Assessment centres can provide instant feedback about how a candidate will handle a new job.
As well as taking greater care to hire the right people, many organisations are rethinking whether leaving career development primarily in the hands of individuals is such a smart idea after all. They're questioning whether it may not only limit an individual's capacity to contribute, but also an organisation's capacity to seize opportunities, innovate and respond quickly to new challenges.
As a result of such a shift in thinking, organisations are increasingly looking for tools and processes that will help them identify the people most likely to excel in a particular role - the "high-potentials" - and help people to develop and improve in critical areas. One of the oldest, though least-understood, processes to help organisations do this is the assessment centre.
"If you ask 10 different HR professionals or line managers, 'What is an assessment centre?' you will get 10 differences answers," says Ian Paterson, general manager of DDI, a global HR career management firm that has been using assessment centre methodology in industry since 1956.
At a DDI assessment centre, which looks like a typical city office space with several private offices, participants experience a day in the life of a particular role. Whether the process is being used for recruitment or career development, participants work through a variety of exercises and simulations alone or with assessors playing roles. This could involve negotiating with a hostile peer, coaching a poor performer or presenting a business analysis. Interactions are videotaped and then analysed later against the competencies deemed essential for a specific role.
Putting people into situations and giving them key tasks that they would face in a new role helps to predict their performance in an actual role, says Mr Paterson.
DDI consultant Leanne Ansell-McBride says while people commonly believe that assessment centres are designed to trick people, the opposite is true. "They are set up for success." Participants are sent preparatory work, which describes the role in a fictitious company they will be playing, to "inform their decision-making and their interactions throughout the day".
"We are not trying to throw curve balls at you, we are saying this is what you are coming to do, this is the role and here is the background," says Ms Ansell-McBride. Participants receive feedback within about two weeks. "Most effective individuals look for feedback and learn from feedback and this provides people with very specific feedback," says Mr Paterson.
Ms Ansell-McBride says: "Feedback also has value for people who are unsuccessful. The unsuccessful people then know what they need to do to get the role in the future. It's almost like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people. I've had a very senior manager tell me it was the best feedback, and the most honest, he had received in his 30-year career."
Integral Energy, a state-owned electricity corporation operating in NSW, is using a DDI assessment centre - in its case, called a leadership development centre - to understand and build on the capabilities of its leadership team. "The information we had before was based on very subjective assumptions and was fairly limited. It may have been one manager's perceptions about a direct report," says Integral Energy's manager of learning and development, Jenny Redpath. "This is providing extremely comprehensive information based on our six leadership capabilities."
The report each manager receives following their participation is typically 40 or 50 pages, she says. "What we are getting now that we never had access to before is very specific information on what they need to concentrate on in terms of their development and what they can leverage in terms of their strengths. The other benefit as far as the organisation is concerned is that we are getting a real understanding of our leadership strengths and the overall gaps in our leadership team. We can see where we have some real risks coming up in the future, so we can start doing something to close the gaps."
Branch manager capital process development Scott Ryan, who participated in the leadership development centre last November, says the simulations were challenging, interesting and realistic. The value lies in the specific nature of the feedback and the process that has been put in place to use it. "It's quite specific. They say, 'You said this here and it would have been better to say this, and what you said here was good'," he says. "As part of the post-mortem you sit down and go through your assessment and discuss what you expected your result to be, where your opportunities for growth are and, importantly, you tie your growth areas with what the organisation needs. There is also regular monitoring to ensure you are actually sticking to your development plan, because the temptation is to slip back into playing to your strengths."
