress button to save your progress without submitting the appraisal, or submit it using the Submit button.

To see all of your users and where they stand in terms of proficiency, click on Performance Management then on Users.

This page will list users and their current Status based on assigned Jobs. To view more information on a user, click on the Name.

You will be taken to their dashboard where you can see their overview.

At the top, you'll find the number of Skills and Competencies acquired, as well as the number of Performance Reviews they've had done, along with the resulting status.

Below, you'll find the history of the Skills they've earned, including time stamps showing when their skill levels changed.

Beside that, you'll find the Skills Map that overlays their current skill levels on top of the required skill levels to give quick, at-a-glance information of where they are meeting or falling short of expectations.

Below, you'll see a chart that shows their skills earned over time beside a chart that shows training they completed that count towards skill levels.

Beneath the charts, there are two lists that show their Competencies and related statuses, and their Performance Reviews and related statuses.

Finally, at the very bottom, there will be a section that shows their recommended courses based on their appraised skills, with buttons to Recommend or Enroll the user.