INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2012
S Y N O P S E S 4 th — 5 th O C T O B E R 2 0 1 2
BUILDING P A R T N E R S H I P S, GROWING TOGETHER
Chris Small Director, International Development
Building Partnerships, Growing Together
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Welcome and Introduction Chris Small
Chris opened Saville Consulting’s 2012 International Conference by welcoming everyone and introducing the main theme of sharing knowledge and leveraging experiences. Chris recognized the vast amount of knowledge and expertise present at the conference and emphasized the aim: Building Partnerships, Growing Together, not just with Saville Consulting, but with each other, so that access to the partner network is made easier on an international level.
Professor Peter Saville Peter welcomed everyone to the conference. He then presented data by the Boston Consulting Group which undertook a study (which is not final until late October) to see what kind of HR activity really made the difference to the profit of a company. The study looked at around 20 areas of HR activities, such as developing leadership, recruitment and selection, managing diversity and inclusion, onboarding/retention, managing talent, managing flexibility in labor costs, managing an ageing workforce and employer branding. Peter summarized the areas found to be making the most difference (in the provisional study) as:
• Recruiting and selection • Onboarding/retention • Managing talent The areas found to make the least difference were:
• Managing flexibility/labor costs • Restructuring • Managing work-life balance
Rab MacIver Head of Research & Development
Wave速: The Next Generation
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Wave: The Next Generation Rab MacIver
Rab talked about the ‘illusion of validity’, explaining that when people believe they can make valid judgments in one area, they think they can make valid judgments in other areas such as choosing a selection method. Rab emphasized the need to have appropriate scientific studies. Rab asked the audience for the reasons behind Wave’s superior validity; answers included:
• Validation-centric design — questions were chosen on the basis of the proven relationship to work • • • • • •
performance Dynamic Rate-Rank online format — Normative and Ipsative combined Exceptional item quality The Wave model — developed by an expert and experienced occupational psychologist team Good international model and good translations into different languages No restriction of range as some of the audience have seen in other personality assessments Many different facets are assessed in Wave to ensure a good overall correlation with key work criteria
A slide showing data from the Project Epsom study compared the overall effectiveness of various personality questionnaires to predict performance. Rab pointed out Wave Professional Styles at 0.57 and emphasized the high validity of Saville Consulting Work Strengths at 0.54. He then showed a slide summarizing the validity of questionnaires in relation to predicting competencies, indicating that again Professional Styles was the most valid.
Validation-Centric Item Selection Rab explained that only the best items were included in the Wave questionnaire: the research team originally had 214 facets and ended up with 108. Each item in the pool had to predict both proficiency and potential well, in addition to the related behavioral competency, to qualify for inclusion.
Item Writing When writing items, the team focused on making them relate to active behavior that underpinned effectiveness. For example, they decided that ‘...accepting new challenges...’ was too passive an item to underpin Adapting to Change; instead a more active item such as ‘I readily adapt to new challenges’ was preferred.
Wave Model Rab showed how the Wave model aligned to the Great Eight and Big Five competency and personality models. Specifically when assessing Great 8 competencies, Wave has the highest predictive qualities in the area of ‘Creating and Conceptualizing’. Wave also has higher average validity than other assessment tools in forecasting overall effectiveness at work.
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Rate-Rank Format This operates by giving free choice and if choices have been tied, it forces a choice. Rab said that the research to date suggested that the online dynamic Rate and Rank format of Wave has higher validity than either Normative or Ipsative scores alone. While this dynamic online format seems to provide a contribution to Wave’s overall superior validity, it does not in itself appear to be the fundemental differentiator.
Motive & Talent Rab explained that the Talent items are integral to improving the validity of the Wave model; motivation is also useful, which is why it’s included. The high validity of talent by itself helps to explain the strong validity of Work Strengths as it uses the Talent items of the Wave model.
Faking Profiles were shown of two candidates who tried to ‘distort’ their Wave questionnaire answers: one who had completed the questionnaire very quickly with little interest, and the other who had carefully tried to distort their results positively. There is a misconception that low consistency is evidence of faking — this is often in fact not the case; low consistency, however, can indicate disinterest or even ‘faking bad’ . ‘Faking good’ is more likely to be evidenced by high consistency and higher acquiescense (with a high frequency of Normative and Ipsative splits).
New Reports Rab mentioned some of the new reports from Wave, including the Sales and Team Roles reports; he explained that the Team Roles model includes a new area of Optimism, which correlates with a team’s confidence and has been found to be important for a team’s success. The data from a Team Roles report can be shown as a Team Profile with the Most and Least Preferred roles for each team member plotted on a wheel diagram.
New Initiatives In addition to specific product launches such as Strengths and MarketYou, new initiatives coming up include:
• • • •
Investing in HTML to make viewing our assessments on iPads possible next year Meta-analysis study on Wave Producing new international Wave norms due to massive growth in database Making bespoke reports more sophisticated and easier to create
Gabby Parry Managing Director
Best Sellers
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Best Sellers Gabby Parry
Gabby explained Peter Saville’s vision for the business as ‘transforming assessment’ by using the power of the internet, providing valid products and ensuring great customer service. The starting point for the route to market was to engage with thought leaders and key influencers through international partners and direct sales in the UK market.
Golden Triangle Gabby discussed the advantages of the ‘Golden Triangle’ approach of products, training and consultancy. When a business gets this mix right, the three link up: clients train to use products, use products and this opens doors to consultancy assignments.
