Benefits of Assessment Centers for Organizations Research Paper

Benefits of Assessment Centers for Organizations - Research Paper Example This research will begin with the statement that the commonest application of assessment is in measuring management employees’ performance, especially for interpersonal competencies. The assessment centers help determine the specific competencies in an individual employee through a series of techniques and methods that include both individual and group activities. The assessors determine an individual’s performance against other employees. Many analysts affirm that assessment centers are very effective in measurement interpersonal skills. An assessment center puts employees through work-like conditions involving individual and team activities and tests that offer the best simulation of real work situations for monitoring and measurement of key competencies. Assessment centers are critical in determining the competency of employees. Competency is a broad term referring to a set of skills, knowledge, individual behaviors and how they auger with the job specification of th e employee under consideration. The interplay of factors in every employee is critical for the overall success of the organization. In addition, assessment centers help organizations to determine the most important skillsets for the organization with regard to the management. For instance, an employee’s willingness to delegate, works in a team, take risks, and take personal initiative. Assessment centers are also great in selecting employees who can provide the best performance for particular jobs. The organization can therefore choose employees for jobs that are most fitting and improve the organizational performance. An assessment center also aids in developing and identifying fresh potential for the organization’s top supervisory jobs (Boehm, 1982), particularly in cases where other methods fail, given its superior ability to reveal an employee’s interpersonal skills. Finally, an assessment center helps identify competencies needing further development and co nsequently help in appraising of employees, which can help in career development. This report analyzes assessment center as an assessment tool and examines its implementation considerations for an organization. A description of the Assessment Center Approach A number of factors, which articulate its goal, underlie the assessment center approach to measuring organizational performance. For an organization to implement an effective assessment center, it needs to identify the competencies necessary for its future employees (Rupp & Reynolds, 2009). In addition, the management has to come up with means to determine the competencies that the current employees possess. Finally, one of the most vital phases in the overall design of the assessment center is the identification of competencies gap, and the eventual process of developing means of bridging this gap. By identifying gaps in an individual’s set of competencies, the organization can help nurture these skills in employees to i mprove their performance, for instance with regard to knowledge and skills. Implementing an Assessment Center for the Organization A number of factors come into play before an organization can effectively implement an assessment center. First, the organization has to find appropriate and experienced raters to conduct the assessment. According to Coffee (2005), in the industrial settings, 3 to 6 assessors assess 6 to 12 candidates over a period of 3 days. Secondly, the organization has to identify an all-encompassing set of assessment techniques, which ensure that the assessment goes on successfully and comprehensively covers all areas of relevance in the study. Normally, the assessment methods are either written or oral. The written exercises include in-basket