Welcome to Skills Direct, South Africa's leading Competency based Skills Assessment Tool. The Skills Direct Assessment Tool is a fully customizable web application designed specifically to meet the needs of the South African market.

In essense the Skills Direct Assessment Tool provides organisations with the ability to assess any number of employees against their assigned Key Results Areas with associated Competencies and Behaviors. Assessments are completed online by the users and then by their respective managers, which provides a 180-degree feedback for each individual employee.

The Skills Direct Assessment Tool is a major advance in the labour intensive, manual process of completing organisational Skills Assessements. The major benefits of the tool is:

- Fully scalable and able to accommodate thousands of users.
- Available with a pre-populated competencies and behaviors.
- Customizable for each organisation with the ability to create
  unlimited Job Profiles, Key Results Areas, Competencies and
  Behaviors.
- Rapid deployment means that assessments can be done within a
  matter of days from initiation.
- Because assessments are done online, users can access the
  system from any of an organisations regional, national or
  international offices.
- Improved project management as reports of incomplete
  assessments are available in realtime.
- 180-Degree feedback on assessments.
- Realtime processing of assessments, result in considderable
  reductions in the time to complete the Skills Assessment process.

The organisational benefits of a Skills Assessment can be considered as:*

Increased revenue. Increased turnover is generated when workers are able to exploit technology, are able to interact with clients positively, and are willing to identify and exploit new ways of doing things and market opportunities. Skills can contribute to these outcomes, which can translate into improved profits and growth.

Decreased or avoided expenses. Skilled workers can reduce expenses in a number of ways. Workers can undertake routine maintenance; detect faults, solve problems smartly, make fewer ignorant errors and breakages and they can address client complaints in a way that builds relationships. Skills can contribute to all these outcomes.

Intangible benefits. When workers know that their employer is committed to their skills development they are more likely to stay, more likely to tell other skilled workers about their positive working
environment making further recruitment possible, more likely to extend their efforts when needed… Clients and customers respond well to environments where people work well as teams… the list goes on.

Employers who train gain.*

They get a grant back from their Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA).

They can even get more back than they contributed. Employers may claim discretionary grants and a SETA MAY pay these. These grants do not depend on how much you pay for the levy. The SETAs will decide these grants based on whether the skills development activities being proposed contribute to the implementation of sector skills plans. There will be grants for learnerships, skills programmes, apprenticeships and for sector strategic projects of the SETA. For more details, contact your SETA.

Most importantly, they get to enjoy the fruits of their investment i.e. increased revenue, decreased or avoided expenses and intangible benefits. These are real – as the 1998 OECD study confirmed. The purpose of the grant is to encourage employers to take the first step - indeed to act in their own best interest! It was introduced to change the culture of limited training in our country.

The National Skills Development Strategy has the following key objectives:*

- Developing a culture of high quality life-long learning.

- Fostering skills development in a formal economy for productivity
  and employment growth.

- Stimulating and supporting skills development in small businesses.

- Promoting skills development for employability and sustainable
  livelihoods through social development initiatives.

- Assisting new entrants into employment.


* Source - Department of Labour