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Using Online Assessment to Measure Cultural Fit
Setting the Scene
Norman Broadbent is a human capital consulting group which provides a broad range of people solutions that deliver a competitive edge for their client’s businesses. As a leading provider of executive search and leadership consultancy services, Norman Broadbent operates at the senior end of leadership and talent identification at board level.
The Challenge
Norman Broadbent approached eCom to assist in the development of an organisational culture assessment to support their executive search services. The objective was to provide Norman Broadbent’s clients with an accessible and easily administered tool to assist with recruitment and onboarding, and ultimately successfully embed new executives into the business within their first 100 days. The tool was to augment rather than replace, any existing onboarding or induction processes. The online job assessment test had to measure cultural fit between a candidate and company by identifying the ‘Cultural Snapshot’ for specific job roles of the candidate and the client benchmarker. Norman Broadbent had developed the content that was to form the basis of the questionnaire.
The Solution
The assessment required an adaptive structure, with responses to previous questions determining subsequent questions. eCom used eNetAssess™, its online assessment tool, to build the questionnaire. The ‘Cultural Snapshot’ content was structured into the various question types and the initial questions were loaded into the system. Edits and additions to the online job assessment test content can easily be made in the non-technical authoring tool. Assessments results are stored in the system from where it is quick to generate reports. The ‘Cultural Snapshot’ questionnaire is delivered to candidates and client benchmarkers via an email link, which they follow to login to the assessment. The client benchmarkers in the hiring organisation answer a range of questions which are then averaged to give the cultural snapshot of that organisation. The executive candidates complete the same questionnaire and a comparison can take place. Comparison is possible between candidates and between candidates and organisations. The comparison is reported in the form of a spider graph that graphically represents the candidate results against the client benchmark. The results generate a further set of questions to explore at interview stage or identifies areas that may require attention at the settling in period.
The Benefits
By using a flexible assessment platform Norman Broadbent have created a completely bespoke online assessment tool which successfully measures candidate’s cultural fit to an organisation. The reporting and graphics make it quick for Norman Broadbent to communicate the outcome of assessments to clients. With the simple authoring Norman Broadbent can edit questions directly in the tool, making it possible to adapt the assessment on a client-by-client basis.
