AQi Index

The Adaptability Quotient Index (AQi) is the scoring layer at the heart of our SkillsAssessorAQ product. It is how we turn a skill assessment into a number you can act on — for hiring, internal mobility, upskilling, and career recommendation.

What the AQi measures

SkillsAssessorAQ quantifies the skill levels of an entire workforce at any single point in time. The AQi organizes every score into three domains:

• Functional — the role-specific technical skills a worker actually applies on the job.
• Foundational — reading, numeracy, and digital competency. These align to international standards defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
• Adaptability — six adaptability sub-domains we measure on every assessment:

- problem solving

- crisis handling

- work stress

- cultural adaptability

- interpersonal adaptability

- physical adaptability

Combining the three domains gives a whole-person read on each worker:

• Functional tells you what they can do today.
• Foundational tells you whether they can keep up with the modern knowledge economy.
• Adaptability tells you how they handle change.

How the AQi is scored

Foundational skills (OECD-aligned scale)

Every worker lands in one of three proficiency levels:

• Level 1 — literacy and numeracy range from emergent to introductory. The worker needs significant, focused instruction to keep error rates low on the job.
• Level 2 — below the minimum level of proficiency to operate, understand, and engage with materials independently. The worker needs more oversight to perform tasks error-free.
• Level 3 — the minimum level of proficiency required for a worker to independently thrive in a modern knowledge-based economy.

Adaptability

We report a percentage score across each of the six adaptability sub-domains plus an overall adaptability average, so a workforce lead can see both the aggregate level and where the specific drag sits.

AI underpinnings

The AI behind the scoring pipeline was developed and vetted with the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. We joined the Vector Fast Lane program in 2022 to build the AI foundation for ArchieCPL (our credit-for-prior-learning product), and the same AI-ethics and bias-review process covers the AQi scoring pipeline.

Industry benchmark (published)

Our most detailed published AQi benchmark to date is the NGen Future Ready / Canadian Advanced Manufacturing study, completed in March 2024 and released to the public on September 17, 2024.

In that study, we assessed more than 900 employees across 115 manufacturing companies. Headline numbers from that workforce:

• Adaptability: 87% average across the six adaptability sub-domains
• Reading: 50% of workers sat below Level 3 (18% at Level 1, 32% at Level 2)
• Numeracy: 43% sat below Level 3 (11% at Level 1, 32% at Level 2)
• Digital: 0% reached Level 3; 96% sat at Level 2

This is the cleanest apples-to-apples industry baseline we publish.

Sector benchmarks in healthcare, retail, public-sector, and other verticals are run on a project basis for specific customers. Those results are reported back to the customer but are not in our public materials.

How the AQi drives pathway recommendations

The index itself is not the product — the pipeline is. AQi scores feed two downstream workflows.

Upskilling plans (SkillsAssessorAQ → training)

When an individual scores below a target threshold on a specific sub-domain (Level 2 digital, for example), our platform flags that gap and lets a manager assign targeted upskilling modules directly to that worker. The intervention is tied to the score, not to a guess.

Career pathways (SkillsAssessorAQ → Career Recommender)

A worker can upload a resumé, and our Career Recommender uses the AQi profile alongside the worker's experience to suggest new career and education pathways — usually retraining moves into higher-productivity, higher-value roles.

We treat the AQi as the bridge from what you know today to where you can credibly land.

Together, those two workflows turn the index into a decision system: AQi says where the gap is, training is the near-term fix, and Career Recommender maps the long-arc pathway.

Validation status

We use the following validation language publicly and it is grounded in these sources of evidence:

• Science-validated assessments. SkillsAssessorAQ is positioned as the first workforce HR solution to provide science-validated Adaptability Quotient scores. The foundational literacy and numeracy items adhere to OECD international standards.
• AI ethics and bias review. Our AI went through the Vector Institute's Fast Lane program starting in 2022 (with ArchieCPL cited by Vector as the program application). The same AI review covers the AQi scoring pipeline.
• Real-world reliability. The NGen study is the largest published AQi benchmark to date at 900+ workers across 115 employers.

What we have not published publicly:

• the full psychometric dossier (internal reliability coefficients, factor structure)
• any peer-reviewed validation papers

Several of those items are still in development. If a customer asks for them, we walk through the methodology in detail on a call rather than pointing them at a public PDF.

Roadmap items (not yet public)

• Public reliability metrics (Cronbach's alpha and test-retest for the adaptability sub-domains)
• Industry benchmarks beyond advanced manufacturing — assessments have been run in workforce retraining and postsecondary admissions, but the numbers live in customer reports rather than on the website
• A published, peer-reviewed validation paper
• The exact internal weighting between the six adaptability sub-domains

Customer-facing entry point

If you are a workforce lead and want to see the AQi applied to your own people, the next step is to see the SkillsAssessorAQ product page on our site and book a demo. Our founder Matt Foran runs the demos directly.