Talent Cycle Gabby explained that the Talent Cycle shows an overview of the Saville Consulting product portfolio, comprised of over 100 tests, two core Wave questionnaires, 13 Wave reports and many subsets of reports. Gabby defined the four Talent Cycle quadrants:
• • • •
Requirements — ‘What is the need?’, ‘What is the job?’, ‘How are competencies defined?’ Screening — taking large numbers in a standardized and valid way, reducing those numbers Potential — making those hiring decisions internally and externally Performance — the measurement and management of performance once hired
‘Potential’ currently generates the most revenue because it includes the Wave questionnaire. The lowest revenue generating quadrant was ‘Requirements’ although this ‘opened doors’ to clients.
Product Sales Gabby then summarized product sales, highlighting sales by Bureau as a good revenue source which provides good client interaction and consistently wins customer service plaudits. The top-selling report is Wave Professional Styles Expert, followed by Swift Analysis Aptitude and Wave Focus Styles Expert but Gabby predicted that Strengths, as a new product, will increase its proportion of sales significantly within the next year.
Test Market In the aptitude test market, the Swift test has been successful, as a combined test was not offered by other providers. As we have produced more online single tests for completion under supervision, Gabby predicts an increase in sales of these tests. The best-selling Swift test is Swift Analysis Aptitude; the single tests in the Analysis range are also best sellers, with Numerical being the highest, followed by Verbal and Diagrammatic. Abstract as a new alternative to Diagrammatic is also starting to impact on sales figures.
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Saville Consulting’s advice on testing is to use unsupervised tests with large numbers and then retest in supervised environment if cognitive is important. Gabby noted that currently, not many people are going down the supervised retesting route, but the test portfolio is ready for a flexible approach.
Wave® The demand for shorter administration times, shorter reports and simpler reporting with good feedback makes the Wave Focus tool, and shorter elements such as the Line Manager report, very popular. The UK tends to use Wave Professional Styles, while the rest of the world leans more towards Wave Focus Styles.
Work Strengths Work Strengths was originally used with the graduate market, but Saville Consulting has recently developed a bespoke output from Strengths designed to assess applicants for teacher training. We are also now actively using Strengths with the call center sector and Joel, our partner in Mexico, has been looking at using Strengths for volume numbers in the financial services sector.
Clients Gabby shared some case studies of our journey with various clients. She discussed international growth of BP’s relationship with us and reviewed the assignment for CSC which started with using Wave to identify their high potential talent; Wave was mapped to Lominger which helped demonstrate Wave’s advantage to show Potential for their talent program. Gabby said the real unique selling point with Wave is that it really looks at potential, and our research data highlights core areas in relation to this. When validation studies are done with clients, the same themes come through: the top two predictors of the Wave sections are ‘Driving Success’ and ‘Providing Leadership’. Although there has been criticism of the 9 Box Grid, many UK clients are using this. Using Wave, we helped CSC populate the ‘Potential’ axis on their 9 Box Grid with a merit list for their senior leadership group, then Sales division and finally their emerging leader population. Saville Consulting also helped CSC to provide performance data for talent in their Nordic region by developing a short, 15 item questionnaire with the 12 Wave sections and our three Global measures.
Product Sales Gabby summarized the advantages of product sales, saying they:
• • • •
lead to referred supplier status and longer term contracts allow integration with applicant tracking systems to embed our tools enable us to support all areas in the Boston Consulting Group study (Talent Cycle) open doors for consultancy
Gabby also announced that we will be using Big Data analytics to advise as to best practice.
Joe Wiggin Head of Assessment, Jaguar Land Rover
Assessment in Recruitment
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Jaguar Land Rover: Assessment in Recruitment Joe Wiggin
Joe talked about Jaguar Land Rover’s legacy and significant current growth. The business is currently owned by Tata who have delegated responsibility for growth to Jaguar Land Rover. Joe’s role involves finding the right products for assessment processes in a company which supports approximately 170,000 jobs in the UK.
Key Corporate Strengths Some of Jaguar Land Rover’s key strengths are:
• Fantastic products • Amazing people — but ensuring they bring in passionate people who also have the right skills and motivations for the organization and its ambitions • Good product development — cutting edge technology and innovation • Business collaboration — with suppliers, partners and academic institutions • Global footprint — growth into emerging markets means people are spread worldwide
Assessment Challenges • Volume – Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) deal with high volumes when recruiting. The business needs to recruit the best people from these numbers, while addressing applicants’ expectation of cutting edge tools in the recruitment process; Joe showed a video which was part of their recruitment attraction campaign.
• Complexity in roles – JLR look for common themes across assessment processes to accommodate
differences between a large number of role types; they need flexible tools which assess core attributes to find the right candidates.
• Global growth - JLR needs assessment products which can be utilized globally.
Choosing Suppliers and Assessments JLR are moving from having little recruitment to quite a complex HR process. The business doesn’t use external assessors; it is therefore important to find suppliers who can quickly upskill and train the management population to be effective assessors. Suppliers need to be reliable, flexible, pragmatic and provide robust, reliable and valid tools. Joe emphasized that as many suppliers had valid tools, it was really important that these tools were also efficient and easy to use and report on. Joe discussed core points which influence his decision-making process:
• Standardization of products and tools — to be able to train HR teams and managers in a core product or ‘template’ that they can adapt and use across a number of different roles and levels.
• Security — products need to be extremely secure in relation to the thousands of applicants so that the assessment process is not compromised.
