Building careers

Aspire Empowers Development

By Yardi Blog Staff on Apr 2, 2025 in Aspire

Employee skill development isn’t just about moving up the corporate ladder. It’s about equipping employees with the skills, knowledge and opportunities to thrive. Property management companies are increasingly recognizing the need to train their workforce, strategically identify skills and promote internal mobility.

Imagine a VP trying to fill a property manager role. How can they quickly identify qualified internal candidates? Or consider a second-year employee wondering which skills they need to advance? Yardi Aspire offers tools to assess, develop and track employee growth, allowing organizations to make data-driven staffing decisions and empowering employees to take charge of their careers.

We spoke with Patty Evans, industry principal at Yardi Aspire, about how Aspire can help organizations build a stronger, more capable workforce.

Identifying your skills

Interviewer: How does Aspire go beyond the basics to evaluate and verify current employee skills?

Patty Evans: Aspire is much more than a training tool. It’s a comprehensive talent development solution. Companies use Aspire’s assessment tools to evaluate employees’ current knowledge, identify skill gaps and ensure readiness for specific roles. Aspire helps companies create career pathways for employees to upskill and grow.

Matching employees with open positions

Interviewer: How can Aspire help identify qualified employees for vacancies?

Patty: Aspire allows companies to set specific competency requirements for each role. Employees earn digital badges by completing targeted training modules, skill assessments and scenario-based exercises that prepare them for the real-world challenges of the role. These certification badges are automatically recorded and integrated with HR systems, making it easy for HR teams to identify qualified candidates for open positions.

Expanding your role

Interviewer: How can Aspire assist employees to find better roles?

Patty: Aspire empowers HR teams to market job openings to employees who are already qualified or nearly qualified, encouraging internal promotions. If an employee is struggling, Aspire’s learning analytics can help identify roles better aligned with their skills and interests. HR can then create an employee skill development plan to help employees transition smoothly into new roles.

Addressing skill gaps

Interviewer: How does Aspire help employees address skill gaps?

Patty: Aspire allows employees to self-assess and track their progress against role qualifications. Managers can assign additional training, mentorship and assessments to help employees close the gaps. Aspire’s coaching tools offer personalized feedback to ensure employees gain the necessary skills to qualify for new roles. All coaching and feedback are captured and recorded in the solution.

Empowering career growth

Interviewer: How does Aspire empower employee skill development throughout their careers?

Patty: Aspire gives employees recommended trainings based on their current or desired job role. Employees can explore potential roles, assess their readiness and enroll in training. Digital badges and certification tracking allow them to measure progress and showcase their achievements.

Making smarter hiring decisions

Interviewer: How can HR and recruiting teams use Aspire to make smarter hiring and promotion decisions, particularly for roles such as maintenance technicians that require hands-on skills?

Patty: Aspire gives HR teams a comprehensive set of tools to assess employees’ knowledge and readiness for new roles. It supports hands-on skill verification assignments whereby employees can submit videos, screenshots, pictures, files or written responses.

This not only ensures that skills are validated consistently across multiple employees but also reduces the number of labor hours spent on in-person skill verification. By eliminating the need to pull both the employee and the supervisor away from their regular tasks, Aspire helps companies maintain productivity while still ensuring high-quality skill assessment.

In addition, Aspire enables supervisors and mentors to record verified skills when employees demonstrate proficiency outside the system.

And finally, Aspire’s survey tools also gauge employees’ confidence in key skills, providing HR teams with valuable insights to make data-driven decisions about hiring, promotions and internal mobility.

Focusing on competency categories

Interviewer: Which competency categories do organizations typically focus on?

Patty: Common competency categories include fair housing and legal compliance, leasing and sales techniques, customer service, property operations and risk management. For example, employees in property operations who need to demonstrate financial competency may complete budgeting exercises, financial case studies or data interpretation quizzes to develop skills in rent collection and property performance. These practical assessments ensure employees gain the real-world experiences that build the skills they’ll need to excel in their roles.

Using creative assessments

Interviewer: Can you share examples of their creative assessments built into Aspire?

Patty: Our Aspire support team has seen clients get creative with how they use our flexible tools to assess employee skills beyond simple online quizzing, making the learning experience more engaging and practical.

You could engage marketing team members in campaign analysis where they assess real or hypothetical marketing data like social media metrics or SEO performance, then submit insights and recommendations via written or video assignments.

For leadership development, 360-degree feedback surveys are really effective. By using surveys and online forms, leaders can gather performance feedback from peers, subordinates and managers, allowing them to track and improve their leadership skills over time.

For emergency preparedness, timed emergency response drills present crisis scenarios, using timed quizzes and delay steps to test decision-making under pressure.

And in customer service, simulations with decision trees guide learners through complex resident interactions, where they choose responses and receive instant feedback based on their choices.

These are just a few ways clients are going beyond the basics to make assessments interactive and truly reflective of real-world skills. Learning leaders can make their creative vision a reality with broad array of authoring tools embedded in the platform.

Assessing employee skill development

Assessment method	How it works in Aspire	Aspire tools used
Work order audits	Learners review and prioritize sample work orders based on urgency, safety and resident satisfaction. Aspire presents these as interactive assignments with criteria-based evaluation.	Assignments, ordering or sorting questions
Budgeting exercises	Aspire provides financial case studies or simulations where learners analyze property budgets, identify cost-saving opportunities and make financial decisions using quizzes or spreadsheet-based exercises.	Games, assignments, quizzes
Marketing campaign analysis	Learners assess real or hypothetical marketing data (e.g., social media engagement, SEO performance) and submit insights via written reports or video presentations within Aspire.	Written or video assignments
360-degree feedback surveys	Aspire facilitates peer, subordinate and manager feedback surveys, allowing leaders to gain insights into their performance and track leadership development over time.	Surveys, esignatures, admin notes
Timed emergency response drills	Aspire presents crisis scenarios with countdown timers, requiring learners to make quick, informed decisions. Correct responses unlock next steps, simulating real-time emergency protocols.	Timed quizzes, delayed branching
Customer service simulations with decision trees	Learners navigate realistic resident interactions by selecting responses in branching scenarios. Aspire provides instant feedback and outcome variations based on choices.	Branching scenarios, custom simulations

Supporting employee skill development

Interviewer: Any final thoughts on how Aspire supports career development?

Patty: Aspire is a strategic tool for workforce development. By leveraging its learning data, companies can foster a culture of continuous growth, retain top talent and offer clear career pathways for employees. When companies invest in internal mobility and skill development through Aspire, both employees and the business benefit.

By integrating Aspire into their operations, property management companies can foster skill development and internal mobility, empowering employees to take charge of their careers while supporting organizational growth.