Work Levels
Work Levels Transforming resourcing and minimising the cost of recruitment Overview Despite advances in technology, recruitment continues to be very expensive and timeconsuming for a recruiting manager and the selection process often involves difficult to articulate (and defend) factors such as ‘personal chemistry’. Work Levels and associated online profiling tools can transform the recruitment process together with the cost-base and lay the foundation for strategic resourcing that enables organisations to develop a complete talent inventory. Introduction The essence of Human Resource Management can be distilled to ‘ensuring the right people are in the right place now and in the future’ and, arguably, there is no more important management responsibility than to ensure that people are well matched to jobs that they undertake.
Yet, the resourcing processes associated with matching people to jobs including recruitment, selection and the management of talent have become complex, timeconsuming, massively costly and inefficient. Not only that, the result of the matching process is often a wrong fit.
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Whilst the cost of failure may be more easily demonstrated where there is the wrong appointment of a senior executive, the big costs add up from smaller misalignments and poor judgements about fit and suitability. Despite advances over recent years in interview skills and psychometric analysis, a successful appointment is often still attributed to ‘chemistry’. It is argued here that this inability to often explain what makes a good fit is due to the fact that ‘People’ and ‘Jobs’ have become disassociated concepts. With the different technologies and methods associated with job evaluation and psychometrics, it is as if jobs are measured in units of weight and people in terms of height. As such there is an inbuilt disconnect and there are many negative consequences.
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Work Levels As a result of this disconnect between people and jobs HR processes and methods are often disjointed and, at worst, can be time-consuming hindrances to line managers. The good news is that there is a management methodology that makes a dynamic link between people and jobs. This methodology is known as Work Levels and is expanded on later in the article. Before this we will quickly address the flaws and weaknesses in current resourcing practices. The Problems and Issues in Resourcing An effective process that matches people to jobs is the foundation for broader talent management initiatives and the building of high performance organisations. It is also essential in minimising the cost of placing people in jobs. However, in so many organisations the recruitment process is time-consuming and the effort expended rarely equates with the reward of making good placements. This is not surprising given that typically: The process builds on a shaky foundation- the CV, There is a lack of management training in how to identify needs and write job descriptions, Managers often feel that they will know what good looks like when they see it and therefore undertake unstructured interviews, Psychometric assessment has provided work for psychologists but often leaves the recruiting manager confused, On-line recruitment has become complex and, despite promises to the contrary, sifting and sorting through potential candidates is as time consuming as ever. The CV In spite of decades of technological innovation the CV, or resume as it is known in the USA, has remained unchanged for nearly 60 years. How we exchange, read
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and distribute CV’s has changed radically, yet the document format of the CV remains stuck in the era of typewriters and stamped envelopes. A CV is essentially a ‘free-hand’ narrative of a person’s career to-date. This lists past and present employers, areas of responsibility and, in the best cases, a list of achievements. However, they do not immediately convey what a person can actually contribute to an organisation or the level at which they have worked. The CV is often produced with the aid of a professional CV writer. As with all marketing documents, CVs can put a gloss on what actually happened. However, it can also be the case that a job history covers up the real capability that someone possesses. Identifying Needs and Writing Job Descriptions The key to making a successful assessment or selection decision is to determine what is important and what it is that you are measuring. As such, the first step to making an effective appointment is to clearly define the work requirements of a job. However, few managers have had formal training to enable them to undertake a comprehensive and objective analysis of the level of challenge of the role and the knowledge, skills and experiences that are required. As such the person specification often lacks depth and often defaults to ‘he or she must be an enthusiastic self starter’. Interviews The interview remains the most widely used selection methodology but without adequate training it can be a manager’s most expensive conversation.
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Work Levels When it comes to assessment, it is necessary to recognise that candidates are sophisticated. They are often highly experienced in interviews and there is a danger that a practiced ‘story’, just as in the CV, can put a gloss on what actually happened in reality. When seeking to understand what a person has actually achieved it is necessary to engage in a dialogue that is uncluttered by practiced responses that so often occurs in interview situations.