International Conference 2012 Synopses
• Employer brand is a key factor: assessments need to be innovative, attractive, look great and delivered on platforms tailored to Jaguar Land Rover’s branding to engage candidates and keep them interested. • Business impact — as the business owns and manages its assessment, the business impact of the processes needs to be minimized and solutions need to support this by being simple and effective at providing data that is easy to understand. Suppliers need to be:
• • • • •
Reliable and do what they say Robust by performing really well at doing what they say they will Informed and present new products and ideas and challenge the client on their current practices Flexible and able to deliver and adapt very quickly as required Offer pragmatic customer service as Joe emphasized that customer service was at the center of his decision on which supplier to use • Accountable such as in cases where applicants may challenge the assessment process • Be able to deliver assessment in other parts of the world to meet JLR’s globalization To illustrate these points in action, Joe presented a video of a tailored Situational Judgment Test which had been created by Saville Consulting to support JLR’s graduate recruitment campaign.
Shirley Jackson Recruitment Director, Ernst & Young
Reaching and Engaging with Professional Talent Pipelines
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Ernst & Young: Reaching and Engaging with Professional Talent Pipelines Shirley Jackson
Shirley shared the challenges Ernst & Young face in attracting candidates to the business and their approach to providing an engaging candidate experience. As a global leader in tax, transaction and advisory services, they employ 152,000 people in 695 offices across 140 countries and are consistently on the hunt for new employees of the same high standard worldwide.
Industry Challenges A high employee turnover is typical in the industry and, as a result, it is important that Ernst & Young appeal to a wider talent pool than those seeking careers in accountancy. This has proved more difficult due to the strict regulations in place that prevent the use of social media for attraction and recruitment purposes. Shirley suggested that, as a brand, they needed to differentiate themselves from their competitors and make themselves the employer of choice.
Aims Ernst & Young wanted to increase the number and range of applicants as well as their attractiveness as an employer. They felt it necessary to improve the recruitment process as a whole so that even unsuccessful candidates leave with a positive impression of the organization. One way of doing this was to make changes to the assessment model, making it more engaging for candidates, more effective in selection and also more timeefficient.
What They Did The HR team split potential candidates into two categories: ‘Active Job Seekers’ and ‘Passive’. The former are those that know about the brand already and are likely to apply, while the second group are people who might not be considering a career with the brand or are perhaps not even aware of them at all. By moving to a strengths-based model, Ernst & Young were able to improve their graduate assessment process as it enabled them to determine what energized applicants and what they were motivated to do rather than simply finding out about their current competencies. The HR team used Saville Consulting Swift Analysis as an aid to successfully highlight intellectual ability and separate the strong candidates from the ones that weren’t quite at the level desired. The team also used Wave, for more senior level appointments, as a tool to improve the overall assessment experience. Competencies were mapped to specific role requirements, providing a more rigorous assessment of individual talent and motives, to ensure that Ernst & Young were hiring people with the best fit for the role and organization. The use of Wave also allowed candidates to learn more about themselves, creating an improved perception of the brand as well as a significantly enhanced candidate experience.
Pep Viladomat Managing Director, MarketYou
Career Profiling: MarketYou
International Conference 2012 Synopses
MarketYou
Pep Viladomat Pep explained that the concept behind MarketYou was to capture the intangible assets, such as competencies of a person, in addition to their CV, work history and education. As an online business, they had several major challenges to meet when developing the test and reports. The questionnaire had to be available online and in multiple languages. It had to be short but with solid, engaging and valid results in a language easily understood by the reader; it would also need to be accessible for people not trained in psychometrics. As a result, MarketYou facilitated the partnership with Saville Consulting who developed the questionnaire required.
Importance of Short Tests Pep emphasized the importance of having a test under 10 minutes long by explaining the high abandonment rates of consumers on websites. The test is therefore eight minutes long, consisting of six screens of 10 questions.
The Questionnaire The test measures 12 dimensions of the Wave model using positive messages; the team behind the questionnaire wanted to emphasize to the user that they need to focus on their strengths as these are where their unique selling points lie and candidates should advertise their top three strengths for employment.
The Report The 14 page report is easy to understand, consisting of positive and engaging feedback. The language used was very important and needed to be clear, accessible and unambiguous. The first page gives an outlook of the individual across 12 competencies. The concept is that usually an individual is very good at three things, average in the middle three competencies and then weak in the bottom three. The next part of the report focuses on their strengths. Each of the top three strengths has a separate page, explaining in basic language, but also extreme detail, what that strength means, how to use it in an interview and how the individual could improve it. The report also shows a competency based Career Area Chart and gives guidance on the most appropriate career area for the individual.
Career Area Chart The career chart or wheel uses the information on the individual’s competency strengths to show those career options which the individual is most likely to suit.
International Conference 2012 Synopses
MarketYou has found the career wheel section of the report particularly useful for careers services at universities. Career advisors may have the tools but, due to the high demand, may not be able to adequately resource all the requests. Therefore if the individual can take the career chart outputs to the adviser, they can quickly help them with career options.
Report Users MarketYou is mainly targeting job applicants to help them market themselves more effectively. They wanted to go further than just the CV by using the individual’s competency strengths as a way of helping to brand themselves. Additionally, those professionals who want to use the report to help develop themselves can be classed into another potential user group. Other users of the report are university careers services and corporations, as they see it as a fast and objective way of screening applicants, along with outplacement services. Pep emphasized that the report as a self-assessment tool provides an opportunity to open a new market income stream. It does this by making a short, easy questionnaire available without the need for training whereas previously this has not been an option, meaning that the life cycle of a sale is much shorter than usual.
