Why Workplace Assessments Fall Short...

Posted on October 06, 2016 by Mark Myette, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

There was an ad campaign Wendy’s did years ago – three older women staring at a burger being overwhelmed by everything else and NOT the beef and wondering aloud “Where’s the beef?” Which leads into this week’s blog – WHY – focused on workplace assessments and why they have the risk of falling short of expectations and outcomes…next week’s blog – WHAT – we’ll take on the assessment topic from the angle what can be done to ensure that workplace assessments serve their purpose!

Note: this blog is not taking on assessments used to screen job applicants…that’s a whole different realm…

At the most basic level, off-the-shelf workplace assessments fall into several categories: psychological; behavioral; personal – character; skill; and knowledge.

Questions to ask BEFORE going down the assessment road…

This week’s blog is also not about a particular assessment – although I have preferences – the opportunity for the company / group is to answer key questions before going down the assessment road:

​- What opportunity have we identified that an assessment will address? Or,
- What problem are we trying to solve?
- Why do we think we have a problem?
- What data do we have to support this claim?
- What do we hope the assessment will accomplish? Or,
- What does success look like as a result of doing the assessment?
- Do we have buy-in from the stakeholders (leaders, managers, employees)?
- How will top-level management support this initiative?
- How will we support the leaders, managers, employees through the use of the assessment? Or,
- How committed are we to rolling out an assessment AND follow up AND follow through?
- How will the assessment be rolled out? Positioned?

It needs to be more than an event…

Too often, with the best intentions, companies identify an opportunity to put a team, group (e.g. sales, sales managers, leaders) through an assessment and when it comes time to roll it out, it gets pushed out and embedded into another “event” – and usually gets squeezed by other initiatives…

Every day HR, talent development, training leaders / managers are having conversations to justify why we would need more than an “event” to roll out something…there’s more to it!
​
A MISSED opportunity…

People take it – get a report – and may even have a follow up discussion with someone to discuss the results (usually, it’s a group discussion NOT one-on-one)…the meeting ends, people file away the results and within hours – the results are forgotten…within HOURS!

A MISSED opportunity…

Or worse, an assessment was rolled out to achieve a particular result / outcome and it resulted in something different than the intended outcome – such as turmoil…

Why? All the emphasis of the assessment was about NAMING where people landed. Putting folks in-a-box.

A MISSED opportunity…

In a previous blog, we spoke about a simple three step process: Name! Claim! & Aim! The reality is in most situations the only step covered is the first one: Name! Folks take an assessment “because they were told to.” They took it and got a report or worse, they took it and never were given their results! Don’t believe me?

Ask two questions to verify the missed opportunity…

1. What were the outcomes from the XYZ assessment we had fill-in-the-blank group complete? (Intentional / non-intentional)
2. Where did they and their team land on the XYZ assessment?

If the response is: “You know, I have to go back and check that out! I don’t know, OR worse, I forget!”

A MISSED OPPORTUNITY!

Next Week we’ll talk about the WHAT of workplace assessment strategies you can have in place to maximize the process.

My best in your quest!

Mark
​I believe each of us is a gift. I create trusted relationships where individuals, teams and leaders NAME, CLAIM and AIM their gifts to achieve optimum ​performance.