We went to town asking a number of business leaders: “What really differentiates competing organisations?” ” With the current rate of technological advancement and innovations, growing access to information and an increasingly shrinking global space, what then would really constitute a competitive advantage for organisations in today’s world of business?”
Interestingly they all responded alike: People! Human Capital! Human Resources!
We beg to differ!
But really, could they all be wrong? Indeed, where would any organisation be without ‘People’? What other factor could be more critical than Human Resources? Or perhaps, could there be there an addition to the traditional factors of production?
And we answer: Yes, there is an improvement to the traditional factors of production – it’s not just people, but the RIGHT People!
Selecting and developing the right people is similar to being on a war front; from identifying and hiring the right people into your organisation, to keeping high performing employees satisfied, engaged and motivated to avoid turnover, and also to identifying developmental needs and putting processes in place to address them. This can be a lot for the HR professional to juggle at the same time but success is inevitably synonymous with Winning the War for Talent.
Hiring, retaining and developing the right people create the most value in achieving a competitive advantage today.
The Concept of Assessment & Development Centres
The notion of an assessment/development centre (AC & DC) often throws up pictures of a building or assortment of rooms devoted to development and assessment activities. But then, this is not exactly the case. Rather, these concepts are beyond the physical arrangements, they refer to ‘methodologies and techniques’ put together to simulate real life work situations with the objective of measuring participants’ competencies in relation to performance on the job being simulated. For example, an assessment centre for a sales executive role would simulate the major components of a sales executive’s role such as sales presentations, meeting with clients, design of sales strategies and report writing while assessing competencies considered critical for success on the role which may include – presentation, analytical, and business acumen skills.
Development centres sprouted from the Assessment Centre model, however, majorly for developmental purposes; it is increasingly used by high performing organisations as a way to develop talent. The goal of Development Centres is to assess a candidate’s capability for their next career role and focuses on personal and professional development.
The Threefold cord – Assessment/Development Centres, HR & Organisational Strategy
Compared to using only aptitude tests, or just an interview, assessment centres provide a more robust framework for gathering evidence on the suitability (or otherwise) of a candidate for a particular job role.
These centres focus on assessing the required behaviour for delivering set corporate objectives and indeed, we have found them to be a critical path within any effective HR system since finding the right talent is always the underlying strategy.
In essence, we have discovered that assessment and development centres form a core component in executing and delivering organisational strategies. Every organisation must seek to ensure it has people with the competencies required for its jobs by selection, development, or – more probably – a combination of the two. From our experience in designing and deploying these centres, we have found that they provide sure ways to help deliver both selection and development of the right people, which in turn creates competitive advantage for the organisation.
Do Assessment Centres Really Work? A Success Story
The success of assessment centres is based on the claim that they provide a more accurate method of predicting a candidate’s fit for the job or otherwise based on pre-identified and defined competencies.
To ascertain the veracity of the claim, we have used data from a pool of candidates who have been tested and assessed at various graduate recruitment programs by best-in-class organisations across sectors like banking, consumer goods and oil & gas.
From a sample size of 70,682 candidates who sat for graduate aptitude tests, about 11,933 had scores that would have been considered successful for the different tests they sat for; a 17 ppercent success rate.
These successful candidates were subsequently taken through assessment centres. The exercises were designed to assess them against the various competencies for the respective jobs they were being considered for.
Results from the assessment centres showed that only about 39% of these candidates who passed the aptitude tests were successful when directly assessed against the competencies required on the job in an assessment centre.
These findings become even more interesting when one considers the fact that quite a number of organisations make hiring decisions based solely on performance at aptitude tests and/or standard interviews. Without any link to competencies required for the job, these methods (aptitude tests, standard interviews) alone prove quite inadequate in identifying the right candidates for the role.
Proven Results
A well designed and deployed centre is currently the most proven way of selecting the right talent in today’s world of business. Both assessment and development centres have proven to be the best methods of selection and development respectively when rated on the grounds of accuracy, acceptability and prediction of performance on the job.
Olagunju is the Lead Consultant/CEO of Workforce Group; a Management Consulting Firm that offers diverse services in the areas of Learning, Development & Research, HR and Business Consulting, People & Task Outsourcing and Recruitment Services.
www.workforcegroup.com