MarketYou Website The MarketYou website creates an individual profile which amalgamates data from various other online sources such as LinkedIn. The profile shows the individual’s experience, a social capital element, skills they add, education and their three top competencies which are extracted from the MarketYou questionnaire. Finally, there is a market value given to the individual, driven by a real time algorithm which uses information about the person and the current job offers on the internet to assess how in demand they might be. To date, MarketYou has had around 100,000 registrations on the site.
MarketYou Website Pep presented the prices as follows:
£ $ €
Oasys
Bureau
66.70 106.80 80.00
100.10 160.20 120.00
Rainer Kurz Director
Career Profiling: Wave速 Tools
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Career Profiling: Wave Tools Rainer Kurz Rainer outlined the areas he would cover on the topic of career profiling:
• Careers at work — how understanding careers can help us to organize many human resource processes such as succession planning.
• Career models — an overview of some of the career models. • Career interests — a questionnaire which was developed for research purposes and underpins a lot of the MarketYou report. • Model and graphs — a preview of some graphs showing an automated way of displaying the roles and job families in the world of work.
Talent Management Rainer described talent management as the application of competencies for a variety of individualized processes such as recruitment, training, development and for organizational purposes such as succession planning and reward strategies. Competencies are all at the heart of these. Rainer said that having Wave sections was a useful way of delivering these strategies, focusing on the top six competencies ordered by importance this is effectively ‘competency based HR management made easy’.
Careers One way of looking at careers when modeling career paths is to consider ‘Vertical Movement’, i.e. moving onto different levels in the company starting from a ‘self-management’ lower level into supervisory and managerial positions.
Talent Pools Rainer talked about talent pools as a popular method in terms of succession planning. Talent pools help organizations plan and decide what to do with their talent. Rainer focused on early career pools, graduates for example, saying that this type of approach also catered for specialist roles. In terms of strategic leaders, the approach could look beyond job family aspects and take into account the business environment and challenges those types of leaders’ experience. Rainer then talked through the classic nine Box Grid and said that career pathing was particularly useful when analyzing individuals that are high potential but don’t meet performance requirements. ‘Providing Leadership’ and ‘Driving Success’ appear to underpin success at work, with Project Epsom data confirming this, but Rainer recognized the challenge to capture this in role requirements. He showed the Project Epsom validities of the Wave section shown as a job profile translated into relative importance to show a typical leadership role with the only difference being that when people are asked they say ‘Processing Details’ is very important.
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Rainer noted the value of identifying important areas, as the ‘shopping list effect’ makes job family profiling (e.g. IT, Sales) difficult; stakeholders want a lot of everything, so the least valid areas should have the least weight. Rainer expressed the view that work needs to be done on designing job family profilers that reconcile the use of a variety of information such as performance and job profiler data using methods that reconcile all elements.
The Wave Wheel Rainer explained how the ‘Wave Wheel’ split into Dependability (Alpha) and Proactivity (Beta). Dependability (Alpha) encapsulates conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness and general mental ability. The other half of the chart was about ‘Proactivity’ (Beta) and encapsulates idea generation, extraversion and drive. This kind of dynamic of dependability and proactivity needs to be managed in any career system, for example traditional integrity reports focus on dependability and run the risk of missing high potential within the company. The third element to the model was ‘Gamma’, or as we have described it: ‘getting it right’, which looks at robustness and how things work. It is the combination of Alpha, Beta and Gamma which is particularly powerful. Rainer presented data from the Wave development study: conscientiousness-related items such as ‘Structuring Tasks’, ‘Investigating Issues’ and ‘Providing Leadership’ were the top contributors to validity. We can rank the 12 competencies, from most important to least important, using the Reverse Ordinal Assessment Rank (ROAR) to get a weight for each of the competencies; this is the thinking that went into the MarketYou report to create a differentiated outcome. Rainer then demonstrated how pursuing goals, followed by producing output and other areas from the delivery cluster underpinned effectiveness at work, showing it as about getting things done at work.
Measuring Performance The criterion measure that would attract the highest validity was the three-item Global Scale. Rainer explained that because this criterion contains the ‘Demonstrating Potential’ item, it has the ability to move beyond proficiency, making it a powerful measure of overall performance.
Development of the MarketYou Report Rainer considered his review of contemporary research coupled with previous experience, specifically around interest inventories, when developing the MarketYou report. Data from Project Epsom, the Great Eight, Aptitude, along with interest and experience data, were all reviewed and effectively “went into the pot” to create scales for the MarketYou questionnaire, with 12 competencies showing good raw validities. The idea for the MarketYou report was to have equations that predicted suitability for job families. Rainer explained that to get to the equations, the strengths of the competency construct associations were rankordered within each career area; these equations underpin the MarketYou report and power the career areas. At the heart of the report are the top three of the 12 sections and how they relate to each career area.
