Providing best practice oversight to assessment centre processes

Situation and Challenge

Following some previous work that People Solutions had been involved with auditing their assessment centre processes, this company approached us to help with design and review moving forward.

Since assessment centres are utilised across very different areas of the organisation, with different hiring managers responsible for design, facilitation, and assessing, there was a lack of consistency in processes that presented a challenge. Some assessment centre processes also involved stakeholders with very different perspectives and experiences that had to all be taken into consideration when designing activities. Additionally, being part of a government department, there were a number of rules around competencies, assessor to candidate ratio, and assessment methodologies that had to be adhered to.

Solutions

The initial project that we were brought on board to assist with was providing training to assessment centre convenors around best practices in design and facilitation. As well as running them through a training session, we provided an accompanying workbook and best practice checklist for them to use moving forward.

We then reviewed the materials they had prepared for an upcoming managerial level assessment centre and provided some recommendations around improving some of the activities and associated rating sheets, including drafting a new role play and associated script, and designing new behaviourally-anchored rating sheets.

Following this, we designed and ran a training session for their assessor panel that covered an introduction to assessment centres, fair and unbiased assessing, the competencies being assessed and expectations around these, and the activities being used to assess these competencies.

Given the success of this initial project, we ran the same process to assist with several subsequent assessment centres – reviewing assessment centre materials against best practice, designing new activities, and providing recommendations and consulting advice for further improving their assessment centre practices.

Result

Feedback from the client indicated that the assessment centre processes we assisted them with ran smoothly and that the new activities were well received. We continue to assist and provide oversight and consulting advice for their assessment centres on an ongoing basis.