#FIRMday London 27th April 2017: Inclusive Assessment in practice, Cubiks
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Inclusive assessment in practice: Lisa Cox, Consultant at Cubiks discusses designing an inclusive assessment process. Lisa will share her experience when it comes to ensuring selection decisions are made without subjectivity and bias. Assessment specialists Cubiks share expertise and insight into the benefits of inclusive assessment and how to go about making your assessment process more inclusive
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#FIRMday London 27th April 2017: Inclusive Assessment in practice, Cubiks
- 1. Creating Inclusive Assessment Processes Lisa Cox 27.4.17
- 2. Cubiks: Your international partner for people assessment We provide flexible HR tools and services for selecting and developing people. As every organisation is different, we work hand in hand with clients to design and deliver solutions with a perfect fit. At every stage of the employment cycle, our award-winning team can offer scientifically-grounded assessments and expert advice. This powerful combination equips employers to find and engage the talent essential for their organisation to thrive, now and in the future.
- 5. 1. The ‘Why’ • Why are you interested in inclusivity? • Building a shared vision of inclusivity • What do you want to be inclusive of? • Champions for your new approach
- 6. 2. Your Assessment Criteria • Defining what great looks like: focus group and interview make up • Designing fair, measurable criteria • Validating and reviewing
- 7. Attraction
- 8. 3. How are you Communicating?3. How are you Communicating? Your language and style – do they reflect your brand and also appeal to a wide range of candidates?
- 9. 4. Where are you Communicating? • Social media, your website • Events e.g. for graduates, engage early and chose where to engage carefully
- 10. Sifting
- 11. 5. A Balanced Approach • Use a range of assessments • Balance ability with behavioural measures
- 13. 6. Set Pass Marks Carefully • High enough to reduce numbers • Not so high as to reduce diversity
- 14. 7. Offer Opportunities for Practice • Practice helps level the playing field • Balances out the effects of education and socio-economic status
- 15. Example: Practice questions for our immersive Situational Judgement Questionnaire
- 16. 8. Accessibility • Balance the desire for impactful, unique assessment with accessibility • Candidates with dyslexia, partial sight, etc. • Candidates with limited online access
- 17. Selection
- 18. 9. Review your Assessment Centres • Pilot your exercises with representatives from diverse groups • Adjust content that is more challenging for minority candidates
- 19. 10. Assessor and Interviewer Training • Your assessment centres are only as inclusive as your assessors • Take this opportunity to refresh skills • How diverse is your assessor pool?
- 20. 11. Evaluation and Adjustment • Collect diversity and performance data at each stage • Evaluate whether any stages need adjustment
- 21. Summary 1. The ‘Why’ 2. Your Assessment Criteria 3. How are you Communicating? 4. Where are you Communicating? 5. A Balanced Approach 6. Set Pass Marks Carefully 7. Offer Opportunities for Practice 8. Accessibility 9. Review your Assessment Centres 10. Assessor and Interviewer Training 11.Evaluation and Adjustment
Editor's Notes
- Clarify WHY? Is the legal case, because it's part of your employer brand? Because you want to have a workforce that represents - and therefore really understands - your customers? Because of the benefits in terms of creativity, problem-solving? This will inform which groups you want to be sure you're inclusive of. And therefore your approaches. I’m going to be talking about how to inclusive of some of the main minority groups we all know of – which are a priority to you? Best not to try to do everything at once! Is there a clear, shares vision for inclusivity in your organisation? If you're clear, is everyone else? Value of senior stakeholder sponsorship
- Whether you call your assessment criteria competencies or behaviours or simply your role profile… It stands to reason that if your criteria were not designed in an inclusive way, then your assessment process that will be built upon them cannot itself be inclusive. Data Collection: The best way to design your assessment criteria (competencies etc.) is to conduct rigorous interviews and focus groups to define what ‘great’ performance looks like. The key is to include representatives from diverse backgrounds in this process. If you don’t, the majority group will define what ‘great’ looks like and will subsequently find it much easier to demonstrate these attributes during selection. Design: using a best practice approach to designing criteria will ensure not only are they truly clarifying what great performance looks like, they also are objective, fair, not unintentionally biased for or against any particular group. E.g. truly measurable and observable = less open to unintended bias Validation: have a wide group review the criteria. When we design competency frameworks, we often create an all-staff survey where everyone can contribute and feedback to us – telling us how well the criteria describe them, if there are any gaps, if anything doesn’t sound right. This ensures the framework really encapsulates your organisation and includes all of your staff – AND really helps to engage people and gain their buy-in
- Communications include everything candidates read about you as an employer, job-specific information, the information given about and during assessments, and the feedback/lack of it given. How: certain language and styles are more appealing to certain groups compared to others. Might your language unintentionally put off older candidates? Might it appeal to women but less to men? Ensure language is clear, engaging and jargon-free.