Tom Hopton Research & Development Manager
Where We Are, Where We Are Going
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Where We Are, Where We Are Going Tom Hopton
Tom outlined the new tests developed across the aptitude portfolio since the last partner conference. These included six in-depth measures of single aptitude areas, as well as the new Swift Analysis Verbal & Numerical combined assessment. He also introduced a number of new norms developed for these tests. Tom then went on to discuss the work completed by the R&D team over the last year, which saw increased item banks across the Analysis Aptitude Range of tests for high-level managerial, professional and graduate roles. He also outlined the process of how Item Response Theory was applied to the unsupervised online tests in the Comprehension Aptitude Range, designed for use across operational, customer, commercial and administrative roles. Tom went on to consider the important issue of security in online assessment, focusing on how item banking and the application of Item Response Theory can be used to ensure statistical comparability of content included in the randomized tests seen by different candidates. Tom explained that while Item Response Theory can be very sophisticated and can be used to take into account a number of important variables in randomized banks of item content, the only way to ensure candidate identity remains to do supervised re-testing prior to appointment. Tom also compared a number of different methodologies for using Item Response Theory with online ability tests, including the fixed-length randomization used by Saville Consulting and other methods such as adaptive testing. While adaptive testing may intuitively appear to be a good thing, Tom explained that there are a number of issues that need considering. For example, adaptive test lengths can vary, which can be both offputting for candidates and difficult to administer. There is also a myth of time-saving with adaptive tests, because items well-matched to a candidate’s ability level do take longer than items that a candidate is comfortable with. Tom also outlined that candidate reactions to adaptive tests may sometimes be negative because they may feel that they have quickly reached the limit of their ability and so have been “found out” or that they have failed. Tom gave details on the new international translation offering for item banked aptitude tests, explaining how Saville Consulting’s partners should focus on translating banks of content that can be deployed across lots of tests within the same range. For example, most partners are currently at “Level 1”, with a fixed-form Swift test translated in their language. To achieve Level 2, they would need to translate enough content to produce the longer fixed-form single tests and this would allow entry-level banking in the Swift test at the same time. They could later move to Level 3, premium level banking for all tests within a range. Tom introduced the new “V2” aptitude reports which contain new test-taking information suitable for use with item banking and randomized tests. These new reports include “Pace” (how quickly an individual has worked compared with the average) and online test access summary information, which provides supplementary information about the candidate’s test-taking experience. Tom summarized the key advantages of the aptitude test portfolio compared to competitors as:
• • • • • • • •
Attractive and work-relevant content Fixed-length testing, controlling item exposure Difficulty levels controlled — both within tests and across portfolio Item type variation — better sampling of multiple work-relevant skills Swift combinations — multiple abilities efficiently measured Testlet timing Detailed test-taking information Exceptional psychometric properties
Rab MacIver Head of Research & Development
Work Strengths
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Work Strengths: Technical Information Rab MacIver Rab MacIver introduced Saville’s Strengths to the conference delegates and gave an insight into its development, technical underpinnings and its unique selling points.
USPs Rab spoke about Work Strengths’ unique selling points: that it is short (20 minutes), straightforward and easy to understand — all contributing to a positive candidate experience. Strengths is powered by the talent items from Saville Consulting Wave and takes advantage of the dual-dynamic format. Finally, the flexibility of Work Strengths means that scores can be easily placed into a merit listing which allows multiple applicants’ scores to be easily viewed and compared.
Reliability Rab spoke about the reliability of Work Strengths; the average alternate form reliability of the 36 Work Strengths dimensions was .82 (N=1153) and the average test-retest reliability of the 36 Work Strengths dimensions was .72 (18 month interval).
Validity Work Strengths outperforms other personality questionnaires (other than Wave Professional Styles), in terms of validity, based on independent ratings of Overall Total Performance and external ratings of ‘Great Eight’ work performance criteria.
Extraction and Score Building Finally, Rab spoke about the flexibility of Strengths to create job fit scores for the easy comparison of candidates on one score. A merit list can be created by extracting a candidate’s score from the Oasys platform. To create a job fit score, identify Wave scales that are important to success of one job, apply a weight to each scale to reflect their importance to job success and combine these weighted scores to create a job fit that can be added to the merit list.
Work Strengths: Alignment Graham Seager
Graham Seager spoke about the alignment of Work Strengths within the Saville Consulting portfolio. Our premium instruments (Professional Styles, Focus Styles and the Performance Culture Framework) include great levels of detailed information and are designed for projects where in-depth information is needed. As such, the prices are reflective of premium products. Graham positioned Work Strengths as our volume offering for measuring behavioral fit and, as such, our pricing structure is flexible enough to make Work Strengths attractive for volume projects.
International Conference 2012 Synopses
The Work Strengths Behavioral Profile (including two reports: one for the Line Manager and one for the Candidate) costs ÂŁ22.10 on a pay per click basis. For volume projects, the per click rate can be reduced by 40% for over 200 candidates. Licensing options are available for large numbers at request.
Work Strengths: Case Study Chris Small
Chris Small presented a case study on Direct Line Group using Work Strengths for recruitment. Direct Line Group is the largest insurer for individual customers as well as the biggest motor insurer and the biggest provider for household insurance. It was previously known as RBS Insurance (part of the RBS business). Direct Line Group were recruiting for 3 contact center roles (Sales and Service, Customer Relations and Claims) and were looking to assess job relevant behaviors and intellectual agility, specifically with regards to accuracy, while also trying to incorporate the new business values. With an approximation of 16,000 applicants, it was important that the process was quick, relied on scores from the assessments and could be integrated with an ATS system. Over time, Direct Line Group wanted to benchmark the data collated against that of previous applicants to the organization. Saville Consulting conducted workshops with key stakeholders to understand the behavioral drivers of success that are considered to be core for all roles, those unique to each role and finally to define the values of the organization in behavioral terms. Fit was assessed using the Work Strengths and Error Checking tools as each candidate received five scores: an aptitude error checking score, a job fit score for each of the 3 roles as well as a values fit score. The recruitment team was empowered to sift large volumes of candidates by being able to make quick decisions within the ATS system to help them decide whether to progress a candidate’s application. Having the three job fit scores enabled recruiters at Direct Line Group to identify if the candidate would be more suited for one of the other roles that they could then be streamed into.
Mark Bewlay Software Developer
Consultancy: Integration
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Integrations and the Oasys Platform Mark Bewlay Mark gave an overview of integration as part of your client offering as well as detailing upcoming upgrades to the Oasys platform.
