Articles

Why do you need to conduct HR assessment?

One of the most important processes to keep your HR department healthy is to assess the department regularly. This assessment can be the only way to determine whether HR needs, duties, aptitude are being met and achieved in an organization. Many organizations make such assessments internally, however, you will likely get better and more objective results if you outsource an outside organization to do it for you. The main aim of this assessment is to identify the strength and weakness points in the organization, to see where the HR department achieve successes and where it needs some improvements. The assessment focuses on many areas in the establishment.

  What are the benefits of this assessment?

• It helps an organization to know whether its HR practices facilitate or contradict with its business goals.
• Inform employees whether their performance is acceptable or not, and make them aware of the weakness points in their performance. In Addition, defining every employee performance will enable the organization to take appropriate decisions, and consequently, guaranteeing the achievement of the organization objectives.
• This assessment will be a formal document which will reveal the reasons behind the poor performance of the employees.
• It helps in the Planning the professional development processes of the employee.
• Measures the employee's readiness to move or upgrade, and the bonus or salary increase can be decided consequently.
• It improves productivity in the department since every employee knows that there will be an assessment of his performance.

  Types of Assessments:

An HR department can conduct a number of assessments either comprehensive or area focused assessments, according to the time, budgets and staff allocated to the assessment. There are several types of assessments depending on why it’s conducted. Compliance, Strategic, and Function-specific are some of the more common types. Compliance focuses on whether the organization’s complying with laws and regulations, while Strategic reveals the strengths and weaknesses of policies and processes and their aligning with the organization's strategic plan. Function-specific assesses specific area in the HR function.

  What and When to Assess

The organization must keep an eye on all the arisen issue in order to know the weak point in the organization. The assessment Conducted must be within the available resources.

Conducting a holistic departmental assessment requires a lot of resources. Many organizations cannot go through such a process more than once a year. Therefore, organizations must adopt conducting mini-assessments that consider auditing a specific area in a specific timely manner. In addition, it’s highly recommended to conduct an assessment following an important event or applying the new change in the organization to see its impact on the organization.

  The HR Assessment Process

The process of conducting an assessment includes many steps, these steps can be summarized in the following:

• Determine the scope and type of assessment

First thing we have to identify when conducting an assessment is the area we are going to assess, and whether it will be a comprehensive or area specific assessment, and who are involved in conducting the assessment.

• Collect Data, Benchmark the Results

Gathering data can be through one of versatile tools. First, a questionnaire with detailed questions about the HR department or the identified area need to be reviewed is established and given to the people involved. This way is simple, easy and needs some time to be applied. Second, the assessors might tend to do interviews for more detailed findings. This way may be harder and more time-consuming, however, it may be more effective. The findings in both ways are analyzed and compared with either national standards or goal standards in the organization.

• Give feedback on the findings

The data analyzed must be delivered to the HR professional and departments’ managers in the form of findings and recommendations. These results must be discussed with all the HR Professional and the departments’ managers in order to make them aware of the changes needed, which in turn facilitate obtaining approval on the change process.

• Apply Changes and Foster Improvements

The organization should consider creating an action plan to organize implementing the raised changes. Conducting an assessment and not applying the results affects negatively on the organization. Therefore, the organization should follow applying these findings. Moreover, the organization must focus on continuous improvement to the polices, process, and practices of the HR department.

Bakkah team for training and consulting