Assessment Design
All too often managers act on gut instinct or anecdotal evidence when making decisions about managing performance, identifying people with high potential for promotion, and even selection and recruitment. While these instincts might be right, they are not sufficiently robust and objective for today’s employment environment.
Head Light Communications specialise in developing tailored questionnaires and assessments for use in:
- development reviews and planning, often associated with performance reviews
- assessing high potential staff for succession management programmes
- assessing candidates in recruitment programmes.
Our design approach
These values are common to each of the different types of assessment we design.
Clarity about which competencies are being assessed.
Using a collaborative process we will review the job roles and competence profiles and agree the competencies to be assessed. We will also ensure the behavioural indicators are relevant, observable and measurable.
Choice of suitable rating scale/scoring model.
There a many different types of rating-scales/scoring models available, each with different attributes and applications. We will ensure the right scale is used to provide consistent, objective feedback.
Use of language and terminology.
The use of language can have a big impact on the quality, for instance by making the items easier to understand and removing ambiguity. It can also help to differentiate the use of language by reviewer group, for instance removing internal terminology / jargon from questionnaires sent to external reviewers.
Clarity of reports
The information collected through assessments can be very rich, but the reports can be quite daunting. We focus on making the reports easy to understand and interpret, as well as providing rich insight. For example we provide guidance for individuals and managers to read and interpret the reports. We provide both summary and detailed information to see the big picture and be able to drill down into the detail; we identifying strengths as well as development areas, we use graphical charts as well as numbers and tables; we allow comparison between self-assessment and each of the other review groups and the degree of consensus between reviewers, and we identify which review groups who are especially well-positioned to observe each indicator; we enable comparisons to be made with previous reviews and with standards or reference groups.
Other design considerations apply to specific types of assessment.
