Assessing like it's 2018

I love helping organisations to assess their people in a fun, objective, scientific, unbiased and - ultimately - powerful, highly engaging and commercially beneficial, people focussed way.

Most organisations are still assessing their people and potential people like it is 1998 rather than 2018, with the same old results that they have always had.

Thankfully, there are better ways - so I just wanted to share a short case study (of some of our TheTalentFinders work), to anyone who's interested in:

1. Getting the best out of their people
2. Hiring the right people.
3. Moving from biased, ancient, boring, assessment methods to a 2018 methodology based on science, objectivity and engagement,

Problem

A mid-size apprenticeship provider, trying to move from a traditional highly subjective approach to talent development and hiring, towards one that is objective, unbiased and people focused.

Albeit they are doing well, they noticed a marked decrease in levels of employee engagement, hiring metrics and retention.

They want to remain as the best in class in their field, while adding a degree of "science" to how they get the best out of their people.

Solution

Using our TalentMap service, we have brought together a number of assessment technologies - coupled with our unique high-touch style - to do an in-depth assessment of all of their existing staff.

The technologies we chose to use have both candidate and employee engagement at the centre of them, backed up by rigorous - but fun - assessments, that ensure a high degree of completion and accuracy.

We looked at attitude, aptitude, potential, skills and career needs/wants/desires - amongst other things.

We then overlaid this with their performance data, to understand the differences (attitude, aptitude, potential etc) between high, average and underperformers.

From here, we developed a profile for each area of the business as to what a "high performer" looks like, using the measures above.

Outputs

The leadership team, HR and recruitment now have a far better, deeper and objective view of their people, their organisation's strengths (and weaknesses), what differentiates high/average/underperformers, and the risks and opportunities this presents.

There have been two significant outputs in the last few months:-

Internal moves

We looked to see whether underperformers from certain areas of the business matched the profile of high performers in other areas. This helped us identify a number of individuals who appeared to be a better fit for different roles/teams/managers.

Of those that have moved, 65% have moved from being underperformers to average performers, and 25% have become high performers.

For the 10% who've done neither, we are hoping it's just a matter of time...but you can't win them all :)

External hiring

We've used the profiles mentioned above to assess external candidates against objective, accurate and unbiased measures - through a mix of gamified (and other) assessments.

External candidates are being assessed in the same way that employees are, but with a concentration on the essential elements - ensuring consistency, but also accuracy.

Typical assessments take around 20 minutes, as they focus on the necessary areas rather than ambiguous "nice to haves" that the hiring manager thinks they need. :)

For most roles - once an initial sift has been done for the right to work, legally required qualifications/experience etc - all candidates are being asked to go through the online assessments.

The logic in this (proven across around 90 hires this year), is that a CV (and to a certain extent a telephone/pre-screen) is prone to bias - and does very little to ascertain an individual's actual ability and potential.

Whereas an engaging assessment approach does just that, without subjectivity and in an unbiased way.

Other Benefits

Motivated teams, who know that their organisation is taking understanding and supporting them in their careers more seriously, leading to better employee engagement - up by 21%

• Better staff utilisation and productivity (the % of underperformers is decreasing rapidly)
• Retention has improved by 50% - through a mix of fewer people being moved on, and others being more engaged

The hiring teams are now able to assess candidates against a proven, scientifically based, benchmark - for each of their teams - de-risking the hiring decision.

• Hiring managers are saying that 90% of the time that the would have hired anyone from those they interviewed.
• 75% of Hiring Managers have hired at least one candidate whose CV they would have "thrown in the bin" (to use their own words).
• External hiring has decreased by 27%, due to being able to look internally quickly and at scale before going to market
• Time-to-hire has gone from 47 days down to 32 days and Cost-per-hire has decreased by 31% - through gains in process improvements (candidates can be assessed at scale), the ability to "fish" from a highly understood and assessed talent pool that grows every time they hire (rather than starting from scratch each time).

That's it - we're just about to feedback to our latest client, and are expecting similar results.

Let me know in the comments if you want a slice of the action, or have any questions. Or follow me on here if you want more of this stuff.