Testing, Testing
Article Analysing Assessment Techniques
The savviest operators aren’t using assessment tools simply to test a person’s skills, but to see if they will fit the company culture
Finding out what makes potential employees tick before signing them up is the obvious aim for businesses using assessment tools. But what are organisations at the cutting edge looking for? Well, increasingly, they are expanding their horizons and looking beyond a simple check of numerical or verbal skills. Cultural fit and leadership potential are rising quickly up the agenda.
In terms of cultural fit, organisations need to ensure that there is a match to encourage employees to stay with them for longer and to give the business unique appeal, says Janice Lane, managing director of psychological software designers Sycadex.
“Until recently, leadership was the real buzzword,” she says. “But now there’s pressure to look at creating the right environment. It’s already clear that the dominant theme over the next 12 months or so is going to be culture.”
Lane explains that if you look at a multinational company such as Coca-Cola, it has a culture that it maintains throughout all its depots and head-office branches, irrespective of the nuances of the country. She argues that to stay competitive, companies should define what constitutes their culture – management, leadership and individuals – and aim to measure it so they can choose employees who match.
Catherine Hick, managing director of TMSDI, which publishes profiling tools and trains assessors to use them, told People Management: “We don’t publish tests that are pass or fail, or mark people out of 10. We focus on development. What we look at is helping people to explore who they are in the workplace, how they can fulfil their potential and how that can have an impact on the workplace.”
She says there is now a greater awareness among the HR profession about profiling tools. “People saw it as a kind of black art, but now they recognise that tools do have a real basis in scientific research into the human personality, mind and behaviour.”
Organisations assess existing staff because they value the depth of analysis and the breadth of data that they can gain from assessment tools. Assessment can help with development in an employee’s current role. People tend to find it a helpful intervention, rather than threatening or destructive, because it gives people a language to talk about those things that sometimes managers find difficult to handle.
Many companies are now assessing for cultural fit. Organisations will increasingly demand greater customisation so that assessment tools relate specifically to that organisation.
So who uses the various types of assessment – for example, interviews, application forms, questionnaires such as psychometric, 360-degree or self-perception, and role-plays/simulations? Unsurprisingly, the consensus is that it’s mostly larger firms that use a full range of tools at an assessment centre, because of the costs involved. Trudy Searle, head of the assessment department at Sterling Selection, says the assessment process is usually designed around a range of competencies that are key to a particular role. And often, what governs the decision on whether to assess or not is cost.
“Certainly, psychometrics, for example, can add value, but people think there’s a high cost,” says Searle. “But what’s the cost of a bad recruitment decision? It’s about making that risk decision and constantly reviewing what excellent performance looks like in the organisation – almost future-proofing your assessment process. It’s not only looking at what your excellent performer is doing today, but what they are expected to be doing in 12 or 18 months.”
Although most FTSE-100 companies and bigger public-sector organisations do use a combination of tools to obtain a holistic view of a person’s capability, the dominant assessment method in the UK remains the face-to-face interview.
TMSDI’s Hick warns that it’s vital to take time to choose tools, and says that any psychometric tests should have been tested rigorously, preferably by the British Psychological Society, which conducts independent reviews of various tests on the market. “It’s so easy to stumble down the tunnel of all the different things you can measure about people and then you have to stop and say: ‘Hang on a minute, is this piece of discussion or information relevant?’” she says.
“We don’t allow people to use our tool unless they’ve been through a training programme. It’s extremely dangerous to use sophisticated tools without the opportunity for people to have feedback from someone who knows what they are talking about. It’s a scientific tool – not a quiz in the back of a magazine.”
This is also the warning from Angela Baron, CIPD adviser, organisation and resourcing, who says that, when used appropriately, testing can enhance decision-making and enable managers to develop more informed and accurate perceptions about the ability and potential of individuals.
“But to achieve these aims,” she says, “it is essential to integrate testing into a wider decision-making process. Tests should never be used as the sole basis of decision-making and the results should always be considered in the light of information gathered from other sources. Even the best tests are only as good as the process of which they form a part, and flawed decisions can even be made on sound and verifiable data,” she says.
Author: Joy Persaud
Date: 28 September 2006
Source: Extract from: People Management Guide to Assessment