competency mapping questionnaire

HR Focus in Start-ups to Succeed

Start-up companies can come in all forms and sizes. They seem to have high failure rates, but the minority who succeed can become large and influential.

It has been seen that most start-up founders more often have a casual or off-beat culture in their thinking, dress, office space, HR practices and Marketing, as compared to traditional corporations. Some of these casual approaches, such as the use of “flat” organizational structure, in which employees can directly communicate with the Founders or CEOs informally, are practiced to promote efficiency and to enthuse employees in the workplace.

Business Strategies for Finance, Marketing, Production, Product Development and Innovation are made without a robust HR and People strategy. The importance of this needs to be highlighted as this is one pillars of the foundation on which the businesses is built, and if this pillar is weak or not there the dangers will always loom. Having a HR and People plan is like a having Finance plan which is absolutely essential to a success of a start-up. If people are not the key focus area the start-up cannot succeed. The HRand People plan needs to be budgeted in the initial phase itself.

Hiring the right person is one of the biggest challenges for the start-up – it is not that getting people is a problem but getting the right-fit certainly is for most start-up organizations. Many a times compromises are likely to be made to get the organization moving quickly hoping that the incumbents will learn and adapt as we go along – something which a start-up needs to be careful about in my opinion.

All start-ups need people who are innovative, adaptable and flexible, analytical, emotionally intelligent, team players and have willingness to learn. They should be willing multi-taskers. Easily said than done – how do we find this out in an interview of an hour or two at the most? The founder’s or CEO’s experience or gut-feel may not be sufficient to make those judgements. There is a professional way of doing thisby putting the person through professional Competency Assessment or Personality (Psychological) Tests.

As the organization matures and grows retention of good people becomes the challenge.Attracting,developing and retaining an amazing team are the hallmarks of success for any start-ups success. If there are right people they will design and redesign success strategies and fight for the organization’s success.

What HR policies should be there? How shouldthe elements of legality, predictability, fairness, equity and control be built into them require in-depth thought and insight as does the business plan. What has succeeded in one organization may not in another as each organization have a unique character and personality. Having policies is not good enough it is their proper implementation which is the tougher part and leads to dissatisfaction in most organizations over a period of time.

Just like business strategies and plans change the HR policies need to be revised and re-engineered keeping in view the business needs.

Making sure that the there is adequate focus on people besides other areas is most important in my opinion.

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Making Performance Management Work effectively

Managing Performance and keeping the workforce motivated is becoming increasingly complex and difficult particularly for the young brigade who is far more mobile and impulsive.
No system is perfect and permanent in any organisation. We need to continuously improve and adapt our processes to the changing environment.
Most organizations do have some form of Performance Management System as in recent times even Performance Appraisal is called the same. Firstly, let me clarify that Performance Appraisal is only one of the elements of the Performance Management System.
A robust Performance Management System (PMS) has 4 distinct sub-processes:
1. Formal Target Setting Process cascading down from the Annual Business Plan. It encompasses a participatory approach and is an open, transparent,data-based and an alignedprocess wherein the organization seeks to set challenging but realistic targets for all its employees.
2. Monitoring and Control involves an institutionalised and an on-going process for giving feedback, coaching and counselling to keepthe performance on track. This is the most important part of PMS and the organization needs to build the competence of its employees – it requires specialized training. This has invariably been a weakness in most organizations we have worked for in the last 30 years
3. The Performance Appraisal against the targets set in step 1 and any revisions thereafter. This requires the elements of subjectivity to be reduced and objectivity brought in. For this the appraisal form needs to be well designed. Self-appraisal often helps to bring acceptance and reasoning in the whole process. Appraiser and Reviewer both need to be data-based and objective to keep personal biases out.
4. A clearly defined Reward and Recognition Policy linked with thePerformance Appraisal contributes to building a motivated work-force. This needs constant review and updating year on year.
It is desirable to have the whole process fully documented with timelines with responsibilities clearly demarcated.
Other process such as Career and Succession Planning need to be in place for Performance Management to be more effective. Some Organizations do keep the two processes independent. However, the retention of talent has thrown a big challenge to many organizations as they grapple with balancing these processes.
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Leverage Your Human Resources With Assessment Solutions

To retain the right employees and maximize their effectiveness in the business, you need to implement effective assessment resolutions. These are structured means of evaluating potential employees on a gamut of fundamental criteria. These ways can also be applied to subsisting employees too.

When used in the engaging and selection process, assessment solutions help you to pick the apt candidate for the role through the usage of a number of structured ways. Employing tested criteria ensures the people you hire are not only the suitable for the position in question but also decide whether they can match and thrive in your current company culture.

