When recruiting new talents, HR professionals often make decisions based on someone’s competencies, motivation, intelligence or personality. They try to predict how successful a person will be in the job. Will this new hire fit into the team? Will there be a fit with the direct manager? How will this employee perform over time and grow within their expertise?

But what if the current market situation changes completely? What if the job content is constantly changing or the field disappears altogether? Should HR then simply look for new people to take over? Based on which parameters can you predict whether someone will be successful?

IQ and education no longer the only predictor of job success

With agile employees, or people with a high learning capacity, you can be sure that you have people on board who can easily adapt to new or changing situations. These employees are curious and self-critical. They will learn thrive faster in an environment that is constantly changing, and will actively seek this out.

Learning Agility refers to the capacity to adapt to change or a new environment. The definition says: the ability to quickly and flexibly develop new effective behaviour based on new experiences and to successfully apply that behaviour. Faster adaptation leads to higher performance.

Mapping the agility of your people will only become more important in the future, especially now that jobs are insecure, markets are constantly changing and work fields are evolving.

From the literature, we can summarise the concept of Learning Agility in four pillars: Change Agility, Results Agility, People Agility and Mental Agility. In cooperation with TalentLogiQs we poured the concept into a measurable model to which we added a fifth pillar, namely Career Agility, and thus developed the Learning Agility Assessment.

What does the Learning Agility Assessment measure? The extent to which someone has the attitude to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and whether or not they are able to give direction to their own career.

Change Agility refers to the passion to want to experiment. People with a high Change Agility score do not avoid strange activities but rather tackle them head on, they like to explore and find pleasure in "everything new".

Results Agility is about achieving results even in difficult circumstances. People who score high on Results Agility perform well under pressure, radiate self-confidence and succeed in inspiring others to bring out the best in themselves.

People Agility refers to good self-knowledge and a good understanding of the people around you. People with a high score on People Agility want to understand others well and thus also manage to gather more feedback and input. They have an eye for diversity and can easily adapt their style to the target group.

Mental Agility is the ability to analyse information or a problem from different angles. People who score high on Mental Agility like complex situations, quickly make logical connections and also like to explain their way of thinking to others. Their open perspective encourages creativity.

Career Agility refers to the attitude of the individual to take control of and direct their own career. People with a high score on Career Agility adapt easily to changing circumstances within their own position or easily take on tasks outside their own role.

✔️ Powerful predictor of job success

✔️ Measuring agility or learning capacity in changing times

✔️ Faster adaptation to change leads to higher performance

✔️ Knowing who has the ability to learn quickly and effectively from new experiences

✔️ Relying on scientifically validated weapon during the war for talent

✔️ Tools for the employee with development tips

Learning Agility-Rapport

Download the report

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Receive your online invitation for the Learning Agility Assessment

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2.

Complete the assessment

Learning Agility Assessment
- 15 min

The Learning Agility Report is a simple report consisting of two parts:

• a results page showing the score on the five pillars, further detailed in a score on different subscales underlying each pillar
• a page that highlights some of the strengths of the employees and gives some development tips to encourage the employee to continue to develop themself

All scores are normalised and reported in STen scores. An STen score of 1 indicates a very low score compared to the reference group, while an STen score of 10 indicates an extremely high score.

How to interpret?

At a glance you can see for which aspects someone does or does not have sufficient Agility.

• Mental Agility

We see someone who is open to change and tries to look at problems or opportunities from different angles (Curiosity & Intellectual Agility), but without trying to get to the heart of the problem (Nonconformism, Lateral thinking & Inquisitive attitude).

• People Agility

We see some good things in People Agility but also development points. If this person could be more empathetic and learn to adapt their message better to the target group within the organisation, they could possibly achieve even better results (Empathy & Communicative Agility).

• Change Agility

This Change Agility score indicates that this person is more of a doer, who likes to take action and accept responsibility for it (Experimentation, Innovativeness & Responsibility).

• Results Agility

Convinced of the actions, this person will be truly agile in relation to the set goals and will adjust their actions when obstacles arise in order to still achieve the desired result (Performance Orientation & Flexibility).

• Career Agility

Furthermore, we see that this person has less maturity to steer their own career and will rather adopt a wait-and-see attitude when opportunities arise, making them dependent on the organisation to provide opportunities. This may imply a risk of being susceptible to offers from outside the organisation (Self-initiation & Mobility).

Finally, in the report you can find some strengths and development points for agility based on these results. Below is a strength and a development tip for this person:

Intellectual agility: Thinks of new and different ways to solve problems, can choose different angles to solve a problem.

Non-compliance: strengthen your ability to break free from ingrained habits by thinking critically about the usefulness and efficiency of the way things are done. Try to identify what can be improved and communicate this constructively, even if you do not yet have the solution.

We stay true to our credit model. Use one credit per participant you invite. A credit will only be deducted from your balance when the candidate starts the assessment. The unit price of a credit is € 44, the minimum purchase obligation is 10 credits. Need more credits? Ask for our volume discount.

No start cost!

Operational within one working day!

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Predicting job success is a theme that has been studied intensively since the 1980s. To date, researchers have not succeeded in providing a well-founded description of the personality and motivation characteristics of 'the ideal employee', given that the interaction with the context plays such a decisive role in this. Attention soon shifted to the individual's motivation to develop further as well as the ability to learn, to deal flexibly with changes in this context. However, knowledge about this domain was limited and researchers have been trying to fill this void ever since. In the 2000s, the term "Learning Agility" emerged, which is now very popular in occupational and organisational psychology.

An interesting finding from these studies is that there are strong inter-individual differences between individuals regarding the ability to learn from past experiences. To develop yourself and learn, you need to be curious, to dare to leave your comfort zone and look for new experiences that may be contrary to your habits. It is precisely this skill that Learning Agility refers to and that we want to map out with this assessment.

Can't find the ideal candidate you are looking for today? Then consider a high potential, who may not (yet) have the appropriate experience but who stands out in terms of resilience, adaptability and the desire to grow.

Thalento is a valuable addition to the personal conversations we have with applicants or our employees. Not only do the results prove to be very truthful, they are also excellent conversation material for deepening and discussing certain characteristics.

Karen Van der Aa - First Floor Careers

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