Author Archives: Dot Pritchard

  1. Assessment Centres

    Leave a Comment Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

    What are you doing about Assessment Centres right now?

    Current norms are preventing us in many cases from running traditional Assessment Centres but that doesn’t mean you can’t still identify top talent and potential leaders accurately and effectively. You may argue that there is ‘nothing like the real thing’ but we believe we can offer you an excellent alternative. So if you have suspended your traditional assessment centre approach due to current conditions do read on.

    Assessment Centre Intelligence (ACI) provides an alternative to assessment centres with a remote, automated and objective on-line assessment and screening process. It works equally well for candidate selection for a job role as for identifying potential leaders within the organisation.

    The starting point for this is a 30-minute award winning SmartQuestionnaire™ which accurately predicts behavioural preferences in relation to both jobs and Leadership competencies.

    Benefits of Assessment Centre Intelligence (ACI):

    How does it work?

    Candidates take a 30-minute SmartQuestionnaire™, which measures 9 major components. (See below)

    The system will then create an automated candidate short list, as well as a frame work for choosing your ideal candidate based on the job role. Remember, the system works equally well for internal leadership selection.

    9 major components measured in the Smart Questionnaire:

    Job Success Eligibility Factors (role specific) – Experience, education, willingness, skills

    Behavioural Success Factors (role specific) – Basic traits, environmental preferences, interests, natural tendencies

    Leadership Competencies (emerging and senior leaders) – Achievement orientation, communication, energizing people, impact and influence, innovation, leading people, learning agility, problem solving, resilience and perseverance, strategic thinking

    Emotional Intelligence (EQ) – Knowing oneself, relationship leadership, self-motivation & self-management, social awareness & service orientation

    Personality (psychometric assessment) – Intrinsic motivators, life values, predictive behaviours, behaviours under stress, underlying or hidden behaviours, potential strengths, potential weaknesses

    Quantitative Critical Thinking – Numerical reasoning, problem solving

    Engagement & Retention Factors (including intrinsic motivators) –Development expectations, social expectations, remuneration expectations, communication expectations, authority expectations, appreciation expectations, personal expectations, work/life balance expectations

    Cultural Fit (aligned to organisational values) – Aligned values (personal vs company)

    Remote Working Compatibility – Remote productivity, remote communication, remote leadership

    Assessment Centre Intelligence provides an excellent alternative at a time when face to face assessment centres are not possible. You may love it so much you will want to continue even when face to face becomes available again.

    We can help you to choose the best approach for your organisation:  

    Option 1 – Gain access to the system and be trained to run your own in-house ACI

    Option 2 – We will run and manage a full ACI for you

    Option 3 – Reports only – for development of individuals or teams and acquisition

     

    Get in touch now for a bespoke demonstration:

    Trevor – trevor@3p.co.uk – 07453 973 791
    Chrissie – christine@utransition.co.uk – 07828 496 388

  2. Remote Working Analytics

    Leave a Comment Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

    Remote Working Analytics

     

    With improvements in workplace technology and the effects of lockdown restrictions, the number of people working remotely in the UK increased dramatically from 4.6 million in 2019 to over 20 million in 2021. This figure has settled in the last year; 30% of the UK workforce was working remotely at least once a week in 2022.

    Whether remote work is new to your organisation or you’ve been doing it successfully for years, your employees have likely experienced both the benefits and the challenges of getting things done away from the office.

    Harrison Assessments Remote Workforce Analytics allows you to measure and understand employees’ capacity to work remotely and how leaders need to adjust their management style to help employees succeed in a remote environment.

    Download Brochure

    Download Sample Reports

    Remote Work Analysis

    Measure, understand and coach your employees’ ability to effectively work remotely. Includes two behavioural competencies for Remote Productivity and Remote Communication and can be combined with Behavioural Success Analysis and Engagement & Retention Analysis.

    Remote Leadership Analysis

    Leaders often need to adapt their style for remote working. Includes two behavioural competencies for Managing Remote Productivity and Managing Remote Communication.

    If you would like to know more please contact me at pat@quadrant1.com

     

     

    Sources: ONS UK

  3. Letting Go Of The Day Job

    Leave a Comment Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

    Letting Go of the Day Job

    I work with leaders from a cross section of organisations, helping them to transition from being an expert in their field to taking on leadership roles.  We have known for a long time that leaders often feel bereft at having to let go of the day job and try hard to hold on to it, often giving the perception of micromanaging.  Leadership courses do their best to train the new set of skills necessary for stepping up and on the whole do a good job. However, some industries in particular find it more difficult than others – industries where a high degree of risk aversion exists – engineering, manufacturing, IT, Utilities to name but a few.