Hiring and Recruitment

When it arrives at employee selection and recruitment, many companies yet cling to the traditional methods of recruitment. These methods – interviews, resume critiques, background checks and so on – are still valid but are nowhere near enough to decide whether a candidate is fit not only to do the work you’re choosing them for but also whether they will fit into your organization and be engaged to its long-term success.

Contemporary assessment systems incorporate skills and abilities tests, behavioral and character evaluations, structured interviews assessments and simulations, cultural fit, job fit and career fit, practical job previews, administration evaluations and can hold custom-built assessments.

As for your existing employees, assessment systems comprising a range of tests, interviews, and simulations provide an ideal method to assess training and development needs. By correctly determining these needs, you’ll be in the perfect position to formulate a training program that improves your employees and thus your complete organization.

Examples are assessment centers and simulations. These enable you to evaluate performance levels and development changes for current employees as well as candidates. These contain a wide range of stimulating and practical activities providing presentation and role playing exercises, written analysis applications and workflow simulation exercises.

Performance Indicators

These allow you to foretell how well your employees will be involved in their work and if they are likely to stick with your organization.

Assessment solutions can also help with another problem that some firms face, that of employee retention. Employees leave organizations for many reasons, but job dissatisfaction is high on the list. Job dissatisfaction can result from many factors including not fitting in with organizational culture to feeling undervalued or in the wrong role.

Employee retention

Proper assessment can improve employee retention in many ways. For one thing, it can work in the hiring process by making sure that the candidate is someone right for the position s/he’s applying for and also right for your company culture. The modern assessment covers such factors as cultural fit, job fit and career fit, to make sure your new employee is with you for the long term.

Ongoing assessment can ensure employee satisfaction by making sure an employee’s talent is recognized and put to its best use.

Cengrow is one among global leaders in management consulting firms and has transformed businesses in all sectors and regions in India and across the planet. They have partnered with a range of clients to develop need based assessment solutions for employees at reasonable costs.

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How to Use Personality Profiles to Improve the Recruiting Process

It’s no wonder that personality profiles have turned out to be a standard assessment tool in the hiring process for many companies. Hiring managers and recruiters understand full well that resume screening, interviews, and reference checks are not a very active or objective means for making hiring decisions.

All that being said, some organizations continue to struggle with recruitment, so they tend to use personality assessment in their hiring decisions. The most probable reason for that is simple: it needs to be in the right hands to get the great results. Used inappropriately, both of these tools can hurt you. The personality profiles are complex tools. And the information they provide is dark and not always easy to interpret. We humans are dark, complex creatures ourselves. To make their tools easier for HR professionals to use, the tool providers have interpreted the computer generated reports to improve readability. The downside to simplicity, however, is that simplicity reduces the depth of information and the power of the tool. Less granular indicates less detail. It often generates challenges to drawing useful and accurate conclusions that are helpful in the workplace.

They should be approved in the use of the assessment tool, and they should be experienced in imparting insight and value. The practitioner creates a strong profile of the candidate or an effective action plan for employee development. Some assessments offer many raw scores, some of which may or may not contradict other scores on the same assessment.

A certified assessments practitioner will realize how to address some of the extraneous information on the computer generated report. Also, they will be familiar with trends and patterns that imply certain strengths or blind-spots in the individual. Most importantly, two individuals with very different personality profiles can still both be satisfied in the same role. The practitioner will help recognize these scenarios so that HR does not overlook and miss out on great talent.
Analysis of learning abilities and talents. This is one of the most important aspects of the candidate assessment and is also powerful for employee development as well. The result is a strong profile of the person’s communications skills, interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, work ethic, commitment levels, and leadership potential. These tools are useful for candidate assessment, but even more powerful for talent management and succession planning.
Personality Assessments provide clarity on where the drive and passion are in an individual, and so it helps ascertain how well a fit a person is for their role and career direction. This is one of the most crucial assessments to use when trying to determine the likelihood of success of any individual in a given designation. It is also useful in the midst of the talent management lifecycle to make sure that the individual is on the relevant career path within your organization.

But it is very important to note that it is possible to have two people with very different assessment profiles that are both competent of succeeding in the same role. Your assessments practitioner will have the expertise and experience to identify those and ensure great hiring decisions.

