Welcome to Assessment Services Community

It is with this mindset that we set out to develop an assessment centre that was the best in the industry.

Too many assessment centres, and the people that work in them, see their role as being auditors.  Their job is to ‘police’ the standard and enforces it.  Do NOT get me wrong, as we often say “The Standard is the Standard and needs to be met”.  However, Standards are often developed with the minimum of what is required in the sector they are required.

Who wants to achieve the minimum of best practice?  Due to technology and the advancements of human potential, customer needs are constantly changing, businesses are having to evolve to stay relevant.  In nearly every sector of industry (other than universities), there have been significant changes that have disrupted the way they do business, and most have had to adapt or die.  

The world of assessments is one that has not changed or needed to.  If an organization is mandated to achieve a Standard, they have no choice and so as the customer there is no imperative for them to be better than they have been.  So they remain bureaucratic establishments centred on defending their actions, rather than seeking ways to add value.

Assessment Services set out to change the mould. We have a simple Motto:

We Care - We Assess - We Add Value

We care enough about our customers to understand their business. We do what we are being paid to do, and that is assess the business against the Standard. We ensure that when we leave, we have added value to the customer that helps them be the best of who they can be.

How do we do that?  

One thing we cannot do is advise.  If we advise our customers, we put ourselves in a position where we are then ‘marking our own homework’. However, we have been privileged to go inside an organization and see what is really happening, not what leaders are being led to believe is happening. So we can give feedback that points out best practices and equally point out what they may not be aware of.  By taking time to understand (care) we know what their planned trajectory is, and so can point out possible areas for improvement, without advising them how or what to do.  This makes the assessment process something that adds value and not just simply provides a certificate of achieving the requirements in a Standard. 

Another way of adding value is the Assessment Services Community. This is a platform that allows our customers to network, share best practice, learn from one another and improve their abilities as they evolve in a rapidly changing world.

At the start of 2013, the assessment centre was exactly as described above. We had a poor relationship with our customers who saw us as auditors or the “police” inspecting them, and administratively we were being far from effective.  There was a ‘them and us’ relationship with the Assessors in the field, that was not helpful and further affected the service the customers experienced.

The most embarrassing part of the whole situation was that we were an example of “good practice” in terms of our ISO accreditation. We had excellent processes in place, but we were loosing money, had a bad reputation and poor relationship with Assessors and staff!

Through 2013/14 we focused on rethinking who were are, what our purpose was and how we could evolve to become a new type of assessment centre. Assessment Centres were very traditional, hierarchal and there was never going to be any pressure from the customers to be any different, because the customers were beholden to the assessment centres to provide them with certificates showing they held the Standard. 

We would have to disrupt our own business by challenging ourselves to be better. As mentioned above, we defined our purpose and summarised in the words ‘We Care - We Assess - We Add Value’. We carefully defined the customer journey and the experience they would have with us. We were to become a customer focused business, and that meant we re-wrote our processes, we made sure that everything we did was simple to understand and follow, even using plain english and not assessment language. 

The focus then turned on developing the Assessors as a community that worked with us to deliver excellence through outstanding customer service. Some Assessors had to go, but the vast majority worked with us to make the transition we were seeking to achieve.

We were on a mission. Without compromising the quality of the assessments being carried out and maintaining rigorous assessment practices, we set out to make significant improvements to our service and the customers experience of being assessed, whilst also pushing down the cost.  We challenged everything, in our quest to make improvements.

By 2016 we were getting customer satisfaction scores of 97.2% for service and being perceived as adding value to their organisation.  We didn’t stop there.  We commissioned the development of an on-line tool that made it easier for customers to plan their assessments and present their evidence. 

Towards the end of 2018 and through 2019 we started piloting remote assessments which reduced the cost of assessments to customers as well.

We are proud of our transformation and are still challenging ourselves to be better and are bringing on new activities to ensure our customers get value for money by working with us.  We know we are the best assessment centre out there, and are capable of delivering a better service than any other assessment centre.  

We are proud of our team, who work with us to make this all happen. We are excited about the future and the opportunities that are available to us.