2. DRIVING ORGANSATIONAL ENGAGEMENT THROUGH PEOPLE SOLUTIONS
Assessment Centre Technologies broadly operates across three main areas:
ACT Talent Analytics focusses on using internal as well as external assessments, needs analyses,
climate surveys, talent audits and customised assessment centres to lead our way. Assessments can
play an integral role in identifying and managing talent within an organisation.
By using assessments one can create a data base of talent to use in succession planning and ideal
employee deployment. This will be achieved by determining the requirements for the position and
assessing employees against those requirements to determine potential, strengths and possible
development gaps.
ACT Talent Analytics offers a specialised research department with a focus on maximising the value-
add and applicability of assessment results to the unique needs of the client. Research,
benchmarking and statistical analysis can assist the organisation to hone their recruitment and
development requirements, and results in a more valid and reliable assessment process.
Our unique GRID approach can be applied using any of the tools from our comprehensive
assessment library, depending on the needs of our clients. This wide selection of tools comfortably
allows for a diverse range of applications in people-related solutions.
The ACT Academy’s main function lies in the development of managers to be leaders. We engage
with managers and take them on a journey of self-discovery and growth. We develop leaders rather
than merely training them and believe in joint journeys of discovery and self-enhancement. The ACT
Academy aims to provide development centres / workshops that are distinctly personalised, refined,
contextual, collaborative and above else, actionable.
Our Genius series is a unique, up-skill opportunity to equip leaders at all levels of the organisation,
and across all industries, with hands-on tools to apply in the workplace the moment they return
from any development centre. Our Genius series modules consist out of the following:
3. Leader as Coach
Conflict Management
Time and Action Management
Team Leader Bootcamp
Behavioural Selling
Furthermore, ACT Academy prides itself in developing impeccable, customised workshops that our
diverse range of clients might need. Our track record of development centres include, but are not
limited to, Competency Based Interviewing, On Boarding, Leading in Changing Times, Emotionally
Smart Leadership, and How To Manage.
To add to the development of people, ACT Academy provides accreditation training on a number of
psychometric assessments such as our own Personal Values Profile, Remote Living Questionnaire,
InterDISC personality assessment, e-Basket and talent analytics. These accreditation training
sessions are aimed at registered psychologists, psychometrists, HR professionals and line managers.
ACT Consulting specialises in people solutions. Our team of qualified professionals partner with our
clients to identify organisational challenges. Our purpose is to enhance engagement levels and
support organisations in nurturing and growing their talent pool. We focus our expertise, time and
effort on finding the most practical and profitable solutions. Together with our local and
international network we aim to address people related challenges and deliver outcomes that
seamlessly align with human capital management strategies. With over 20 years of experience in
human capital solutions and a client base that spans across a range of industries, nationally and
internationally, we are able to customise solutions in line with the specific needs of our clients.
Together with ACT Academy and ACT Talent Analytics we offer tailor-made solutions to address
each client’s need in the following areas:
Talent management
Leadership development
Succession planning
Development of Competency frameworks
Designing Assessment/Development Centres
Recruitment
4. In Talent Analytics it is important that individual talent information can be compared and integrated. By
having a centralised platform one ensures that talent data is always accessible and readily available to guide
talent decisions.
From an organisational perspective, to get the most value out of any assessment initiative, it is imperative to
identify up front which of these dimensions are most relevant to and pertinent for the position candidates are
in currently or have the potential for in future. This will further ensure that the assessment process is fair and
justifiable.
Assessments can be used for a variety of contexts, such as:
Recruitment and Selection
Learning and Development
Career and Talent Management
Succession Planning
Self-awareness
Teamwork and Team Effectiveness
Our unique GRID approach can be applied using any of the tools from our comprehensive assessment library,
depending on the needs of our clients. This wide selection of tools comfortably allows for a diverse range of
applications in people-related solutions.
Personal Values Profile (PVP)
Every person is driven by their own unique set of values which dictates the standards they live and work by.
The PVP is a self-report questionnaire designed to identify the comparative importance of a series of 21 pre-
defined work values to a person in their job, work environment and career. This analysis ranks values from
most to least importance to the individual, providing leadership insight on where and how to align corporate
values thereby increasing engagement in the organisation.
Corporate Values Profile (CVP)
The CVP is the companion to the PVP. While the PVP looks at values from the vantage point of the individual,
the CVP looks at specific values from the job perspective. Corporate values set the organisational standards for
functions, jobs, and employees in the organisation. The CVP utilises the same work values as the PVP, ranking
them from most to least important in relation to the requirements and expectations of the function, job, team
or business domain.