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The Fundamentals of Business Process Re-Engineering

Nowadays, some companies implement Process Re-engineering to attain quick savings and achieve the short term profits they have always wanted to make. Thinking good about this progress, they go to another ambition only to find that soon they are confronted with many of the same difficulties they believed they had cleared up. Now they are challenged with re-engaging the staff, incurring additional costs, to fix issues that may directly have been identified and dealt with without the loss of customer satisfaction had they originally planned for continuous growth.

Business Process Re-engineering simplified

Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is a complete process demanding a change in the primary way business processes are done. BPR recognizes unnecessary or repetitive activities and reduces them. Wherever feasible, it takes standard procedures and automates them. To achieve, it needs you to have a thoroughgoing and complete agreement of existing processes. Using this in-depth information allows for an examination of how well to make each piece of the method more efficiently, while always focusing on customer comfort.

What is needed to succeed?

To achieve BPR, traditional thinking and management functions must give way to empowered leadership and think “outside the box.” The exchange of information at all levels throughout the organization is essential. It begins with implementing goals and objectives for each process, defining roles and detailing shared strategies. This step is necessary to the success of a BPR action. Management must discharge departmental mandates, spare the work from the departmental accounts and remove strict operational control. These are anti-productive to BPR initiatives.

The next step is empowerment, allowing employees to have a say on how the business will work efficiently. To make sure that this happens, senior management must agree to commit to several things. The most important commitment: providing and supporting the impetus for the initiative. Once started, they can’t look back, this will likely be the most difficult obstacle management will encounter. Employees must see and understand that management supports employee participation and agree changes must be made. Management can’t disregard suggestions; even those they feel are frivolous and must provide positive feedback to encourage continued participation and success.

Next, management should realize that there will be time commitments involved both for themselves and for the staff. They must be willing to share some of their time with the staff doing the process investigation and mapping, for not only are the daily functions of the business examined and mapped but the management services as well. If there is a commitment to enhancing the overall functionality of the business, then no area can be left unmapped.

Many tasks are involved in Business Change. The first step towards success is planning and empowerment. The balance of tasks involved in a successful BPR implementation requires a fair amount of strategic thought and planning. Positive attitude, process thinking, avoiding the temptation of quick savings by eliminating staff, and being concentrated and on task, are the heart of the process and can be difficult. Remember, these are essential qualities in a productive transformation of the company.

Business – Quality Management Evaluation: Validate the work

Most successful companies these days are using some quality management system. This is not only a traditional method but one that is entirely justified and shown to be effective in the performance of the company’s goals; in particular on the business side.

A quality management system has been found to be highly beneficial for any business. This system helps the company make certain that all the ideas are taken sincerely and served meticulously for a more dynamic process that touches goals. It additionally works to reduce the volume of waste besides the way.

The system aids in keeping customer satisfaction in the long run. This is because nothing beats the good quality and high standards when it comes to making the customer happy enough to get back to an extra round. More so, happy customers are continuing to support the business to other characters within their political networks.

There are some options when it arrives at business quality support systems. Starting with one does not mandatorily have to be complicated. The only information necessary is a clearly established goal and a belief of the processes that make up the complete business. It does not end there. An evaluation of the operation should be carried after it is implemented to make sure it works and can do what it is deemed to do – guarantee the products and services delivered are of the highest quality all the time.

A good way to evaluate the effectivity of a quality management scheme is to have an independent audit. It involves an orderly and fair check of the various procedures in the industry. It assesses how the methods are using and profiting from the system. The statement should reflect every single person in the corporate ladder to ensure that all phases of the development profit from the policy.

Staff from within the organization can and should accompany the audit themselves. These internal auditors should maintain complete objectiveness in doing the assessment. Furthermore, they should keep the focus, which is to improve the procedures and not to find fault with their co-workers.

Consumers could also be obligatory auditors. This is a fair thing to do because they are not associated with the company and are more objective in recording observations and assessing the business methods and the entire quality management system being used. In addition to that, the customers are going to end up impressed with and appreciative of the company’s desire to be better.

Another good idea for an audit is to hire a consultant to conduct an entirely biased evaluation. Probably the only downside is the cost of paying for this professional. However, one can be sure about the quality of work done. It pays to have someone who is highly knowledgeable and trained in this particular process.

Cengrow is among the leaders in Management Consultants. They have a dedicated team of experts who understand the complexities and challenges of your Business performance management. The team then customizes solutions to meet the specific needs of your business.

Projective tests: Have a keener eye for talent

COMPETENCY BASED INTERVIEW A projective test is a type of personality test in which the individual is made to respond to ambiguous scenes, words or riddles. This kind of analysis emerged from the psychology of thought, which suggests that people have their behavioral traits and urges which might leave an impact on the business organizations they work with. These projective tests were intended to uncover such unconscious desires that are hidden from a normal behavior of an individual.

