Pressures driving the use of assessments:
- competitive landscape putting focus on productivity and performance
- shortage of leadership skills / weak succession pipeline
- marketplace and customer demands require better insight into existing and anticipated workforce
Most important objectives for use of assessments:
- improve quality of hire
- identifying high-potential talent
- identifying skill / competency gaps for each job role
Top strategic actions to support assessment efforts:
- build a competency framework to assess against
- align workforce with business objectives
- identify gaps based on current workforce supply and anticipated needs
Most valuable uses of assessments:
- identifying candidates likely to have the greatest impact
- identifying competency gaps for individuals
- identifying team fit and building teams
- evaluating promotion readiness of employees
- assigning team members based fit
Top sources of competency definitions:
- performance driven – based on the characteristics of current top performers
- values driven – based on core organisational values shared by the organisation
- future focused – based on the needs of forward looking business strategy
Solution selection criteria:
- ability to integrate with other HR or talent management software
- provider has experience with organisations of similar needs
- ability to demonstrate business value by helping build a business case
- price
Integration with talent management elements:
- recruitment
- onboarding
- performance management
- succession planning
- learning
To achieve best-in-class performance, companies must:
- use assessments in the pre- and post-hire, and throughout the employee lifecycle
- define a competency framework to assess against
- link assessment results to organisational performance metrics, and communicate the impact regularly
