Rating scales describe competencies and objectives in a general way.
Rating scales are of three types:
Proficiency scales measure a person's mastery of a skill or technique. For example, a person's management skills could be:
Basic
Good
Excellent
Expert
You apply proficiency rating scales to competencies only. You can apply a single proficiency scale to multiple competencies. (Alternatively, you can define proficiency levels that are unique to a competency. See: Competency Measurement)
You can measure unit standard competencies using proficiency rating scales. You may want to measure all enterprise competencies using the same scale, for example. However, you must also define outcomes and assessment criteria for unit standard competencies if they are to lead to formal qualifications.
Performance scales measure a worker's delivery of a competency or objective. A worker's competency can rank high on a proficiency scale but less high on a performance scale, or low on a proficiency scale but much higher on a performance scale. You can select a performance rating scale when defining competency assessment templates, objective assessment templates, and appraisal templates.
Weighting scales measure the importance of a competency to the enterprise. For example, a competency's importance could be one of:
Low
Medium
High
A skill that is extremely important to the enterprise would attract a higher weighting than one that is occasionally relevant or of minor importance. You can select a weighting scale when defining a competency assessment template.
Note: You can also apply weighting values to objectives. However, you do not use weighting scales. Instead, the lookup HR_WPM_WEIGHTING defines a single scale for use throughout the enterprise.
You can create rating scales that are available to a particular business group only, or, if your system administrator has set the HR: Cross Business Group profile option to Yes, you can create global rating scales that are available to all organizations within your enterprise. If you use more than one rating scale of a particular type (for example, if you use multiple proficiency rating scales), ensure they are comparable by giving high numbers to high ratings and low numbers to low ratings.
When you define a proficiency, performance, or weighting scale you can make it the default scale of that type either within the current business group or globally.
You can add attachments to rating scales. For example, you can attach a competency or objective description or a video of a person demonstrating a skill.