Preparing for your Investors in People Assesment
Preparing for your assessment
Once we have agreed approximate dates and scope of the assessment, and you have signed a proposal, we can start planning each stage, step-by-step.
The assessment is a positive engaging process where I'm looking for evidence of good people management, not trying to “catch you out”, and so it is important for us to build trust and rapport.
The first step is to organise an online staff survey where all of your employees have a voice. This is confidential and gives people a chance to say how they feel about working in your organisation.
Next we can fix up a Context Meeting. This can be done by video conference if social distancing is recommended. It may be helpful if you can provide some information in advance about what your organisation's priorities are, such as:
- Some background information about the organisation – history, successes, issues etc
- Organisation structure charts down through the management line
- Business Plan (executive summary only)
- HR processes, procedures, metrics (maybe a few powerpoint slides)
- Learning and development plan for both managers and staff
- Core vales statement
- Reward and recognition strategy
- How you manage performance
- Skills matrix / Leadership competencies
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Anything else you consider good people management
The context meeting puts your organisation's ambition at the centre of the Investors in People assessment.
There is more information about this here:
We need to decide the number of people “in scope” for the assessment. As well as all staff on the payroll, you need to include any consultants, contractors, agency staff, board members, volunteers, Governors etc – anyone who makes a contribution towards achieving your organisation’s objectives. Then we can select people from those in scope to have a discussion with.
Deciding who should be at the Context Meeting is important, as this is an opportunity for key people to be involved at an early stage. There are benefits to the organisation if I can engage with strategy decision makers, answer their questions and give an overview of what type of discussion is planned with people their teams during an interview. It's always confidential, open and friendly. Nothing for them to worry about. Most people enjoy the session.
It's useful to ensure the people at the Context Meeting have familiarised themselves with the IIP framework and considered for themselves what your organisation is doing to meet the requirements. If we have a video conference, they can present their ideas to the whole group.
You'll need to draw up a schedule for the interviews so that any disruption is minimised and everyone knows exactly what will be happening during the assessment (probably by video conference during lockdown).
How does assessment work?
I will interview a representative sample of your employees. It's usually around 5% to 10% for medium sized organisations.
Investors in People assessments are based on three types of evidence:
- Results and analysis of the staff survey
- What people say at the interview (interviews can be in pairs or groups)
- The HR metrics you use, and any documented policies and procedures you send me
You don't have to send me any policy documents if you don't want to. Some organisations have information easily to hand in a format that can be quickly emailed to me without creating too much extra work. Sometimes data is on an internal HR application, so it's more difficult - but screen shots can be used.
Bullet points on a PowerPoint presentation are a great way to send top level information that can be used as evidence to support the survey results and interviews. I can put these charts and graphics directly in my report. Charts showing people performance trends over the last 3 to 5 years are particularly useful.
The reason for keeping paperwork to an absolute minimum is that what matters is that the organisation can give practical examples of how they meet Investors in People requirements, not just having paper policies that aren't being acted on or reviewed.
Most evidence is collected through the confidential one-to-one interviews. I will interview people from across your organisation, senior leadership team, managers and people. The purpose of this is to establish whether the aims and ambitions of the top managers are understood and being implemented by those throughout the organisation. The evidence collected during interviews is not attributed to individual employees.
The number of days required for assessment depends on the size of your organisation.
What is included in the price?Investors in People aims to help your continuous improvement by providing you with timely support before, during and after your assessment. Therefore, for most organisations, your package will include:
- Staff Survey - All your employees can have their say. With an Insights Assessment, different teams or departments within the organisation can be compared in terms of their engagement, satisfaction, rewards, and how they are managed and developed.
- Context Meeting - This is where some of the the senior leadership team talk through the organisation's people priorities and give their view on how well best practice people management is ebedded across the whole organisation.
- Interviews - This is the main part of the assessment, including interviews with a representative sample of people across your organisation and brief feedback to you and the senior team at the end of the last day of interviews.
- Assessment report - Analysing the evidence and reflecting on the assessment, I provide a written report. This includes feedback on areas of best practice and areas for development and improvement.
- Continuous improvement feedback - After your report, this will provide you with development recommendations related to your organisational objectives.
Feedback and assessment reports
Following a short period of reflection, I will provide immediate feedback at the end of the assessment. This is intended to give you an outline of the findings and to highlight my initial response to what I have seen and heard.
In most cases, I will indicate whether or not your organisation has achieved the Investors in People Standard.
I may need time to reflect on the findings, to digest and evaluate all the data I've collected. A final comprehensive assessment report will then be presented to you with the opportunity for a detailed discussion of the findings. Suggestions about possible strategies and priorities for improvement will be provided as part of an action plan for your organisation. Any reports or information made available to me or resulting from the assessment are kept in strictest confidence between you, me, and Investors in People.
Many customers find my insights, feedback and assessment report an invaluable source of information. It is the ideas and suggestions on where the organisation needs to focus development work that is most useful.
Next assessment
Once you have gained Investors in People recognition you will be need to be reviewed within the next three years. Some organisations are choosing to have more frequent reviews, often to link their Investors in People assessment with their annual planning processes.
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