Real Skills: Online assessment tool

Real Skills is a free online self-assessment tool available to organisations in the mental health, addiction and disability sectors. It has been developed by Te Pou o te Whakaaro Nui and Matua Raḵi to provide an easy way for organisations and the workforce to assess knowledge and skills and plan targeted workforce development.

To work well with people who have problems with addiction, mental health and/or disabilities we need to demonstrate competency in many areas of practice. If your organisation is using or wants to use any of the following frameworks then Real Skills can provide you with an easy way to gather, access and review information on your workforce’s knowledge and skills.

This information can help to identify particular areas that might need development in order to provide best care for people accessing services.

Workers can assess themselves against any of these frameworks, based on which is relevant to them and their role at any point in time:

• Let’s get real
• Let’s get real: Disability
• Te Whare o Tiki – co-existing problems knowledge and skills framework
• Competencies for the mental health and addiction service user, consumer and peer workforce

Aggregated reports provide a snapshot or baseline indicator of current workforce capability and workforce development needs

Real Skills provides the ability for organisations to sign up their entire workforce in order to generate organisational, service and/or team level reports. These reports aggregate anonymous self-assessment information from any framework that the organisation has identified is relevant to their work. 

This information can then be used to create workforce development plans in the specific areas where the greatest needs have been identified.

All assessment information is securely stored in people’s profiles and they can easily return and update as required. 

Is your organisation ready for Real Skills?

To determine whether your organisation will benefit from Real Skills online assessment tool, are the following statements true for your organisation? 

• Our management team are on board with the idea and committing the time and resource to roll this out to staff. 
• We have decided how individual’s assessments will be incorporated into existing appraisal processes or form a new solution for us.
• Our organisation would like our staff to reflect the values, attitudes, knowledge and skill described in one or more of these frameworks.
• Our staff have been informed of the Real Skills online assessment tool and know why and how they will use the online system.  
• We can provide the following data for each staff member we’re signing up to Real Skills: first name, last name, email address, team name, indication if they are a team leader, region of work (DHB district). We understand this data is stored securely and only visible in Real Skills by our Real Skills champion and the individuals themselves. 
• We have a manager, or other nominated person from within our organisation, assigned to oversee the set up and administration of Real Skills (our Real Skills champion). This person: 

1. has access to a computer and work email
2. is confident in the use of online systems 
3. has a good knowledge of our organisation’s structure
4. has access to information on teams within the organisation.

All set?  

Sign up your organisation, or to find out more about Real Skills online and whether it is right for your organisation, please contact one of our team:

Ashley Koning (Matua Raki)

Jo Van Leeuwen (Te Pou) 

Synthia Dash (Te Pou - Disability team)