Workforce Group has called on Nigerian organisations to rethink how they use assessment, arguing that its value extends well beyond evaluating candidates during recruitment.
The call is contained in a new white paper by the organisation titled *Assessment as a Force Multiplier: How Leading Organisations Use Assessment as a Strategic Decision Engine*. The paper argues that organisations can use assessment more strategically to generate insights that support decisions across the employee and organisational lifecycle.
According to Workforce Group, assessment can provide better information about the capabilities organisations have, the capabilities they may need in future and how people can be deployed, developed and prepared for larger responsibilities.
The paper asks organisations to examine how well they understand their existing workforce before turning to external recruitment.
Questions include who is ready for a larger role, who has the potential to lead, where capability gaps exist and which employees could be developed to take on future positions.
Akindele Afolabi, Director, Workforce Assessment, said organisations can spend significant time and resources searching for talent externally while overlooking capabilities that already exist within their workforce.
‘The issue is not simply whether organisations have talented people. It is whether they have enough intelligence to know what those people are capable of, where they can create the greatest value and what they need to develop next.’
Workforce Group said assessment has often been linked to recruitment, where candidates are evaluated before joining an organisation. However, many decisions made after employees join are based on performance records, managerial judgement and observation.
The organisation said this can create gaps in decision-making.
For example, an employee who performs well may be promoted into management without an assessment of their ability to lead people. An organisation may also invest in training without first identifying the specific capability gap it is trying to address.
Succession planning can face a similar challenge when employees are identified as possible successors based mainly on experience without establishing whether they are ready for the responsibilities of the role.
Workforce Group is proposing that assessment should become part of the wider process of managing talent rather than an activity used mainly during recruitment or promotion.
Its proposed approach follows four stages: assess, interpret, decide and improve.
The organisation said this process can provide information across the employee lifecycle, including recruitment, onboarding, promotion, leadership development, succession planning, team effectiveness and workforce planning.
It can also help organisations determine whether a problem requires training, leadership development, succession planning or external recruitment.
‘The question should not simply be whether someone passed an assessment,’ Afolabi said. ‘It should be what the organisation now knows that it did not know before, and what it can do differently because of that insight.’
The white paper introduces two frameworks to support the approach. The Assessment Opportunity Map identifies points across the employee and organisational lifecycle where assessment can support decisions, while the 7Is Framework links assessment insights to workforce and business priorities.
Workforce Group said the frameworks can help organisations move from identifying suitable candidates to understanding how existing talent can be deployed and developed.
The organisation said this could also support decisions on whether to build, buy, deploy or develop talent based on evidence about leadership pipelines, team capability and workforce gaps.
Rather than treating assessment as a one-off exercise tied to a specific hiring or promotion decision, Workforce Group said organisations can use it as an ongoing source of intelligence for people and business decisions.
The organisation’s position is that assessment can play a broader role in helping leaders understand their workforce, identify capability gaps, make more informed talent decisions and align people decisions with business priorities.
Its white paper, *Assessment as a Force Multiplier: How Leading Organisations Use Assessment as a Strategic Decision Engine*, is available on Workforce Group’s website.