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Assessment and development centres are increasingly considered the most effective ways to recruit and develop employees. Usually based on some form of competency framework, assessment centres combine a series of activities that attempt to simulate situations that prospective employees might find themselves in during the course of the job they are applying for.
These exercises are observed by assessors who grade their performance according to predetermined competencies / criteria. Generally each competency will be assessed in more than one activity and by different observers with discrepancies being discussed during a ‘wash-up’ session when an overall ‘score’ is allocated to each delegate.
The key difference with development centres is the level of feedback that is provided to the delegates. As the intention of these events is to help an existing employee to develop further, the emphasis is on giving constructive feedback and holding formal review sessions, so that the delegate and assessor (and / or their line manager) can agree their development priorities moving forward. Assessment centres can be run either:
•As a set of disparate activities that each assess specific competencies, but are not linked to each other in any way
•As a coordinated set of activities around a given situation or organisation
Our preference is the latter, as this allows us to see the flow of performance and enables delegates to become immersed in the simulated situation.
We design a set of activities that would both assess the competencies within organisational frameworks and (where possible) reflect the activities of the management community.
Actors are used in these centres to play customers, employees, managers and (in some cases) colleagues. In many cases they can also double up as assessors