Why Have an Integration API? • Make Saville Consulting assessments available to clients who already have an established recruitment system in place
• Allows 3rd party solutions to retain control of candidate workflow and experience • Ensure clients are able to capitalize on the strength of Saville Consulting assessments without the overhead of retraining users on the Oasys platform
Typical Integration Clients There are two main categories of integration:
• Integration for Applicant Tracking Systems — This is the most common type of integration and is designed to fit in with a client’s existing recruitment process.
• Integration for Bespoke Development — This is a one-off development to cater for a client’s bespoke application, typically in the form of a reseller.
What We Need To Know Mark suggested that there are a few key pieces of information that we would need to have before we start work on an integration. Firstly, the IT team would have to be made aware of the products that are going to be used; this is fundamental to the process and leads on to the other information that would need to made available, including the means by which the result data is to be retrieved. In addition, the list of technical contacts is very useful for queries. They also need to know how the Oasys platform needs to be branded as well as the number of assessments required per candidate in the recruitment process.
Potential Problems for Consideration As with any project, Mark explained that there are a few potential problem areas. Communication is key and it is vitally important that both parties understand the respective areas of responsibility and support. Other areas for consideration include the handling of score and report data as well as the support needed for resetting candidates and for test timing adjustment in specific cases.
Oasys Enhancements Mark ended his presentation by updating delegates with the most recent enhancements made to the Oasys platform. These included the improved ability to search and sort data, improved response times for larger data sets, the separation of candidate and administrator user interfaces, an upgrade to the report generation engine, as well as vast improvements to both the way that data can be extracted and the way that Merit Lists are formed.
Elaine Down Vice President Consultancy
Consultancy: Our Offering
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Saville Consulting’s Impact Consultancy Offering Elaine Down Elaine’s introduction looked at changes in consultancy which, since the 1980s, has seen an increase in competition, a greater offering of customized and less expensive solutions, the use of IT and innovative solutions and a more global outlook by organizations. Elaine explained how the Saville Consulting Talent Cycle is used to categorize clients’ needs across four quadrants of the human capital agenda: Requirements, Screening, Potential and Performance. She outlined examples of consultancy assignments which Saville Consulting has delivered in the past eighteen months within each of these areas:
Requirements • Role profiling — for critical roles on behalf of United Utilities; profiling characteristics of senior leaders at Enfield Council.
• Behavioral and competency mapping — two recent projects were highlighted: mapping the BBC’s leadership competency framework to the Wave Framework and the design of a new competency framework for Lambeth Council.
Screening • Merit lists — using Wave assessments to produce merit lists against required characteristics to help
inform a major accountancy firm about individuals as part of their partner selection process. Consultancy has used Wave and Aptitude assessments as part of a leadership program at the London Borough of Enfield. • Assessments — the use of aptitude tests and Wave assessments to screen candidates for technical roles at Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Potential • Identifying talent — Use of Wave assessments to support the identification and development of talent at an individual, team and organizational level at the London Borough of Lambeth. Designing a Leadership program at the BBC.
Performance • Assessment & development centers — design and delivery of development centers and bespoke assessment exercises for clients including Camelot, United Utilities and DST Global Solutions.
• Team effectiveness facilitation workshops — using the Wave Team Roles Report at the BBC, The Department of Energy and Climate Change.
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Impact Consultancy
Our services are centered on a desire to identify the real drivers of success in organizations, underpinned by our research into those factors which drive successful performance. Elaine described how the use of the word ‘impact’ in our consultancy solutions was integral to the idea that these core elements of our work would make significant impact; she illustrated this with a series of droplet images, showing the Impact logo and branding.
Universal Leader Model Saville Consulting’s model of Universal Leadership considers the likely impact of individuals within three areas: Professional, People and Pioneering; Elaine explained that our consultancy solutions are underpinned by this model with project and report outputs linked to showing the potential and performance of individuals, teams and organizations across the three Universal Leadership areas.
The Universal Leader PROFESSIONAL Impact Areas
PEOPLE Impact Areas
PIONEERING Impact Areas
Service and Product Delivery
Engagement
New Products/Markets
Managed Risk
Successful Teams
Organizational Transformation
Expert Reputation
Communication
Organizational Growth
Impact Solutions Elaine then talked through the Impact assessment solutions, showing a range of examples such as the creation of exercises to assess the assimilation of information from a variety of sources for the Impact Development Center and how the Impact Assessment wheel for an organization could be aligned to the Team Roles wheel.
Toolkit To conclude, Elaine presented the idea of the Impact Consultancy Toolkit which would be created in collaboration with International Partners to include for example tools and services that promote best practice, information about Bespoke Impact reporting, the Impact Interview Guide, Case studies and appropriate marketing materials.
Richard Field Senior Graphic Designer
Sales & Marketing: Branding
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Marketing Practical Applications: Branding Richard Field
Richard spoke about the redevelopment of the company website and provided useful marketing hints and tips from a design perspective.
Key Drivers for Redeveloping the Website Currently, the Saville Consulting website is 1200 pixels wide, dimensions unsuitable for laptops, tablets or mobile devices, as only part of the page would be visible on the screen. You would need to scroll up, down, left and right, making for a less than satisfactory browsing experience. This wouldn’t have been such an issue 10 years ago, but with the increase in usage of iPads and iPhones for web browsing, it is more important than ever to ensure that your website is mobile enabled. One key step in achieving this is to remove ‘Flash’ as it will not display on these popular devices. Our new website has been designed with all this in mind; resizing to a width of 970 pixels makes it appropriate for viewing on smaller laptops, tablets and mobile phones. The introduction of device-friendly JavaScript replacing all Flash elements ensures that we aren’t getting left behind, but evolving with the technology on offer.
