It’s no secret that AI is transforming learning at every level. This is true in our classrooms, where AI-powered capabilities, including personalised learning and instantaneous feedback, are helping students to thrive. It’s also true in our workplaces, where AI-powered skills platforms stand to turn historically tedious training focuses into one of the easiest parts of the working day.
This ease is set to become especially vital across the soft skills that are now a priority for over 90% of HR professionals. Key focuses, including teamwork, collaboration, and problem-solving, are quickly overtaking hard skills in their ability to transform internal operations, but they’re notoriously difficult markers to measure. AI-powered skills platforms like Helix provide an easy-to-reach solution that ensures real-time, fully trackable soft skill results. Keep on reading to find out how.
What is Helix?
Helix was developed by the team behind the intuitive LMS, 5app, and is an AI-powered skills platform that aims to integrate soft skills measurements into your everyday workflow. Far from requiring in-depth and time-consuming standalone assessments, Helix integrates with your existing systems, including Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet, to understand team performance and potential improvements based on the meetings you’re already having.
Helix then uses these insights to help you develop and grow the soft skills that will drive genuine personal development within your company. This invaluable tool provides live scores for employees across the ‘Core 9’ soft skills, and ensures clear, actionable feedback that’s designed to slot straight into your company’s inner workings. Helix also tracks real-time progress over time using intuitive data that’s fully accessible on a visual dashboard that shows you, at a glance, how every member of your team is developing, or struggling to perfect unique soft skills focuses.
How Does Helix Measure Core Skills?
Helix is powered by a proprietary 3Q engine that analyses real-world communication based on quantitative and qualitative signals, and the quotient of sentiment or tone. In other words, it considers everyday behaviours and turns them into insights you can actually use. These insights are then measured against an ‘out-of-the-box’ essential skill set known as the ‘Core-9 skills’, which are –
- Accountability
- Active listening
- Change management
- Coaching
- Coachability
- Communication
- Growth mindset
- Results-focused
- Strategic vision
This skill set is specifically developed to help you hone essential leadership behaviours that, as well as ensuring employee development, make it more likely that your team will work harmoniously and productively. You can choose to either invite Helix to all of your meetings, or you can opt in on meetings that allow you to zone in on core sets of employees. You can also remove Helix during a meeting if you want to focus on specific skills or areas of conversation that help to guide learning in the future.
Helix: Providing Unbiased Assessments Whenever you Need Them
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, soft skills assessments have always been rife with problems. Aside from being generally difficult to judge, manual skills tests are at significant risk of falling foul of bias, including preconceived notions of seniority within a company.
Helix stands to simplify soft skills assessments on all fronts. As well as measuring everyday performance without the need for dedicated skill tests, Helix helps to eliminate bias by considering only standardised feedback that eliminates the blind spots often seen within human-only reviews.
Helix also ensures updated feedback about skills development, both routinely and on request, thanks to options that include –
- Live dashboard: A live dashboard provides clearly displayed visual summaries and percentage scores to help you instantly spot strengths and growth areas across the entire Core 9 skills suite.
- Personalised Summaries: Helix also sends personalised summaries straight to your inbox every single week, which outline actionable insights immediately after meetings, as well as weekly performance roundups to keep your training focus on track.
And Helix doesn’t just provide the insights you need to sort soft skills once and for all – it also provides the tools you need to transform, thanks to its integration with another 5app must-have tool – VeeCoach. This AI-powered coaching tool is the secret you need in your soft skills arsenal, and uses all of the insights you’ll glean via Helix to surface personalised content, courses, and learning activities to fill performance gaps with ease.
Pros: Taking Back Ownership of Genuine Development
Helix provides undeniable benefits for businesses that are keen to tackle training at last, but don’t have the time or know-how to do it themselves. Without lengthy assessments, human bias, or inevitable skills blindspots, this simple tool can help you to take back ownership of development once and for all. Just a few of the most notable benefits that Helix has to offer include –
- On-the-job skills assessments
- Integrated operations across Zoom, Microsoft Tools, and Google Meet
- Real-time performance tracking
- Clear, actionable feedback
- Ongoing assessment according to the ‘Core 9’ leadership skills
Cons: Is it Right for Your Budget?
Helix has a lot going for it, but no tool is the ideal fit for every company. Generally speaking, Helix is developed for use within sizable companies that need a little help bringing soft skills learning back down to scale, and its price point reflects that. You’ll undeniably get better value out of this program if you’re using it to assess sizable teams that would be impossible to monitor otherwise. For that reason, Helix may not be the best option for smaller businesses, though it could become a great investment as soon as you start to scale operations.
Conclusion: Helix Has a Place in Any Sizable B2B Enterprise
Bringing your business up to scratch is now as much about soft skills as it is about technical proficiencies and qualifications on paper. Tools like Helix ensure that you’re better able to measure, monitor, and improve soft skills outcomes without losing significant time to the task. Sizable B2B enterprises could certainly benefit from signing up and allowing Helix to sit in on meetings that could easily end up meaning more for your company than you might realise.
