Selecting and developing talent for organisational change
This financial services client had identified the need for some significant changes to a core support function to help equip the business for future challenges. The organisation needed to have a clear picture of its current capabilities within the function to help make decisions about how people would fit into new roles and how to provide appropriate support and development.
Approach
The project had to happen within a very short timescale to meet organisational goals. Wilson Ainley worked closely with senior managers in the business to build understanding of the work environment and create a process that had strong credibility with people, in terms of both fairness and relevance to their real work environment. The approach involved:
- Profiling the capabilities required for the future, drawing on existing leadership frameworks
- Designing a one-day assessment process comprised of structured interviews, psychometric assessment and bespoke business simulation exercises that closely mirrored the new ‘target‘ roles
- Training senior managers within the business to act as assessors, focusing not just on best practice assessment skills but also, and more critically, skills in delivering constructive developmental feedback
- Acting as an external and independent assessor on the assessment events
- Providing written development reports on the people assessed to inform decisions on suitability for new roles and provide constructive feedback to help people develop.
Success
The project was conducted within two months. Senior managers had confidence that they had a robust and objective assessment of their peoples’ capabilities that they could rely on to make critical decisions about suitability for new roles. Participants who went through the assessment felt that it was objective, relevant and fair. The client was also able to identify capability gaps that needed to be filled in order to deliver on the challenging work commitments of the function over the subsequent 18 months.