Overview

A manager assessment is a formal evaluation cycle in which you grade the skill proficiency of your direct reports. Manager assessments run in parallel with employee self-assessments — while your team members grade their own skills independently, you assess each of them using your organization’s grading scale (typically 1–5). When both are complete, the scorecard shows your grades and the employee’s self-assessed grades side-by-side for comparison. Manager assessments exist to provide an independent perspective alongside each employee’s self-reported proficiency. Together, manager and self-assessments give your organization a more complete picture of skills across the team, which feeds into skills gap analysis, development planning, and workforce reporting. Assessments are created and assigned by administrators. You receive manager assessments for the direct reports assigned to you in SkillsDB. You do not create assessments yourself — if you believe you should have an active assessment but cannot see one, contact your administrator. How you grade depends on how your administrator set up the assessment:

• Guided flow — If your administrator built a manager assessment flow, you complete a step-by-step flow that can include a welcome screen, information, and survey questions around the grading grid, and finishes with a Team Assessment Report. See Completing the Guided Assessment Flow.
• Grading grid only — If no flow was built, you grade your team directly in the grading grid, or grade each team member individually, from the assessment details page. See Batch Grading and Grading an Individual Team Member.

Both approaches use the same grading grid and the same grades. Only the surrounding steps differ.

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Navigating to Your Team’s Assessments

To view your active assessments select Team > Assessments from the left sidebar. The My Team Assessments page shows all assessments currently assigned to you, including completed and ended ones. ACE quick filters — Not Started, In Progress, Completed, and Ended — narrow the list. You can select several statuses at once; results match any selected status. Select an active filter again to clear it. With no status filters selected, all available statuses appear, so there is no separate All filter. Draft assessments are not shown. Each row in the table displays: Select an assessment title or its action button to open it.

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Completing the Guided Assessment Flow

When your administrator builds a manager assessment flow, grading is wrapped in a guided, full-screen flow instead of opening directly on the assessment details page. The flow walks you through any introductory steps your administrator added, then the grading grid, then submission and your results. A progress bar and a phase label at the top show where you are, and the current phase name — such as Welcome, Information, Questions, Grading your team, or Submit — appears beside the SkillsDB logo. Starting the flow

1. Open the assessment from the My Team Assessments page. If you have not started, the first screen’s button reads Get started; if you are returning, it reads Resume.

Move through the flow with the Next and Back controls at the bottom of each screen. Selecting Close (the X in the top right) leaves the flow and returns you to the My Team Assessments page — your grades are saved automatically, so you can return and continue later. Flow steps

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Opening an Assessment

Selecting an assessment opens its details page. This page is your home base for the full assessment — it shows overall progress, individual team member status, and your two grading options. Assessment metadata A card at the top of the page shows key information about the assessment: Batch grading card A prominent card shows your overall grading progress across the entire team, with a progress bar and a Start or Continue button. This is the entry point to batch grading. See Batch grading below for details. Direct reports table The table lists each of your direct reports with their current assessment status: Action buttons available for each employee: You can search for a specific team member using the search input above the direct reports table. The table filters by first or last name as you type.

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Grading an Individual Team Member

Individual grading lets you work through one team member’s skills at a time. This is best when you want to give each person careful attention, review skill-by-skill context, or add comments as you grade. Starting individual grading

1. In the direct reports table, select Start or Continue next to a team member’s name.

When opening an assessment for the first time, an intro modal appears before you begin grading. Step 1 — Keyboard shortcuts: The first screen shows all available keyboard shortcuts. Select Continue to proceed. Step 2 — Assessment overview: A summary screen shows key information before you begin. Select Start Assessment to begin. If you are returning to a partially completed assessment, the button reads Continue Assessment. Understanding the grading layout The grading interface is divided into three panels: The center panel displays:

• Skill title — Shown as “[Section]: Skill Name” (for example, “Leadership: Team Management”)
• Skill description — A collapsible description of the skill
• Progress counter — “X of Y graded” in the top right, updated after each grade

The grading table in the center panel contains:

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Grading a Skill

To assign a grade to a skill:

1. In the Grade column, select Add Grade to open the grade selector.
2. Choose the grade that best reflects this team member’s current proficiency. Each option shows a short description (for example, “Proficient”) and a longer explanation.
3. Select your chosen grade. The grade saves automatically — there is no separate save step.

The grade selector highlights two reference points to help you calibrate:

• A Benchmark badge next to the grade matching the role’s expected level
• A Prior badge next to the grade from the previous assessment cycle

After selecting a grade, the progress counter increments and the skill in the left sidebar shows a checkmark.

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Marking a Skill as Not Applicable

If a skill does not apply to a team member’s current role or responsibilities, you can mark it as Not Applicable instead of assigning a grade. To mark a skill as Not Applicable:

1. In the N/A column, toggle the switch on.

When a skill is marked Not Applicable:

• The grade is cleared and the Grade column shows an N/A indicator.
• Skill flag buttons are disabled for that skill.
• The skill counts as complete toward your assessment progress.
• The skill is excluded from the average grade calculation in the completion summary.