Key Considerations for Your Website Design Richard talked about important elements to factor in when piecing together your own websites to maximize effectiveness. He suggested including a clear and simple explanation of who you are and what you do in an easily accessible, highly visible location on the homepage. He also explained that the homepage is the ideal location to keep a ‘Latest News’ section, keeping people up-to-date and ensuring that it is a different experience each time a visitor clicks through to your website. Cross-selling is another important component of website design and maximizing output; on a product page about Wave Focus Styles, for example, include brochure downloads and adverts for webinars and Wave training, encouraging the user to explore more and potentially spend more.
Key Considerations for Your Email Marketing As a B2B organization, Saville Consulting deals primarily with users of Microsoft Outlook which has much stricter spam filters than other email providers (e.g. Yahoo and Gmail); great care and attention needs to be applied so that emails don’t end up in ‘Junk Mail’. A good balance between images and text is wise. Words like ‘free’ and ‘lottery’ should be avoided in subject lines. Split testing these subject lines is highly effective. This is a method in which you send a variety of subject lines to a small number of clients before assessing which one achieved the highest open rate and using this for the remainder of your distribution list. You should also always include a plain text version of the email to ensure that every recipient will be able to view the email. Lastly, Richard recommended using a ‘send schedule’ to build a consistent send frequency which, in turn, will help email open rates.
Key Considerations for Your Hard Copy Marketing Rich closed his presentation by talking about the benefits of producing hard-copy marketing tools. All logos and diagrams used in these hard copy materials should be supplied in vector format to ensure the highest quality; this means that the image can be blown up to huge sizes without it pixelating at all. It was also advised that two versions should be produced: one to send off to printers and one that can be printed on more basic internal printers. It is an idea to curve the edges on documents for internal printing so that if unwanted borders appear, as they so often do, it will look more professional.
Kate Pilgrim Marketing Manager
Sales & Marketing: Practical Applications
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Evidence-Based Practical Marketing Kate Pilgrim Kate’s presentation focused on how Marketing has been using evidence to adapt and improve our activities. Evidence was collected from customer feedback, analytics and using our CRM system to analyze where we achieved the best return on investment.
Marketing Objectives The key marketing objectives were:
• • • • • • • •
Lead generation — building our database of new contacts based on proactive responses Customer relationship building Cross-selling — helping our customers discover our entire portfolio Building the consultancy offering Raising corporate profile Maximizing marketing spend — ensure we’re spending on activities bringing the best return International marketing — to support our international partners ‘Knowledge is power’ — improving our potential customer data to respond more effectively
Market Perceptions Kate talked through her perceptions of the market as having long lead times (up to a year); the increasing influence of procurement departments; greater day-to-day involvement of line managers in the recruitment and development of staff; and a lack of standardization of assessment. She said that we estimated there were, on average, nine points of contact with a lead before they were converted to a spending client.
Digital Marketing Saville Consulting’s focus on Digital has been on emailers, webinars, website, digital advertising and social media. Beneficial reasons for focusing on Digital marketing were:
• Generating sales — Direct Marketing Association survey estimates that 20% of sales for consultancy and • • • • •
professional services is generated by direct digital marketing Lowering cost Improving customer data Providing evidence — hard statistics obtained (e.g. emailer open and click through rates) Audience segmentation — enabling specific groups of audiences to be targeted based on internet search habits/social media profiles International reach — no geographic boundaries
Email Dos and Don’ts Kate highlighted best practices for email marketing, including: using an email platform (e.g. dotmailer) to analyze best day and time to send messages; using photos and split test titles; call for action in the first two sentences, offering trials; directing enquiries to a specific person; capturing customer data; mobile enablement in the design; and steering clear of bombarding with too frequent communication.
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Webinar Dos and Don’ts Some key lessons learned from Saville Consulting’s webinar program included:
• • • • • • • •
Using a ‘Fact Finding’ message in the invitation and interesting titles Communicating regularly with registrants Having a moderator Making webinars interactive Including case studies Providing specific attendee offers Getting customer data where possible Ensuring follow-up within half an hour of the ending
Website Kate presented key objectives of the website redevelopment project:
• • • • • • • •
Increased sales — by generally increasing visitors and enquiries Lead generation — helping to build the contact database Mobile enablement — ensuring our website can be seen by mobile device users Better cross-selling — using the temptation bars to better profile and bundle products Customer engagement - improving Secure Area to promote better dialogue with customers Usability — ensuring users find the information they want more quickly and easily Corporate profiling — helping to raise the visibility of the SC brand generally Building employer brand — highlighting employee activities to show SC as an exciting workplace
Kate showed examples of how the new website is being used to achieve some of those objectives and discussed ways to improve returns from websites such as: implementing Search Engine Optimization; linking to other parties’ websites; reviewing website analytics regularly; and keeping content fresh.
Social Media Kate rounded off her presentation by considering the place of social media in marketing. Using social media as a marketing tool enables Saville Consulting to drive more traffic to the website, and crucially, to better engage customers and key influencers.
James Hollingsworth Senior Marketing Executive
Sales & Marketing: Practical Applications
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Marketing Practical Applications: Events James Hollingsworth
James looked at why events were a key part of Saville Consulting UK’s marketing strategy and provided an overview of our two hallmark events.