The projective techniques require more time and skill to administer than more objective testing methods and hence are an efficient method in assessing an individual’s competencies on the organization. They are very useful to employers in helping them obtain a comprehensive picture of a person’s personality mark the traits that they foresee as valuable to their organization and channelize it for their own as well as individual’s benefit.

The projective techniques directly or indirectly imply to competency based interviews, which have a sole purpose in an organization: to test employee’s skill. So, as interviewers you may be more interested in candidate’s experience or previous qualifications, what you need to know is whether you have the right skills to take the position on in your firm as different companies compete with different goals. You can also practically test how candidates would react in given situations. So rather than concerning yourselves with candidate’s past achievements, place emphasis on predicting how he/she would behave in a certain scenario in a business is driven environment.

The tasks in a competency based interview would range from oral and written communication to planning, organization and problem-solving. So, it is time for you as an entrepreneur to match the right skills with the right candidate and see your business grow. Cengrow has achieved this mastery with time; it is equipped with all modern techniques in analyzing candidate’s profile and his behavior to make sure your he/she does justice to the role been given. It is all a growing corporate firm needs, a workforce not smartest in the room but brightest to do the job that is assigned. Cengrow will help organizations grow through these everyday situations in which most of the business leaders fail to identify the right talent for their needs of activities. Some key competencies that employers look for in a candidate include:

Teamwork
Responsibility
Communication skills
Decision making
Leadership
Problem-solving
Goal orientation

A consultation firm helps you have a plethora of all these in the working class you hire. But where do you find one reputable company? Cengrow has been the people’s choice since past 30 years. The applications designed here helps organizations make prudential decisions when it comes to recruiting the right talent, getting relevant data from past and current and optimally utilizing the talented workforce to encourage them to do better. Cengrow, to sum up, is not just a consultation firm, but a potential power you can trust for fulfilling your ambitious business goals.

Psychomotor Testing: Efficient Operational performance

Psychomotor Testing is a unique yet an important element of the hiring process in companies. Covering a full range of job-specific aptitudes, cognitive ability and personality tests, this test offers a comprehensive solution to hire and manage the right employee and accurately predict performance metric for specific roles.

Why is it Important?

Psychometric tests cover a mix of ability and aptitude tests that includes a specific questionnaire on competency mapping to help deliver a clear and concise insight into the candidate’s talent, attitude and attributes. It highlights the key performance areas of the employee and helps companies to understand the behaviour and psychic of an individual. Interviewers can get a first-hand insight on employee by assessing the logical reasoning abilities of an individual and how one responds to changing situations or challenges that sprout in a working environment.

Benefits of Psychomotor Testing

Conducting Psychomotor Testing not only benefits an organisation in assessing and hiring the right candidates but also helps in improving the organisations internal workforce.

Most of the Psychomotor Testing are prepared with multiple-choice questions and timed. Unlike other tests, these tests do not have a right or wrong answer but focuses on the candidates/employee’s personality and general outlook. Moreover, these tests can be conducted offline and can also be integrated and automated online, making them easy to use and convenient for all kinds of companies.

It is important for organisations today to focus on evaluating performance and growth potential of its employees and most of the companies are adapting and preparing psychometric tools including a questionnaire on competency mapping that helps employers introspect and enhance their workforce and gauge the right talent. Cengrow, a global consulting firm designs and conducts performance management tests along with a range of assessment solutions including psychometric testing, competency mapping and other tools that help businesses lead and perform better.

These kinds of questionnaires offer role clarity and make the selection process simpler and much more effective than the traditional hiring method of just interviewing the candidates.

Organisations following competency mapping have benefitted immensely by getting a chance to identify potential employees, analysing the person’s core strengths, key competencies and how one reflects in a demanding work atmosphere. Additionally, competency mapping provides an insight on a person’s work style and specific skills that may be suitable of the open or higher position in and within the organisation. By giving a fair insight of the employee, the employers can effectively map the right person to the specific job and help him perform better or move up with the roles fitting his personality.

In short, competency mapping helps identify qualifies individuals, assesses performance of the existing workforce and focuses on enhancing productivity of the organisations objectives and reach its overall objective for a successful growth.

It is time to select and develop your organisations human asset by choosing an experienced business consulting firm like Cengrow that offers tailor-made solutions like competency mapping assessments and psychomotor testing to help you hire the right talent. It is time to adapt new tools and methodologies that enhance your organisation’s goal setting, performance appraisals and employee’s career planning in a better more improved way.