However, online recruitment lacks a useful and efficient matching methodology. Despite advances in search-engine capability, there is no easy read-across from CVs to job requirements
Competency based interviews have rightly gained popularity in recent years as the methodology allows interviewers to probe for evidence of experience. However this approach has its limitations. It does not tend to encompass the business perspective or thinking skills that someone has.
Next Generation Resourcing Processes Work Levels is a management methodology used by some of the world’s leading organisations and provides the basis for step changes in resourcing.
Without looking at the quality of the thinking skills and depth and breadth of a person’s perspective it is not possible to fully assess their capability to handle situations that fall outside of their experience. Lacking this vital information, it is impossible to assess their potential to undertake more challenging work in the future. Psychometric Assessment A rigorous approach to selection is required and unfortunately, seemingly scientific psychological profiling falls short. Personality profiling tools most often ask for context free answers to general preference questions. As we know from our own experience, people are highly context dependent and have great powers to modify behaviours depending on the situation. As such, preferences may bear little resemblance to actual behaviour in real-life situations. Not only is the value of many psychometric assessments relatively low, when the results require expensive interpretation, the real impact is just extra cost and long recruitment cycles.
The consequences are that the recruiting manager spends considerable amounts of time going through a high volume of misfits to find the right person or they outsource this task to a third-party at significant cost.
The essence of Work Levels is that all work can be allocated to one of a specified number of levels of work - each with its own theme, purpose and core contribution. Core contribution describes the outputs of the job and the value of these to the organisation is in direct proportion to the complexity of the environment in which decisions have to be made. Based on this, the mirror image is established which relates to the people requirements. Making this connection provides the basis for profound change. A step change in resourcing methods rests on a simple premise; if you use similar dimensions and a common language to profile both people and jobs it is possible to measure the extent of the match. Using Work Levels, and associated profiling tools, it is possible to: Transform the cost of short-listing candidates, Minimise the risk of executive failure associated with poor selection practices.
Online Recruitment The internet is increasingly the market place that brings people and jobs together.
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Work Levels By making the connection, a dynamic link between people and jobs is formed. People management experience Motivation and values
Personal style
Professional/ technical/ functional skills and knowledge
Minimising Risk As detailed above, there are often serious flaws in selection processes. Work Levels is the equivalent of a ruler that provides the opportunity for objective assessment. In fact, it enables assessors to go beyond assessing current capability; it enables an assessment of growth potential. Growth potential describes a person’s ability to take on more complex work than they have, as yet, experienced. Using Work Levels, assessors can quantify the gap between a person’s capability and the job requirements now and in the future and this provides the basis for risk assessment. Green Paper series
People management requirements Team Working Organisational culture
Core capability
Short-listing Using Work Levels, people can profile their own experience in a completely revised format that emphasises capability, skills, knowledge and experience. When this is used as the basis for a CV then it is possible to automatically match people and jobs in a way that transforms the initial short-listing of candidates. When the gap between job requirements and a person’s capability is assessed, short-lists can be produced automatically and in a way that does not discriminate unfairly.
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Professional/ technical/ functional skills and knowledge requirements
Core contribution
Conclusion Despite the fact that recruitment is largely moving to the internet as the medium that connects people and jobs, very little progress has actually been made in reducing the end-user costs associated with the matching process and in making better recruitment decisions. Now, Work Levels and its associated internet based profiling tools provides the opportunity to transform the cost base of recruitment and minimise risk. Using Work Levels, organisations will have the ability to: Increase effectiveness by distinguishing the success criteria, Increase the efficiency of matching volume applicants to real jobs, Reduce management time spent on recruitment administration, Reduce the risk of misfits by improving assessment without the use of costly external assistance, Build a talent inventory that identifies growth potential.
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