At a&dc, we recognise that times are tough in HR at the moment. There’s great pressure to do things more quickly and at a lower cost, which doesn’t necessarily lead to greater efficiency for your organisation.

This came to light when we recently carried out a Global Survey of Assessment Centre Practices. The investigation, which was the largest of its type ever conducted, included 543 HR professionals and psychologists from 53 different countries. Participants were asked questions on different aspects of centre use and practices, revealing a number of concerns surrounding the implementation of assessment and development centres.

The results suggest that there is a general trend to do more with less, for example, by having short assessment centre durations that cover a large number of competencies, using smaller ratios of assessors to participants, and only providing short training sessions for assessors. This implies that centres are suffering due to the increased pressure on HR for leaner processes.

In order to address this issue and give HR teams a greater level of support, we have launched an Ask the Expert page on our Facebook profile. This provides a free platform for HR professionals to have their questions answered, offering them advice to really make the most of their centres and other talent management processes. Every month, our team of assessment and development experts will answer the key questions online – so if you have any talent management, assessment or development queries, submit them to us on Facebook today.