PVP / CVP Match
The true power of gaining insight into the values of the individual and the job environment lies in the
comparison of these two (PVP and CVP) metrics. The level of congruency can guide managers and leaders on
organisational strategies for performance, reward, change management, restructuring and authentic
engagement.
Congnitive Job Profile (CJP) and Emotional Job Demand (EJD)
Cognitive and Emotional Job Profiles are designed to specify the requirements of a job according to the
dimensions of these assessments. Job specific benchmarks are created which candidates are measured and
compared against. The job Matching Report measures an individual against the job benchmark. It identifies
person-to-person compatibility as well as areas of development.
5. e-BASKET
Competencies, such as leadership, are complex to understand and assess in a pragmatic manner. However,
measuring abilities such as delegation, problem solving and priority management is critical for leadership
development. Assessment centres have been used as a manual and time-consuming process to provide a
comprehensive and balanced evaluation of a person’s skills. Our new e-Basket tool-set, can be completed
online and in real-time. It can, quickly and accurately, measure levels of proficiency on six specific leadership
competencies using simulated high level leadership scenarios. The result is focused on developing talented
leadership.
Remote Living Questionnaire (RLQ)
Work-life integration is becoming increasingly important for organisations to attract and retain
talented people. The challenge is more complicated when one is required to live and work in the
same environment; even more so when that environment is situated remotely. The RLQ is relevant
to companies in the mining, agricultural, manufacturing, farming and meteorology industries
deploying people in isolated areas. It is an invaluable tool for multi-national companies deploying
employees in isolated geographical areas, other than their home country.
MATRIX
The incremental value of combining data analytics is the new way of identifying talent for the future.
This approach takes assessment results and combines them in a variety of ground-breaking
permutations, which is expressed in an easily interpreted report for managers. The integration of the
assessments establishes whether a person will psychologically fit into a specific position or
environment and indicates the ability to acquire the skills and responsibilities associated with the
job’s key performance indicators. It also identifies talent for accelerated management development.
In its simplest form, candidates are plotted on a 4-quadrant grid: each of the four quadrants guide
on how to manage, develop and retain talent, allocated in that part of the GRID.
DISC Grid
DISC profiling is one of the world’s most widely used behavioural assessment systems. It works by
breaking down patterns of behaviour into four important factors: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness
and Compliance. These four factors are measures across different contexts to help interpret how a
person will tend to behave in different situations.
The ACT team, comprising of registered psychologists, psychometrists, research psychologists and
accredited consultants, is qualified to administer a wide range of psychometric and other
occupational assessments, and will assist your organisation to optimise the most appropriate
processes in line with your objectives.
Over and above occupational assessments, ACT also offers the following initiatives:
Climate Surveys
Developing organisation specific Integrated Competency Frameworks
Conducting Organisational Development / Change Management projects
Facilitating teambuilding sessions
Bespoke 360° Surveys
Facilitating group formation sessions
Against this backdrop, ACT offers the flexibility to structure the content of any assessment to suit the
specified requirement.
6. Benchmarking
Benchmarking can be defined as a method of identifying standards/best practices to assist with
decision making. There are a variety of different benchmarking options available:
Intra-company – benchmarking within the company
Inter-company – benchmarking between two or more companies.
Intra- and Inter-department – analysing and comparing assessment results both across and
within departments
Areas of specialisation – benchmarking assessment practices, results and/or requirements
within a specialist job role or family of job roles e.g. finance.
The benefits of occupational assessments include:
Increasing the return on investments made in recruitment, selection and development
Reducing risk of costly errors in recruitment, development and management of individuals
Flexibility of methodologies and processes to suit the client's specific requirements and
context
Providing a professional and independent review of the candidate
A transparent, fair and unbiased process - open to scrutiny
Compliance with relevant labour legislation
7. The ACT Academy starts with a facilitating discussion and focusses only on which competencies are
needed. It is therefore tailored development in its purest form. Please see a short description of the
different programmes and modules in the Genius Series.
Leader as Coach
Leaders who empower others incorporate informal coaching discussions on a daily basis to create a
culture of ownership & trust. The Leader as coach modules focus on:
Gaining insights into effective coaching models; learning how to run an engaging meeting;
stimulating and empowering discussions, knowing how to think like a coach, acquiring brilliant
listening and questioning skills, and understanding how to create mutual understanding and trust.
