Five ways to use Assessments more effectively | InspireOne

by Inspire One InspireOne Business Consulting Firm

With analytics and measurements coming into the fore in HR, it’s little wonder that assessing employees has taken so much mind space of HR leaders. The benefits cannot be discarded – from hiring the right person in the right role to identifying development requirements for your high potentials. If well used, they are said to have no adverse impact and yet deliver results that predict (not foretell) your employee’s performance on the job.

So what are ways in which to make the use of assessments more effective in your organization?

Here are five for starters:

Involve the line manager. It cannot be over emphasized but assessments that are designed for business leaders would be better suited to deliver results that business leaders require. By starting with the output in mind, involve your business stakeholders to agree on a set of outcomes using which they feel comfortable to take relevant actions (for hiring and / or development) that support operational decision-making.

Don’t let go there; consult with them on the first few process steps to get them to become more comfortable with your assessment process and become your ‘Assessment Champions’. Before you know it, they’ll be speaking fluent HR!

Automate the administration process as much as possible. ‘As much as possible’ is key. Oftentimes, organizations continue to hold on to earlier process steps, such as first level interview screening, even after using Assessments predominantly to screen applicants early on in the process. Similarly, while identifying high potentials, managers can often bypass assessment results with their developed bias. Failing to trust the validity of the assessment process is a key reason why many well-intentioned assessment initiatives fail.

When using assessments for recruitment, also look at using the data to develop the person during on boarding. According to Aberdeen Research[1], 75% of Best in Class companies use Pre-hire assessments for creating targeted development plans during post hire. That translates into a 91% retention of employees in the first year by Best in Class companies versus others.

Beyond selection, there’s prioritization as well. Oftentimes, hiring managers do not have depth in their pipeline to effectively use assessments for selection. In such practical situations, its important to still prioritize the candidate pool for interviewing. This will ensure that you capitalize on the probability of hiring a high performer and also not lose out on the possibility of selecting a trainable candidate who can over-achieve by stretching himself/herself.

Better, more informed sourcing based on assessment data. An established assessment process can work wonders to your sourcing strategy. You can generate enough data to create a detailed DNA profile of a high performer, which you can then work backwards to identify sourcing channels that provide you those characteristics in future hires as well. This feedback loop also helps recruiters to constantly calibrate their assessment process and make it relevant for the future.

These are just five approaches to effectively use assessments out of many more possible approaches. Do you have any such approaches that you recently used? Tell us how you used assessments innovatively in your organization and we’ll profile your work in our upcoming U&I quarterly newsletter.

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