Competency Assessment – Key to Better Hiring

One of the most challenging tasks for the human resources – HR team in any organisation is to search, find and choose the right talent. Competence at work is crucial for projects productivity and in the overall growth of an organisation. When it comes to recognizing employee competencies, most organisations fail to recognise and utilise their true talent and skills. This is the reason so many organisations today conduct competency assessments or ask employees to undertake a competency mapping questionnaire that help them effectively hire and manage their workforce.

Competency Assessment – Placing Right People in The Right Jobs

Competency assessment is a process that has been designed to measure and assess an individuals or a group’s performance consistently in relation to the business requirements of the organisations they are enrolling or applying for. The process includes a competency mapping questionnaire that the employee answers and helps organisations understand and identify key attributes and skills that the person has in order to fulfil his job roles & responsibilities. In fact the employee too will be happy to be fit for the job he is assigned to and that shall help him build a positive relationship with co-workers, seniors and coordinated better internally.

Psychomotor testing not only helps gauge a person’s performance effectiveness but also his ability to process and follow instructions and react to situations succinctly.

Vital Requirement for All Organisations

Competency assessment is vital to all organisations big or small, new or old as it assists in hiring the right talent. It can also help organization in a variety of other tools and measures including a 360 degree feedback that helps in job promotions, internal assessments etc.

Every company needs to implement competency mapping assessment and make it an essential exercise. It will enhance the performance of each role and will help improve training and development procedures and in turn improve functional and technical competencies of the workforce.

The business environment is constantly changing and with a dynamic business it is imperative for the human resources to implement the right competency mapping and truly evolve talent management, development and overall employee appraisal format.

In recent times, global competition defines an organisation’s growth and business strategies need to be implemented for efficient workforce. Technology presents new solutions and with new tools and applications being launched constantly, customised assessment solutions including psychometric tests, competency mapping and other career-based approaches have enhanced human resource’s management and have proven positive in enhancing the organisations productivity and overall growth. So if your organisation is in need to match the right talent with the right jobs, get in touch with a business consulting firm like Cengrow, a respected and recognised international consulting firm that specializes in designing, preparing and conducting competency assessments, psychomotor tools, Critical Reasoning Test and psychometric testing for leadership and many other proven methodology and tolls for organisations and sectors located globally.

Competency Mapping: Importance for Employee Selection

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Competency Mapping is a process that helps identify key competencies for a particular position in an organisation or for using it for training, recruitment, performance management and succession planning. It is a behavioural trait and not a skill or an ability that defines an individual’s competencies that make him meet the job demands within the parameters put by the organisation.

High in Demand

Competency Mapping is not a new concept, but in recent years it has been in high demand and many organizations use competency models as a basis for their performance management systems. Today, the organisations and businesses have understood its importance for employee selection as a process.

Encompassing professional, personal and technical competencies, competency mapping is highly flexible and can be customised as per the client’s needs. Moreover, it can even be built upon an already existing competency map of an organisation.

Benefits of Competency Mapping

The benefit of competency mapping is that it creates standards for employee training and development specifically tailored to your organizational needs.

It is a quick and efficient method that focussed and analyses how employees work and usually takes 1 or 2 days time period.

Creating a competency map helps to drills down to the skills, knowledge, abilities, and behaviours required for each unit of work. This approach makes the competency map a very useful and practical tool for organizations.

Another benefit is that it creates a comprehensive list of specific skills required to be performed on a job. This forms the basis of a competency assessment that focuses on how an employee performs at work in relation to the specified performance standards. In fact a competency mapping also provides ongoing employee performance coaching in lieu with the assessed employee’s acceptance. This not only benchmarks employee performance but also helps organisations target performance deficits and highlights skills that require additional trainings or specialised courses. Furthermore, it avoids the pitfalls of cumbersome documentation and complicated methods that often result in generic competency statements.

A competency model can be used for selection, placement, redeployment, performance management and evaluation, planning training & development, career role mapping and separation. Competency models are also useful as they not only communicate what is important to an organization but also provide a stable foundation for developing integrated human resource systems such as staffing, training, promotion, succession planning and performance management.

Should you be interested to use competency mapping, you should get assistance from experienced management and business consulting firm like Cengrow. With more than 30 years of expertise in management consulting globally, Cengrow provides end-to-end solutions for all your business challenges and adds value to your organisation’s performance, people and process. They help organizations identify key competencies and define associated critical behaviours that are linked to their strategic objectives and key success factors of their business.