Assessment and Development Centres
“I was quite nervous about how I was going to carry my department through our imminent major expansion, but the development workshop helped me see how we could prepare every individual for it.” – Middle manager, pharmaceutical company
Recruitment and retention are key issues for those whose professional success depends on the professional competence of others.
Management Futures is skilled at helping you make well-informed selection decisions and hire the right people. We can support new and existing staff through training and ensure they have the right skills.
Assessment Centres
Extensive research demonstrates that there is one way to hire the best candidate for a job. Only one really effective way of providing an employer with comprehensive and objective information on which to take a decision. That is an assessment centre. Using a combination of appropriate psychometric instruments and practical problem solving and decision making exercises designed to replicate the way in which a person would do the job, they offer a far deeper insight into the suitability of a candidate than can be gleaned from a conventional interview alone.
Assessment criteria are based on carefully developed competencies – that is, the behaviours to be observed in someone doing the job very well.
There is no such thing as a “standard” assessment centre – some can last as little as half a day, while others can go on for two or three days or more. The centre would be designed around your needs.
A full report is produced for each candidate, to give the selection panel comprehensive factual information about the candidates rather than subjective personal impressions.
We strongly recommend that candidates are debriefed on their performance shortly after attending the assessment centre
Development Centres or Workshops
Development centres are an excellent way of equipping staff with detailed feedback, insight and enhanced self-awareness to ensure that subsequent training and development interventions are targeted and relevant. They are an exciting and innovative approach to:
- managing the human resources component of organisational change
- identifying the potential and development needs of your key people
- developing integrated corporate and departmental training plans
They run over one, two or three days and can either be targeted at key skills critical for the immediate development of your organisation or the complete development needs of your management team.
What they deliver to the organisation
Development centres offer a robust basis for developing the human resources component of business plans. They can deliver:
- an audit of current management capability
- an audit of future potential
- a process for aligning people with the skill set for the future
- a robust basis for developing training plans
- a focused approach to allocating training budgets
What they deliver to the individual
Development centres:
- put the responsibility for development with the individual
- make the employee feel valued within the organisation
- provide an individual and targeted personal development plan
- leave the individual committed to a realistic action plan
How they run
At Management Futures, our approach is to update or develop a comprehensive set of management competencies with you. These competencies underpin the design of the centre and provide the measures against which participants will be assessed.
We will help you prepare participants in advance of the workshops so they get the best out of the experience.
The centres are intensive and stretching and usually run on a model of activity, self-assessment and structured feedback.
Each participant will leave with a comprehensive personal development plan. The organisation will receive a detailed summary report highlighting the key issues and development needs identified in the centre and recommending a priority action list.