Socially Responsible Talent Management: Assessments and Selection

Talent Management is a wonderful tool that allows us to harness our biggest resource, human capital. In one way or another, we have been using talent management practices for hundreds of years and over time we have developed strategies to improve every facet of it.

However, more needs to be done to ensure that these practices are socially responsible and contribute not only to a company’s wellbeing but also to the wellbeing of its employees and society at large.

In this series, we will take a look at the talent management practices of recruitment, employee assessments and selection, training, and finally performance management. We will also explore how we can use socially responsible practices to improve them.

Assessments are tests and other selection procedures used by employers to screen potential new hires and to help determine which current employees should be chosen for promotions and other opportunities.

However, the assessment and selection procedures used by a company can violate anti-discrimination laws if they disproportionally exclude people based on race, color, sex, national origin, religion, disability, or age.

Even when an assessment test does not disproportionately discriminate against a protected class, employers may still discriminate during other selection procedures through their own internal bias. This bias can take the form of in-group bias, and the halo and horn effect among others.

In-group bias can happen when individuals consciously or subconsciously show preferential treatment to those who share their identities or other characteristics while discounting those who do not. While the halo or horns effect causes employers to echo a positive (halo) or negative (horn) characteristic found in an applicant. This echo then affects the view of the employer as they end up generalizing and seeing that applicant only in a positive or negative light.

Assessments and selection procedures can be made more socially responsible by using job analysis as their basis, making them standard and uninformed, testing their validity, and using training and intervention methods to prevent selection bias from employers. Additionally, the process should be transparent and communicate honestly to all candidates.

Job analysis should be used as the basis for assessments and selection procedures because job analysis can help to determine which functions are essential to the job. By doing this we can ensure that job assessments and selection procedures lawfully comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and that any essential exceptions are in compliance with the Fair Labor.

Furthermore, assessments that have been found to be valid and also a less discriminatory alternative should be used in selection procedures to ensure that the assessments being used are good indicators of the skills, knowledge, and characteristics that are necessary to perform the job proficiently.

To reduce personal bias, we must ensure that assessments are uniformed and standardized and that these standards are communicated. An honest and transparent process will increase the sense of fairness experienced by all applicants and boost a company’s image.

As an extra layer of social responsibility, employers administering assessments and other selection procedures should receive diversity training to create awareness of their personal bias in addition to implementing intervention methods such as rating calibration sessions.

During these sessions, managers meet and share how they plan to rate applicants. In these meetings, they collectively look at the lowest and highest score and explain their reasoning for providing those scores. After a discussion of the given score, the decision must be approved by the group. Afterward, the managers look at the distribution of ratings and how they show up for each identity group. By performing this technique in unison, biases can be identified and corrected.

Through these strategies, companies can create more equitable and fair assessment and selection processes.

To learn other strategies to help you improve your organization, check out our Ultimate Guide to Queer and Trans Inclusion in the Workplace.