DEVELOPING A CANDIDATE ASSESSMENT STRATEGY: CASE STUDY
Selecting the right candidate for international assignments continues to be an area that companies want to improve, as early repatriation and attrition can lead to failed assignments and have a big financial and talent cost for your organization. One way to help choose the right employee for an assignment, increase their chances of success on assignment, and maximize your mobility program’s ROI is to conduct candidate assessments.
Candidate assessments can help companies develop their talent. In an earlier post, Maximize Your Global Mobility ROI With Candidate Assessments, we discussed best practices organizations can use to strategically assess, select, and develop candidates. Following is a case study where we helped a client develop a customized assignment readiness strategy to help support their employees before, during, and after the assignment.
Case Study
An automotive and e-mobility company was facing early repatriation and attrition challenges leading to failed international assignments. This prompted the organization to explore candidate assessment and readiness solutions to increase assignment success, leading them to:
- Conduct an extensive analysis on the monetary value of losses, which totalled USD $2million per failed assignment.
- Identify the root cause as “unrealistic expectations” for the international assignment.
- Explore solutions to assess candidates and provide realistic expectations to assignees immediately.
- Present a proposal, in partnership with Sirva, to the organization’s Talent Council for top- down buy-in and to set realistic expectations for the challenges of international assignments.
Sirva Intercultural Solution
Sirva Intercultural collaborated with the organization to build a customized assignment readiness solution including:
- Access to the Overseas Assignment Inventory (OAI), Sirva’s proprietary assessment tool, for the employee and partner to measure cultural adaptability.
- Providing a manager’s questionnaire outlining the purpose of the assignment, job description, and expectations for the role.
- Access to CultureWizard’s Culture Calculator Suite to create a personal profile of cultural values to better understand areas of similarity and differences between the home and host locations.
- Curated assignment destination information to ensure employees are presented with the positives and challenges of the assignment location provided by Sirva’s Destination Service Providers.
- Interpretative behavioural interviews with Sirva Intercultural trainer to validate OAI scores, debrief the Culture Calculator profile, present the manager’s questionnaire, and review destination information.
- Summary reports for the organization’s HR and management including a risk assessment, visual graphics of results from tools, and assignment recommendations.
Results
Sirva’s solutions allowed the organization to:
- Secure buy-in for the customized solution from the Talent Council.
- Gain support from leadership, assignees, and potential candidates for pre-assignment activities.
- Launch a pilot program with select assignees already in the host location and some preparing for assignment.
- Gather compelling data and knowledge of assignees’ cultural agility to further customize the organization’s global mobility policy to address talent mobilization needs and alleviate assignee and family concerns.
- Develop strategies to maximize the success of key talent on assignment and minimize financial losses.
- Support assignments in real time and build potential candidate pools for future assignments.
SOLUTIONS FOR STRATEGIC CANDIDATE ASSESSMENT
Expanding the use of candidate assessments can help you further your overall organization’s talent objectives. For more information on how Sirva can help you with candidate assessments and other intercultural training tools to help your contribute to your organization’s strategic talent development goals, please email us at concierge@sirva.com or reach out to your Sirva representative.
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