- Favoured social media channels e.g. recent research from Trendence in the UK showed LinkedIn used more by candidates from higher socio-economic groups compared to candidates from lower socio-economic groups Twitter and Facebook better channels for the lower socio-economic groups. Events – most relevant for graduate hiring - are you targeting certain universities? Certain courses? These universities have diversity statistics of their own, you can imagine who targeting only those universities that have less diversity will mean your applicants will be less diverse. Engage early
- Psychometrics tests are powerful predictors of performance, but some (e.g. certain ability tests) are known to disadvantage some minority groups. A balanced solution is to use a range of assessments, including other behavioural measures (Personality Questionnaires or Situational Judgement Tests – shown here) to gain a broader and more holistic view of each candidate. This will offer everyone the best opportunity to demonstrate their skills and suitability for the role.
- This year we had a client with about 14,000 applicants for a certain set of roles. They chose to use Cubiks Hire which is our modular sifting solution that you can use to bolt a range of different assessments together. SJQ, Behavioural Q, numerical, abstract and verbal reasoning – more holistic picture
- When sifting, your aim is to reduce the volume of candidates as you move them through the process, and to regret candidates who really would struggle to perform in the role. However, ‘pass marks’ for individual tests should be set at a reasonable level. There are known group differences on certain abilities. For example, we know that in general, as a group, women tend to perform less well than men on spatial reasoning. What we don’t want to do is to reduce the number of women who pass a sift test because they do less well on spatial reasoning – especially when a high level of spatial reasoning may not be required for the role. We use an industry standard ‘four fifths rule’ – which states that the ratio of a minority group passing a test should be not less than four fifths (or 80%) of the majority group passing the test. If is it less, we consider reducing the pass mark.
- Especially for Apprentices/Graduates/Early Talent, your online assessments may be the first assessments of that type that candidates come into contact with. We know that candidates from lower socio-economic backgrounds are likely to have had fewer educational opportunities and less support in preparing them for these assessments. Therefore, to maintain your diversity and balance out the potential effects of education and practice, ensure your assessments offer comprehensive instructions and opportunities to practice.
- Last year one of our clients who has about 40,000 applications for their graduate scheme used our immersive SJQ to give candidates an online case study exercise. They had access to a range of documents about a fictional scenario and had to respond to emails, some of which had their own attachments, by selecting which response they thought was most effective. Mini practice scenario at the start (untimed) allowed candidates to familiarise themselves with how the test worked. Meant that those for whom this may have been their first online assessment, who may not have had opportunities to complete practice tests at school, may not have had parents encouraging and tutoring them would not be disadvantaged compared to their peers.
- Out of enthusiasm to create online assessments that are unique and to engage candidates with cutting edge approaches and technologies, sometimes accessibility can be forgotten. Bear in mind that, ideally, your assessments should be useable by candidates who require reasonable adjustments such as extra time for those with dyslexia or dyspraxia, or larger font size for those who are partially sighted. If it’s not possible to make the necessary adjustments, be sure to create an alternative to your online assessments such as a version on paper. How can all candidates be fairly assessed? Our clients – reduce the complexity of a page, use a certain size font, test with screenreaders Our clients – focus on socio-economic diversity - build assessments that can be taken even on older computers in public libraries, or indeed on mobile phone screens
- Any assessment centre exercise has the potential to hinder a specific group’s performance. To avoid this, pilot your exercises with representatives from diverse groups. You can then make adjustments to any content that makes your exercises more challenging for minority groups of candidates.
- Training your assessors in best practice principles to ensure they take a fair, unbiased, standardised approach to all candidates no matter what groups they might or might not be a part of is critical. It can be challenging to ask people who have been assessing for years to attend training – changes to your assessment process and a new focus on inclusivity is an ideal opportunity to not only familiarise them with the changes, but also remind them of best practice approaches The more standardised a process is, the less opportunity there is for unintended bias to emerge – and the better it will predict future performance. Have you also considered how diverse your Assessor or Interviewer pool is? What impression might this be giving candidates? Where might unintended biases lie?
- With the aim of constant improvement, we recommend analysing diversity and performance data at every stage of your process. This will highlight if certain tasks, questions or even your assessors are making it more difficult for a particular group to progress. This comes at the end of this set of slides, but really it needs to be baked into your process from the beginning. Armed with this knowledge, you can make yet more informed adjustments to enhance inclusive selection year-on-year.
- There are lots of tips here…my aim has been to offer you a wide range of ideas at all stages of an assessment process so that even if you only have the resources or the time to do one or two you can do something!