Conflict, Influencing and Negotiation
This module forms the basis of constructive feedback and difficult conversations. Delegates will learn
how to use the most appropriate approach when dealing with conflict; how to work with people, not
against them; being assertive without the aggression; avoiding the traps of entanglement during
difficult conversations; learning how to develop a win-win approach when negotiating better
outcomes for yourself; and gaining skills to plan for negotiating with manipulative people.
Behavioural Selling
Clients buy from sales people they like. Learn how to read behaviour and modify your own to close a
sale. This module consists of seeing the client’s perspective; creating trust; moving from problem
solving to problem finding; acquiring skills to modify your own style and behaviour to that of the
customer.
Time & Action Management
Time cannot be changed, but actions can be managed. This module will teach delegates to take
action on things they can influence. Delegates will learn the principles of handling ‘first things first’
and planning for the big rocks.
Team Leader Bootcamp
The ability of team leaders to engage and motivate their teams is becoming a much sought-after
skill. Performance driven teams needs fuel and this module provides this fuel. This popular workshop
focusses on understanding teams and spotting a great team; energising the team; becoming a
relationship facilitator and making work worthwhile to achieve goals.
8. Other tailored workshops within the ACT Academy include, but are not limited to:
Understanding Behaviour
Provides more information on behavioural aspects, preferred communication styles, approach to
conflict and task / work environment.
Competency Based Interview Workshop (CBI)
Principles and process of designing a Competency Based Interview (CBI) process. Aligning the
interview process / questions to a competency framework.
Emotionally Smart Leadership
This workshop aims to increase participants’ insight into self-perceptions and the perceptions of
colleagues. It links together the concept of behaviour, emotional intelligence and multi-rater
feedback to provide a holistic overview of work place performance and geared to facilitate specific
development initiatives.
Leading in changing times
The workshop aims to strengthen leadership capability in an interactive session. It is aimed at
leaders and future leaders across all levels of an organisation. As part of this workshop, participants
will discover their unique leadership fingerprint, derived from their behaviour, emotional
intelligence and values.
On-Boarding
The On-boarding workshop is an opportunity for students, leaders and graduates to discover and
expand themselves in the world of work. This unique and experience-based full or half-day
workshop aims to introduce participants to a host of practical guidelines that addresses a variety of
areas.
9. Some of our core consulting solutions are:
Talent Management
Talent management can be defined as the integrated set of processes and systems in an
organisation that are designed and implemented to attract, develop, deploy, and retain talent in
order to achieve strategic objectives and meet future business goals. In order to be able to achieve
effective talent management one needs to understand the make-up of an organisation’s current
human capital. Understanding the dynamics and trends of the organisation as a whole can also assist
HR practitioners to implement interventions more successfully, organisation wide.
Succession Planning
The aim of a succession planning intervention is to effectively deploy the talent pool of the
organisation. By using the holistic, statistical representation of the talent pool, as well as other
performance information about the individual, one can effectively plan the succession strategy of an
organisation. Information from assessments can be used to recognise high potential individuals that
can be fast tracked and developed to succeed the current managers and leaders within an
organisation. Succession planning interventions will focus on skills that are recognised as important
for personal development in preparation for future successions and promotional opportunities.
Leadership Development
Leadership development programmes aim to provide leaders and emerging leaders with
opportunities to learn and grow their leadership capacity. By assessing an individual on various
psychometric instruments one can easily determine their current and potential leadership abilities.
This information, together with the job requirement, provides an integrated overview on the
individual’s development gaps. By addressing these development gaps one can not only increase
current performance of employees, but set up individuals toward successful, dynamic career paths.
Development of Competency Frameworks
Competency framework development is a process used to identify and describe those competencies
that are most critical to the long term success of an organisation. Competencies are the knowledge,
skills and abilities that are related to success at work. Identifying the key competencies required by
your organisation helps to clarify what is expected from employees in terms of performance and
outcomes. Moreover, competencies can be used as a benchmark of ideal behaviour within and
organisation.
Customer Designed Assessment and Development Centers
The assessment centre is a technique which employs a number of assessment tools in an attempt to
gather a wide spectrum of knowledge about candidates. This information can be used to make more
accurate selection and development decisions. ACT assists organisations in identifying key
competencies and designing customised in-house assessment centres. Typical competency exercises
include in-basket exercises, role plays, group discussions, presentations and case study exercises.
