Employee assessment is one of the primary focus areas for Samolov Group consulting company. Nina AFONINA, Head of Evaluation Department at Samolov Group, talks about how to build the employee assessment system in a bank, and why it is so important.

NBJ: Nina, what exactly does “employee assessment” mean?

N. AFONINA: Employee assessment is one of HR’s strategic tasks. When making any personnel decisions, we evaluate the employees by answering two questions: “Who do we need?” and “Is this particular person right for us?” 

Of course, efficient staff members who drive strong business performance are every employer’s dream. There is a popular formula which describes efficiency as the product of “can” and “want”, where “can” refers to the employee’s qualities, talents, competencies, skills and knowledge, and “want” is the employee’s motivation to work.

The range of available assessment tools is quite extensive: psychometric testing, exams, evaluation centers, individual interviews, project evaluation, KPI, 360-degree feedback, etc. It is very important to choose the right tools when planning an evaluation project or periodic evaluation procedures.

NBJ: Are there any situations when еmployee assessment in an organization is especially critical?

N. AFONINA: Of course! And these are situations when companies often seek help from external experts. Such evaluations are most often carried out to build a talent pool, set up a new department, create a top team, etc.

Cases when employees’ motivation needs to be assessed deserve special mention. When facing challenging market conditions in a changing environment, it is essential to understand what is happening with the people, what drives them, what motivation factors are important to them, and how satisfied they are. Otherwise you can find yourself in a situation where your employees achieve zero performance due to low motivation despite being highly skilled professionals.

NBJ: If a company needs to assess their staff, where should they begin?

N. AFONINA: I won’t be original: you should start by setting the objectives. If the evaluation objectives are already clear, you should create a competency model which will be used for evaluation of your staff. We often find that competency models established by the companies don’t actually work. They exist only on the formal level, are totally irrelevant to real-world conditions, and are more of a hindrance than a help when making personnel decisions. This is why we help our customers create working competency models and choose proper assessment tools.
We build our evaluation models using the funnel approach: from the most fundamental and difficult-to-change qualities to those that are easily developed. This allows optimizing the assessment project costs by screening out respondents with low potential at early stages.

Therefore, we suggest starting by evaluating the people against the competencies that are essential for any profession. These are responsibility, goal orientation, interest in their chosen profession, human relations – we call this the communication paradigm.

The next funnel level is professional competencies. These are personal qualities required for successful realization of one’s potential in a specific profession. For example, it wouldn’t make sense to hire a sales manager who is not customer-oriented or a debt collection specialist with low stress resistance. This is the most interesting part: we help our customers identify and select the qualities that are really important to them.

The skills evaluation is done after the competency evaluation, since skill deficiencies are easier to compensate. For example, if you have a specialist with good fundamental and professional competencies, but poorly developed skills, you can consider yourself lucky – such employees make a great resource for development, they tend to learn quickly, and can become very efficient.

Finally, we assess the knowledge, because knowledge gaps are the easiest to fill. Of course, you should never lose sight of the motivation factor, but I’ve already mentioned that.

NBJ: Can you tell us something about the existing assessment tools?

N. AFONINA: No single assessment tools is a panacea in itself. You need to understand when and where to use each specific method. 

For example, psychomentric testing serves as an excellent “filter” for large-scale evaluations, and is also very good for knowledge evaluation. Various types of tests are an efficient way to evaluate motivation, corporate values, etc. Assessment centers are invaluable when you need to assess team work and skills. Individual interviews produce quite accurate results and allow evaluating the entire set of competencies and skills. Project assessement also yields very good results when you are able to observe the respondents performing real-world tasks.
We use a wide range of tools for our assessment projects.

NBJ: Can you give us an example of an assessment project?

N. AFONINA: Let’s discuss a specific example – an evaluation project implemented jointly with MDM Bank.

The company needed to select a “strategic talent pool” of 100 employees exhibiting high potential and strong leadership qualities in two weeks. We divided this project into three stages.
At the first stage, we conducted online testing and rated the employees. The rating was based on the test results and employee performance indicators. This allowed screening out those staff members who had insufficient motivation and skills. At the end of this stage, we were left with 1,500 candidates for the talent pool. 

During the next week, we organized ten evaluation centers (100–150 persons per center) and selected 15 strong leaders capable of steering their teams from each group.
The third and final stage consisted of internal contests held jointly with the bank’s staff evaluation department to assess the employees’ knowledge as well as personal qualities of each candidate. As a result, we managed to create a talent pool of 100 successful staff members within a short time frame and at minimum costs for the customer.

NBJ: What special methodologies that provide insight into the employees’ talent and potential do you specifically offer to credit institutions?

N. AFONINA: Assessment of the products offered to the customers is critical for credit institutions. This is where we offer another psychometric tools – knowledge tests and various surveys that enable large-scale 
evaluations. 

The banking industry generally features clear career paths and well-established procedures for staff development inside the credit institutions. That is why we always enjoy working with the banks and helping them achieve their goals.