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Assessment Value: Job Performance
March 25, 2008
Incorporating employee assessments into your talent management strategy can lead to optimized individual and business performance.
By Mary Clarke
Every private and public sector organization in the world faces risks that could jeopardize—or potentially jeopardize—the success of its operation. Human error is one of the biggest threats to successful business operations and performance.
Over the last 10 years, my company has implemented assessments to measure the performance of more than 1.2 million employees at hundreds of companies—including 12 of the world's top 100 brands. The data we have gathered will shock many: On average, 23 percent of employees do not understand at least one crucial aspect of their job. If nearly a quarter of your staff are underperforming in their jobs, what impact is that having on your bottom line? The problem of how to mitigate business risk due to suboptimal employee performance is one that should keep CEOs and HR directors awake at night.
An effective way to address this problem is to include employee assessments as an integral part of your company's talent management strategy. Even the ablest senior level staff can make mistakes, however well trained for the job. They may misunderstand their roles and responsibilities, incorrectly applying what they think they know and need to do to get the job done correctly. Such misunderstanding can have serious consequences for the business, namely: safety failures, security breaches, shareholder mistrust, and lost revenues and customers. Consider a finance manager who doesn't fully understand the products he is selling, an emergency medical technician not mastering emergency medical procedures, or a sales manager incorrectly explaining the terms of a service agreement to a key customer.
The importance of conducting regular employee assessments cannot be understated. Yet today, surprisingly few companies incorporate assessments into their talent management process. Without regular assessments, companies are ill equipped to identify the extent to which employees truly comprehend how to fulfill the requirements of their jobs, have the capability and confidence to perform their jobs, and are likely to make big decisions on the company's behalf.
Useful assessments must provide access to vital but previously unattainable workplace data—objective measurements of employee understanding. That is, useful assessments need to identify levels of employee understanding, competence, and confidence, while helping businesses see the strategic and financial impact of suboptimal employee performance. Corporate assessment systems typically rely on management to make a subjective assessment about an employee's performance, drawing from a personal development plan. Worse still, some companies rely on employees themselves making these judgments about how well they understand crucial aspects of their job. Subjective methods fall short because they cannot be sustained over the long term, nor provide concrete data for both management and employees to measure improvement over time after each new assessment phase.
Companies looking to get more from their talent management systems can commission customized assessments, designed by subject matter experts to highlight where knowledge gaps lie in a specific topic area or vertical market. With such assessments, companies can analyze performance by course, individual, group, team, geography, office location, service, product line, or on an enterprise-wide basis. They also may choose to issue assessments in conjunction with a psychometric test, giving them for the first time a complete, highly detailed summary of the precise skills and competencies of their workforce.
Companies can opt to integrate employee assessments within an existing corporate development and learning framework as tools to test whether individuals can qualify for exemption from certain requirements relating to training. For example, for a global bank that wants to improve customer service across several regional markets, a well-crafted assessment gives it access to a complete, highly detailed database of the precise skills and competencies of its entire associate structure—from tellers to banking center managers.
Assessments also can be used to identify those employees who do understand their jobs, but lack the confidence to make the right decisions in tough business situations. By drawing out this data, management can empower employees to gain the confidence needed to do the right thing. Conducting regular assessments allows individuals to reach their true potential, so employers, in turn, can continuously improve business performance.
Today's most successful companies know where the risks—actual and potential—are and have systems in place to mitigate those risks before the worst should happen. Employee assessments should be a key tool in the arsenal to ensure top performance at all levels of the organization.
Mary Clarke is CEO of Cognisco, a global market leader in custom-built, online knowledge assessment and learning solutions. Headquartered in the UK, Cognisco operates in 150 countries and in 31 languages. For more information, visit www.cognisco.com.
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