As businesses strive to compete in a difficult market, the need for efficiency is becoming extremely important, and organisations are always looking for ways to do more for less. At the same time though – particularly in our ‘VUCA’ environment where managing talent is a real challenge – it’s fundamental to be able to hire the best individuals for a role and be able to develop the employees already in your organisation. As such, Assessment and Development Centres have a significant role to play.
At a&dc, we recently partnered with Colorado State University in the USA to conduct a global survey of Assessment and Development Centre practitioners, reviewing key trends being seen around the world. And the findings suggest that Assessment Centre usage in organisations will only increase further as more and more companies recognise its benefits.
As I’m sure you’re aware, some of these advantages include the fact that a lot of time can be saved, for instance with automated or semi-automated generation of participant report content rather than doing it manually. On top of this, virtual assessment centre exercises can be run without assessors being present, which can help to overcome geographical barriers, and there can be real benefits in terms of costs and accuracy.
It’s clear that the nature of Assessment Centres has changed though and, over the years, techniques have developed in response to the needs of businesses. One example of this, for instance, is our new Assessment and Development Centre Exercises, AC-EXS, ‘on demand’ service, which is a first for the HR industry. We recognised the need to give our clients the flexibility of having an instant service, that also has a huge range of exercises available, measuring multiple competencies, covering a variety of work situations, sectors, business functions and career levels.
Assessment Centres and the methods used in them will continue to develop further, and technology in particular is expected to play an even greater role. Perhaps one day we’ll even have centres that can assess themselves! But, for now, if you’d like to find out more about our new offering, visit our website.
