Very closely linked to Talent Identification are assessments for Capability Purposes.
We often have clients who find that a whole group of individuals, typically in first line management positions, are not performing, but don’t know why. Invariably, we have found, that this is due to problems with capability. Individuals may have been supervising for years and have ample experience, but are just not performing. With projects like this we will assess the entire group, and be able to identify which individuals have the capability, do not have the capability or have excess capability for the role that they are in. This is extremely helpful to organisations to make decisions around:
  • Who has the capability to be trained to close gaps
  • Who should be redeployed into more suitable roles due to a lack of capability
  • Who can be fast tracked into more senior roles due to excess capability
  • What can be expected of the team performance – wise based on the collective capability of the team
  • What the implications are for recruitment going forward
For example, we found the following with one of our clients who were experiencing wide spread poor performance amongst their team leaders.
The psychometric assessment showed that 10 out of the 16 Team Leaders had insufficient capability for the role. Because of this training and development was unlikely to be successful in closing gaps and therefore redeployment of some kind where they were placed in roles better aligned to their limited capability would be the way to go.
It further informed recruitment decisions going forward – the emphasis clearly would have to be on ensuring that sufficient capability was brought into the team so the selection criteria would need to weight capability more than competencies.
Of the 4 who had sufficient capability, the assessment identified their development needs and development plans could be drawn up accordingly. Those with excess capability could be assigned to the more challenging areas of the plant and could also be fast tracked for more senior roles.
Overall, management could not expect this team to perform very well due to the lack of capability, and there was a strong likelihood of “downward drag” where the production manager would have to compensate for the poor performance of his team leaders, by taking over some of their responsibilities and having to provide ongoing coaching and support to them. Of course to the detriment of attending to the responsibilities in his own roles.
The capability limitations on this team were a definite constraint to the performance of the plant and this issue had to be addressed by bringing in people who had the capability commensurate with the job.
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