Why Events? James started by suggesting that the benefits to running regular events are endless. Firstly, they are a great way of generating leads, making contact with people, exchanging email addresses and the start of a process in which, ultimately, we hope to engage them as a customer. Events are ideal networking opportunities to cement relationships with existing clients and also to encourage those that are on the periphery to get more involved, generating more income throughout the business. James presented events as a great way for delegates to get to grips with the application of Saville Consulting products and use them in practical ways such as the Job Profiler Card Sort exercise. This is the most effective way for Saville Consulting to demonstrate our offering: allowing people to use the products and hear real-life examples of their application in business. An event can also be used as a means for data capture and research into what is happening in the industry, and an opportunity to present Saville Consulting’s marketing collateral, such as comprehensive new brochures, product flyers and campaign leaflets.
Tips on How to Market an Event James went on to talk about the best ways to market your events, suggesting that a lead time of at least 12 weeks is vital, allowing you to market, plan and prepare as best as you can. This is also important as diaries tend to fill up quickly and the aim is to have as many attendees as possible. Following on from this, targeting your invites to those that are relevant to the event being run is a good idea before widening the net closer to the time; sending invitations via email is the cheapest and most effective method allowing for valuable analytics of open rates, responses, etc. The actual content of the invite should be minimal; short, relevant titles and clear calls to action suggesting why people should attend, as well as details of when it is and how to book places, should form the basis of any good invitation. James suggested that following the invite up with regular contact will help reduce drop-out rates and he quoted statistics that this has helped to reduce the rate at Saville Consulting events by 20-30% and less than 10% on the day itself.
Saville Consulting Events The Hot Topics Series The Hot Topics series was launched in 2009 and held at the RAC Club in Mayfair, London. James explained that this is used as a ‘soft sell’ event at which client speakers are invited to share their approaches on the hot topic issue of the day. It is aimed primarily at HR directors and other senior level people, allowing them to network and share experiences over an informal lunch at the end of the half-day event.
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Talent Development Day The Talent Development Day series of events was first launched in 2011 and has rapidly become the largest event run by Saville Consulting. A nationwide event, it is an informal and interactive day focused on skills development via the use of our tools and products. There is a choice of routes for the day, each comprising a skills workshop, case study presentation and round table discussion. The workshop is designed to introduce, as well as demonstrate, the Saville Consulting tools and how they can be applied practically to a hypothetical business based case study. This is followed by the case study presentation which illustrates how clients have successfully used our products and how they have been of benefit to their organization. The round table discussions, facilitated by Saville Consulting staff, end the day, allowing delegates to exchange ideas on a number of HR issues. This is then used as a basis to form a large part of the event synopsis for use by the marketing department.
Post-Event Marketing Evaluation forms are distributed to delegates on the day and are used to shape and improve future events while also being an invaluable tool to collect information on new delegates so that we can target them with future marketing offers. James closed by explaining how important it is to send follow-up messages to delegates on the same day or within 24 hours, while what they have learned and seen at the event is still fresh in their mind. You are more likely to successfully arrange a meeting in this timeframe following the event, than if you wait any longer.
Growing a Business with Entrepreneurial Spirit
Professor Peter Saville
Ajaz Ahmed
Chairman, Saville Consulting
Entrepreneur, Founder of Freeserve
International Conference 2012 Synopses
Peter Saville: Growing a Business with Entrepreneurial Spirit Peter Saville introduced entrepreneur Ajaz Ahmed, to discuss with the audience what aspects of his personality have made him successful. During his introduction, Peter read through Ajaz’s Leadership Report and asked for interpretations from the audience. He highlighted the lack of strong academic success in many historical leaders, such as Sir Winston Churchill and modern business leaders like Sir Richard Branson, emphasizing instead their abilities to inspire and motivate teams into believing their concepts, to delegate tasks and having the determination to follow their instincts.
Background Ajaz started Freeserve, which he describes as his first ‘eureka moment’, after discovering there was nothing available to help ordinary people connect to the internet. Freeserve enabled people to quickly install the internet on their computer. It rapidly became the UK’s largest internet service provider. Within a year, it had entered the FTSE 100 and, at its peak, it had a value of £9 billion. Since then, Ajaz has embarked on a number of successful entrepreneurial projects, including the Abdul’s chain of fast food restaurants. A high-street chain of stores offering walk-in lawyer services is also in the pipeline.
Profiling an Entreprenuer – Ajaz’s Wave Profile Key Findings Ajaz’s profile shows that he is receptive to feedback from others and willing to learn from his mistakes. His interpersonal skills are a key factor in his successful behavioral style which suggests that he has an effective impact on people. According to his Wave summary, he is extremely ‘Inventive’ (scoring a sten ten); although a closer look at his profile suggests that while he is good at developing concepts, he has little interest in the underlying detail. It also shows that he is less inclined to follow the rules and this is echoed by his very low sten score on ‘Conforming’.
Characteristics of Success Having failed all of his exams, Ajaz didn’t go to university and to this day he sees a clear distinction between academic prowess and business savvy. A successful salesman in his twenties, Ajaz had already risen to the position of manager at Dixons and took charge of the biggest store in the area within one year. Ajaz has a strong belief that ‘life isn’t difficult’ and that ordinary people can make a difference. For him, success is about the desire to have something to show for your life’s work; he wasn’t going to retire with nothing to show for his toil. Being able to delegate is important. Ajaz is able to come up with big ideas but finds detailed tasks and planning difficult; he recognizes the importance of being able to utilize other people’s skills to make his ideas a reality. Ajaz believes that everybody has ‘eureka moments’; it’s only that entrepreneurs have the self-belief, influence and determination to drive things forward and make them happen.
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