To reverse the Not Applicable status, toggle the switch off. The skill returns to an ungraded state and you can assign a grade normally.

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Adding Skill Flags

Skill flags let you designate a team member’s standing or development status for a specific skill. Flags are visible on the team member’s Skills Profile and in org-wide skills searches. To add a skill flag:

1. In the Skill flags section of the grading table, select the flag you want to apply.
2. The flag is saved immediately. Select it again to remove it.

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Setting a Custom Benchmark

Each role has a default benchmark grade configured by your administrator. You can override this for an individual team member if their expected proficiency level differs from the role default. To set a custom benchmark:

1. Select Update Benchmark next to the Benchmark value for a skill.
2. In the benchmark modal, select the grade that represents the expected level for this person.
3. Select Save.

The custom benchmark applies only to this person and does not affect the role-level default for other team members.

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Navigating Between Skills

You can move through skills in any order at any time during grading. Using the navigation buttons:

• Select Previous at the bottom of the page to return to the preceding skill.
• Select Next to advance to the next skill. The Next button activates once the current skill has been graded or marked Not Applicable.

Using the left sidebar:

• Select any skill to jump to it directly, regardless of order.
• Graded and N/A skills show a checkmark in the sidebar.

Using keyboard shortcuts:

• Press ← to move to the previous skill.
• Press → to move to the next skill.

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Submitting an Individual Assessment

You can submit your assessment for a team member once all their assigned skills have been graded or marked Not Applicable. When you select Next on the final skill (or press Enter), SkillsDB checks whether any skills remain incomplete. If incomplete skills remain: A modal appears listing all skills that still need a grade or N/A, grouped by job role. Select any skill in the list to navigate directly to it and complete your input. If all skills are complete: A completion modal appears showing a summary of your grading: To finalize:

1. Review the summary.
2. Select Submit.

Your assessment for this person is marked Completed and you are redirected to the scorecard. The Submit button in the direct reports table also submits a person’s assessment once all their skills are graded.

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Batch Grading

Batch grading lets you assess all of your direct reports skill by skill — working through one skill at a time across your entire team simultaneously. This is the most efficient approach for large teams and makes it easy to compare your team’s relative performance on each skill as you grade. Starting batch grading

1. On the assessment details page, select Start (or Continue) on the batch grading card.

An intro modal appears with an overview of the batch grading interface and available keyboard shortcuts. Batch grading keyboard shortcuts: Understanding the batch grading interface The batch grading interface has three panels: The center panel displays the current skill’s name and description at the top, followed by a row for each of your direct reports. Select a person’s cell (or use keyboard shortcuts) to assign a grade. Grades save automatically as you enter them. Moving between skills in batch grading After grading all team members for a skill, a confirmation prompt appears. Select Continue to advance to the next skill, or select any skill from the left sidebar to navigate directly to it. Use the right sidebar to see which skills still have ungraded cells. Submitting batch grading After grading all skills for all team members, a Submit Assessment confirmation modal appears. It confirms you have finished assessing all of your direct reports and states that once submitted, your grades are locked and can’t be changed, along with when your grades reach your reports’ skill profiles.

1. Select Submit to finish, or Cancel to keep grading.

Your assessment is marked Completed for all team members at once. You are redirected to the assessment details page, where you can open individual scorecards for each person.

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Viewing Scorecards and Results

After submitting an assessment for a team member, you can view their scorecard to see a side-by-side comparison of your grades and their self-assessed grades. To open a scorecard:

1. On the assessment details page, select Scorecard in the team member’s row.

The scorecard displays:

• Your manager-assessed grade for each skill
• The team member’s self-assessed grade for each skill (if they have submitted their assessment)
• The benchmark grade for each skill in their role
• A visual comparison across all three data points

The scorecard is read-only. Grades cannot be changed after submission. Opening results after submitting Once you have submitted a manager assessment — or your administrator has ended it — its row on the My Team Assessments page shows a Results action instead of Start or Continue. Selecting Results opens your results for that assessment:

• If the assessment has a manager flow, it opens your Team Assessment Report, which presents your grades for each report grouped by career.
• Otherwise, it opens the manager grades matrix for the assessment.

When a Team Assessment Report is available, a toggle in the top right switches between the Team Assessment Report and the Skills matrix so you can move between the career-level report and the full grid of grades.

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For Administrators: Setting Up a Manager Assessment Flow

Administrators control what managers are asked and graded on. On an assessment’s management page, the Manager Assessment card lets you shape the manager track independently of the Self Assessment track. Building the flow Each assessment has a separate build for the self track and the manager track. The manager track grades each report’s career skills in one grid; you can optionally add a cover, information cards, and survey questions around it. Launching the manager track When you launch an assessment, you choose the scope — the self track, the manager track, or both. The Schedule option is available only for the self assessment; the manager track launches immediately. If you launch the self track only, start the manager track later from its card on the management page. Reviewing manager responses On the assessment’s Results page, an Employees tab and a Managers tab appear when the assessment has both tracks. The Managers tab shows each submitting manager’s answers to the manager flow’s survey questions. Managers’ grades themselves live in the manager grades matrix, linked from the page.

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Common Questions

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