Never is this approach more valuable than in the recruitment and selection of your people – of your greatest assets. Retention of your brightest most motivated, and most valued employee starts with your hiring decisions.
Hiring a new person is one of the hardest, most expensive, and critical decisions you can take. It's never been easier to attract potential recruits, but how will you choose the best one for your business, the best fit for your organization, the person most likely to get the job done?
If the only tool you have to help you make your selection decisions is the unstructured interview, you could be wasting huge amounts of time and money.
“In determing "the right people," the good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience”
~Jim Collins, Good to Great
Studies have shown that the most effective selection process involves a combination of structured, competence-based interviews, and validated assessment tests or questionnaires.
And formal assessment is also a key tool when it comes to succession planning, and identifying training needs. If you want to keep those great people you spent a fortune on hiring, you need to know how best to develop them for the long term.
Way Ahead provides two critical services to help you make the best hires and keep your best people – better decisions lead to better results.
Recruitment
Who are you looking for? What responsibilities will they have? How much will they be paid? What level of experience, education, and competency do they need? Where might you find suitable candidates?
All these are basic but critical questions which can be surprisingly difficult to answer! Way Ahead works with you each step of the way. We provide advice and guidance coaching you to start with the end in mind. This means we will help you to:
- Describe the main objectives of the position;
- Identify the true level of skills, knowledge, and experience are needed to ensure success;
- Draft an accurate and realistic Job Description and candidate profile;
- Create the job posting;
- Identify sources of potential candidates.
This will put you in a great position to attract a number of well qualified leads.
Assessment for Selection
Choosing the best person from a number of qualified candidates requires more than "good people instincts". You need to know what kinds of question are most likely to elicit responses that will indicate whether the candidate has the kind of practical experience you need to get your job done. You should also consider deploying some sort of assessment instrument.
At Way Ahead we have access to some of the best validated and most widely used assessment tools, including SHL's Occupational Personality Questionnaire.
We have tests that measure cognitive abilities such as verbal and numerical reasoning, and planning and organizing, plus personality and interest inventories to assess personal attributes such as motivations, conscientiousness, assertiveness, energy, and interpersonal skills.
We can work with you to design the ideal candidate-screening process, to maximise your chances of selecting the perfect hire from your list of candidates. Once each candidate has completed the assessment exercises, we'll prepare a comprehensive, integrated report, including descriptions of behaviors, strengths, and development needs.
Assessment for Development
Way Ahead's individual assessments provide valuable behavioral experiences that stimulate thinking about skills and careers. Participants receive detailed feedback describing specific strengths and developmental opportunities. In addition, the assessment process can be extended to include developmental coaching, action planning or follow-up training.
This is essential if you are at all serious about succession planning.
Opportunities for learning and development are a key motivator that will help keep your people on board and engaged. Our assessment tools are the ideal method for identifying potential and helping people focus on what needs to be worked on.
Performance Appraisal
Too often this key tool for improving organizational performance is reduced to an exercise in completing HR forms! Managers regard it as an onerous imposition, and employees are only interested in how their 'review' will impact their compensation.
But an effective performance appraisal system can give businesses real leverage when it comes to improving processes and operations.
Used properly, the performance appraisal can be a great tool for motivating employees, identifying training needs, improving management effectiveness, and unearthing great ideas for streamlining operations or increasing profitability.
Talk to us, today, to find out how create a performance appraisal process that will help you retain and develop your people, at the same time as improving your business results.