Employee Assessments – Recruit, Manage and Retain
We wave flags in most editions of this newsletter about the benefits of pinpointing the hidden talent within your business, the gaps between where your employees skills are right now and what you need to do to fill that gap with training, development and hiring to acquire missing talent.
Below is a recent study out of the UK brings this need into even sharper relief in finding that whilst a steadily increasing number of businesses use testing and assessment in the recruitment stage, few make the most of the wealth of valuable information gleaned from these assessments in helping new staff to reach their potential in their roles, or in identifying talents within the business as priorities change with economic conditions and customer demands.
To all our clients who have used personality assessments in the past to recruit staff, and now want to maintain their development in existing jobs, or look at their redeployment into new roles, don’t forget that you have all that information at your fingertips and that we are just a phone call away to assist in supporting you in driving your business forward through making the most of your existing teams in changing times.
For those of you looking to introduce testing and assessment into your businesses to increase productivity and reduce risk, we are just a phone call away from you too. 06 833 6465 or click here
Personnelzone Article, September 2010
Written by Mary Clarke, CEO, Cognisco
With almost a quarter of the (UK) nation’s employees currently job hunting, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) Employee Outlook Report Summer 2010, there is clearly a plentiful supply of candidates to fulfil employers’ requirements. However, with so many to choose from, getting it right can become even more of a challenge and, as the market remains vulnerable from recession, companies can ill afford to make recruitment mistakes. Moreover, organisations need to make sure they identify and hire the very best people to help keep them on the road to recovery, improve performance and provide a competitive advantage.
Assessing a candidate’s skills, knowledge, competence and suitability for the role is a vital part of the interview process. Without this knowledge, employers are effectively in the dark when recruiting, as one cannot rely on CVs alone to judge a person’s suitability to a job function.
The key to increasing levels of certainty in recruitment is by including candidate assessments. Many companies already use psychometric and employee assessments as part of their recruitment processes to ensure the right fit – and this is a good thing. Indeed psychometric testing is on the increase according to findings from 2009 research by Personnel Today’s paid-for sister service XpertHR. Of the 90 employers surveyed – covering a combined workforce of almost 420,000 people – more than half had either increased their use of psychometric testing in the recruitment and selection process (44%) or introduced it (14%) during this period. Nineteen per cent had increased the use of psychometric testing for training and development, while 9% had started using them.
Managers need to have a clear picture of what potential employees truly understand versus what they think they understand. While psychometric testing is a valuable step at the recruitment stage, they can be enhanced further still when screening potential staff is combined with administering bespoke employee assessments that test both an individual’s knowledge of every aspect of the role as well as their confidence in performing it.
Our own Learning and Appraisal Consultants analyse job roles and provide descriptions of on-the-job activities necessary for all positions within an organisation to determine which tasks each individual is required to complete and the standards to which the individual has to complete them.
Job Profiling helps organisations consider the key behavioral requirements of each and every job and provides clients with a template into which they can slot or appraise an individual. It provides an objective way to look at the type of individual needed for each role in an organisation. Indeed those who use such a system have benchmarked each role thus providing essential comparative data.
Whilst many companies have invested in tailored employee assessments, they are used most commonly in the pre employment stage to ensure the right people are recruited. Unfortunately, this is often the last time employees are assessed.
Most people move through several different jobs and ranks, and their jobs often become increasingly complex, and therefore assessments need to be ongoing to deliver the greatest benefits to an organisation. It may become very difficult for managers to be sure the individuals in their team understand their new or evolved roles if they are not regularly assessing their knowledge, understanding and confidence. Without ongoing assessments, management is essentially denied the knowledge which would help them to make informed decisions about how to best utilise staff. I’d argue that assessments should be rolled out beyond the pre-employment stage of an employees’ career with an organisation and used throughout the entire time they are in its employ.
Reinforcing this view, Cognisco commissioned a report from global marketing-intelligence firm IDC in 2008 entitled, ‘Counting the Cost of Employee Misunderstanding,’ which revealed that one quarter of employees do not understand certain aspects of the job role and that major knowledge gaps are unaddressed in many companies.
A misunderstanding can range from misinterpreting a company policy, business process or job function, to a combination of all three. In any organisation, these kinds of misunderstandings are inevitable, but they can also be incredibly costly – businesses are losing £18.7 bn a year as a result of employee misunderstandings. They can also damage relationships with key customers and clients – 99 percent of the 400 companies questioned confessed that these misunderstandings had put their sales and customer satisfaction at risk.
In this competitive market, companies need to be able to pinpoint their best talent and use it in the most beneficial way. They also need to know where their vulnerabilities lie, in order to minimise business risk. For example, individuals might be called upon to handle new processes and systems or deal with new regulations or compliance that may have legal ramifications if misunderstood. The Health and Safety Offences Act 2008, which came into force on 16 January 2009 and broadened the range of health and safety offences, demonstrates how a new regulation could seriously affect an organisation if its principles are misunderstood.
Under the Act, any health and safety offence could lead to a prison sentence for anyone in a business and a hefty fine if the case is taken to higher courts. The only way for managers to be confident that every individual in their organisation understands and can adhere to such a regulation is to assess their knowledge. An employee assessment will highlight knowledge gaps, which can be addressed through training.
As one continues to examine the case for ongoing assessments, the benefits of a tailored training and development programme become clear at the expense of the “one size fits all” training programmes adopted by many organisations. Such uniform programmes are increasingly recognised as ineffective, both in terms of budget and performance, which may actually cost organisations in the long term by overlooking important knowledge gaps that put a company at risk – for example with new regulations, such as the Health and Safety Offences Act 2008 cited earlier.
Delivering bespoke training, on the other hand not only identifies and solves knowledge gaps but can also make employees feel more confident in their roles and, consequently, more productive. A report from Proudfoot Consultancy in December 2008 revealed that 26 percent of UK workers’ time is spent unproductively, with 1.3 days of every week spent doing things that do not deliver productive results. Improving employees’ understanding of what their job roles truly entail would eradicate expensive mistakes, boost productivity levels, improve efficiency and increase employee confidence.
Regular customised assessments can also help managers to make more accurate decisions about whom to promote and when. Assessments will show when an employee is ready for such a move by highlighting if they have the necessary skills, capabilities and confidence to perform well at a higher level. Promoting employees at the right time can motivate them, help to retain the workforce and reduce turnover. Conversely, companies may lose some of their best employees if those with the skills and competency to be promoted are overlooked.
The information gathered from assessments can also aid an organisation in making more accurate and informed decisions about redundancies. Having a clear picture of the skills, capabilities, and training and development needs of every individual in an organisation is critical if managers are to make fair, informed and rational decisions, which include an evaluation of training costs versus the cost of redundancy. Transferable skills can then be clearly identified during the selection process for suitable alternative employment.
While there are many benefits of employee assessments, one of the most important advantages from a business perspective is that they provide managers with clarity about the people working for them, how productive they are and the value they add to the business. This knowledge is vital in a downturn when companies need to be as strong as possible and keep their best employees on board. Managers need objective employee assessments if they are to carry out an organisational design review and engage their workforce fully preparing for the upturn. Uncovering and addressing the knowledge gap is just the first step in preparing the organisation to ‘outsmart’ its competition.
Written by Mary Clarke, CEO, Cognisco
For more information, please visit www.cognisco.com
Acknowledgements:
- Personnelzone
- Cognisco
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