Staying in the comfort zone
According to Ian Matheson, head of talent and assessment at Penna, what's lacking is a desire to question the suitability of the tools used by HR: "For HR there's a comfort zone, using things that are familiar, well tried, well tested. But do they still work? Take competency-based interviews, for example - we've been told for the past 20 years that a structured, competency-based interview is the way to go. But these are situational, they look at what people do now or have done in the past, whereas often we want to see how they will perform in different environments or how they handle change."
In some cases, the tools being applied may simply not be relevant for the role, or for the candidate or employee that is using them. Many organisations, for example, will ask everyone to do a numerical reasoning test, even where they will not be working with numbers. Or the tests are administered in such a way that certain groups are put at a disadvantage.
"With numeracy tests there are still gaps between men and women, and some of this is to do with the way the tests are administered, the way conditions impact performance. When women and men are in a room together, women perform worse because they are more aware of their gender and the 'expectation' that women fare less well," says Kandola. He adds that simply being aware of this, and making small changes, could improve the reliability of the test.
With increasing pressure to evidence their decisions, it is natural that HR professionals want to call on an arsenal of tools to support their reasoning - whether in recruitment, talent management or L&D. And while the DWP example shows the way that tools can sometimes be implemented for the wrong reasons, in some cases organisations could be accused of blithely applying tools and approaches they've used for years with little consideration as to whether or not they're still fit for purpose.