    The habits exhibited by potential leaders are of course an unconscious process and often don’t come to light even during the leadership training.  Habits of behaviour and thinking which have been formed over time to accommodate the role of the day job and which now need to be changed if they are to step up to the challenges of leadership.  A classic example is shown here –

     

     

    the diagram shows the top two rows (Initiating and Motivating) of a paradox report for someone applying for a leadership role. The graph as a whole shows the person’s overall approach to work and the final two rows (not shown here) are Implementing and Maintaining thus giving us a complete picture.

    For now, let’s just take a look at the top row which represents the setting up of any project or work requirement. It is called ‘Initiating’ – I sometimes prefer to call it the ‘visionary’ level because nothing has happened at this stage – it’s all in the planning, in the mind, in the imagination.

     

     

    Incidentally this person has scored quite highly on both the Motivating and Implementation stage suggesting that he/she is very good at implementing a strategy and motivating others to get behind it once the strategy is in place.  But now things are different.  We are asking this person to step up and become a leader which he/she may well be able to do with some training but first needs the awareness of the gaps.  The need for the skills used in the day job become secondary to those needed at the strategic level.  Take a look at the first paradox graph in the diagram ‘Opinions’ – this person has a strong propensity to be open and reflective in his/her ideas and will spend time gathering those of others.  It may take a while for this person to become certain and feel confident to express an opinion thus appearing ‘flakey’ to others.  The key here is not to stop being open and reflective but to ask the question ‘what has to happen for you to be certain in this scenario?’

    Similarly, the Decision graph would suggest that this person’s approach to decision making is erratic at most thus leaving people unsure of what might happen next.  The preparedness to make a decision in a leadership role is key to success so work is needed here too.  The one I find most fascinating is the Strategic Graph.  Here we have someone who is unsure of their own opinions, finds it tricky to make a decision and is also risk averse.  This may be fine in the day job, for example, we would really not want engineers to take risks with the engineering aspect of their role but this is different. Strategy by definition has risk attached, since it has never been done before. Remember this is at the initiating or visionary stage of the work – at some point this person will have to put a stake in the ground, having analysed the pitfalls and gathered and analysed enough data.  A whole new set of skills which can be taught but need awareness first.

     

    If you would like to know more about the unique and versatile Harrison Assessments Talent Solution approach, based on enjoyment theory, please do get in touch:

    Pat Hutchinson

    07768 922244

    pat@quadrant1.com

  4. The Lunacy of People Assessment

    Leave a Comment Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

    The Lunacy of People Assessment

    A thought occurred to me recently. If your organisation measured growth in sterling for the first quarter, US Dollars for the second, Yen for the third and Euros for the fourth would you think this a sensible idea? When your children were growing up did you measure their height in centimeters, then inches then centimeters again? Would you find it odd if your sat nav gave distances in miles and then kilometers and then back to miles again and then for special treat measured the last section of the journey in furlongs? So why do we use so many different assessments for people development?

    I work with organisations who use one assessment for beginners in an organization, another for aspiring leaders, another for teams and yet another for senior executives. The reason for this is probably simple – traditionally there has been no one assessment that has offered a complete talent solution. I have sometimes heard HR professionals say that as people progress through the organization they want to be able to offer ‘something different’ as if its special to change the yardstick in some way. Traditionally assessments measure a ‘moment in time’ and don’t offer the analytics that current, more progressive assessments offer which perhaps is the reason for the wide offering and a reluctance to change keeps people rooted in such thinking.

    Going forward analytics in the HR field are going to become prominent in organizational development. HR specialists are now able to offer the analytics to –

    · Match people accurately to specific roles

    · Assess retention and engagement expectations to enable organiastions to keep their talented staff

    · Develop talent through every level of management and leadership

    · Develop teams that are able to work effectively together

    · Create cultures that are progressive and in line with the strategic goals of the organization

    · Use emotional intelligence assessment to design personal development plans

    · Assess behavioural and leadership competencies in line with the organisations expectations.

    · Create a succession planning system to match prospective candidates to roles quickly and effectively

    · Assess cultural behaviours in teams and groups to ascertain the impact on productivity and design necessary adjustment programmes

    It makes sense therefore to choose a yardstick which is going to give like for like comparisons along the way – one that has been thoroughly researched, is highly accurate and benchmarked against excellent performance not norms as is the traditional approach.

    If you would like to know more about the unique Harrison Assessment Talent Solution which can provide all of the above do get in touch.

    Pat Hutchinson, Quadrant 1 International Ltd, pat@quadrant1.com

Quadrant 1 International