Niken Ardiyanti, MPsi: Challanges and Opportunities of Human Capital Strategy in Conducting Online Assessment
Hana Fajria – FEB UI Public Relations Officer
DEPOK, Wednesday, 17/06/2020 – bumntrack.co.id published an article written by Niken Ardiyanti, MPsi., psychologist at the Management Institute, FEB UI, entitled Challenges and Opportunities of Human Capital Strategy in Conducting Company Assessment Online in its “Expert” column. Below is the article.
The government’s announcement of the first confirmed positive case of Covid-19 in mid-March 2020 marked the beginning of a significant change in the structure of organizational governance and business processes. The Covid-19 pandemic has clearly, significantly and fundamentally changed the governance and business processes in companies, including the process of reviewing opportunities and challenges in the external environment, in addition to strengths and limitations within the company.
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced all entities in organizations to make immediate adjustments as they adapt to the change in order to survive this crisis situation. Direct or face-to-face interactions are minimized through the enforcement of social distancing and work from home rules stipulated in companies’ protocols for Business Continuity Plan (BCP).
Companies have implemented competency-based HR management (MSDM-BK), which gives the Human Capital Directorate not just a supporting – merely as an Administrative Expert- but also key roles and functions as enabler in the company, namely: acting as a connecting factor and influencing the function of the key performance (core – Operations and Marketing). Human Capital Strategy is an operational implementation of a company’s business strategy that becomes a vehicle for achieving corporate excellence (value creation) (Ulrich, 2012). One of the Human Capital Strategy work programs is to carry out an employee mapping assessment (HR mapping) as part of the process of developing superior talents for the succession planning process in companies (Christensen, in Roadmap to Strategic HR; Turning a Great Ideal Into a Business Reality, 2006).
On the other hand, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced all of us to keep our distance (social distancing) and alternately work from home #WFH, a necessity that has clearly and significantly changed business processes. Changes in business processes include the implementation of an assessment program that in the past had to be carried out offline (face-to-face) but that currently must be carried out online.
The Covid-19 pandemic does not necessarily delay the implementation of the employee mapping assessment in companies. In other words, the moral wisdom of the Covid-19 pandemic is that companies must begin to understand the A to Z of online assessment. As a consequence, it is likely that in the future, all stakeholders will also consider online assessment as a formal and standard method of assessmen – replacing the commonly used assessment method, namely the offline assessment method.
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines online assessment as an integrated process of using data that aims to assess the behavior, abilities and other characteristics of individual employees in order to make a specific diagnosis or recommendation.
The strengths of online assessments include being effective and efficient, economical and practical. There are also some weaknesses, including unstable Internet connection, the accuracy of the results (multi-rater), and the issue of confidentiality.
On the other hand, there are four challenges that are taken into consideration by all stakeholders – customers (corporations/organizations/institutional service users), online assessment consultant service providers and the government (Ministry of State-owned Enterprises and the National Civil Service Agency/BKN), and the public. The four challenges are: 1). Ethics, 2). Psychometry, 3). Implementation Protocols, and 4). Information Technology.
The first factor, ethics, is about how to prioritize the principle of confidentiality of test materials and to maintain the confidentiality of test results – both of assessment participants and organizers, as well as the professional code of ethics of psychologists. Meanwhile, psychometry relates to the validity indicator of test instruments – measuring what will be measured (validity principle) and reliable norms in accordance with the industrial sector (banking, financial institutions, manufacturing, retail, insurance, etc.), and methods. The assessment used is adjusted to the objectives of the implementation of development programs. In this case, the employer needs to understand the tools and methods most appropriate to the objectives of the assessment.
The third factor is that the mechanism for protocol for the implementation of online assessment is different from that of offline assessment. Consider the participant in the employee mapping assessment for Middle Management positions (BOD minus 1), with participants mostly belong to the age group whose understanding of and skills in the Internet of Things (IoT) are minimal. The organizer should understand and promote methods of online assessment techniques according to the mutually agreed protocol. The final challenge is IT – information technology – how the quality of the network apart from the software and hardware of the online assessment system has been confirmed to have been tested and consistently stable during the process from start to finish.
Narayandas, Hebbar & Li (Harvard Business Review, 2020) said that the lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic is that there are opportunities for company management, including to take advantage of digital data that can be a golden opportunity for company management to carry out developments related to:
- Predictive analytics through the use of data sources (big data). By using various statistical methods, modeling and scientific utilization (data science) of artificial intelligent (AI), companies can identify all the possibilities that can act as a mitigation program for the company’s business strategy going forward, not just limited to human capital strategies, for example: design of the latest online-based business model, adaptation of online-based business processes, redefining the form of cooperation and collaboration among cross-directorates/departments within the company.
- 2. Utilization of an online dashboard – namely the development of a mechanism for an employee performance appraisal method that focuses not only on results but also on processes using stored digital data to measure employee performance.
- Formalization of the virtual communication model as an alternative to face-to-face communication.
- Acceleration of the digital transformation process into business processes. In this case, the challenge is how individual employees are able to re-learn and release their un-learned knowledge so that it is easier to adapt to learning new skills for the digital era.
- Long-term learning process (lifelong learning) involving leaders who have competencies that the company still needs so that they become lecturers/in-company trainers to share knowledge.
Change is a necessity. Change is not something we need to survive, but change itself is real life. The Covid-19 pandemic marked the beginning of the 21st century that really tests us all. As stated by Alvin Toffler, an American futurologist in his works on digital and communication revolution, people who survive in the 21st century are not those who are good at writing and reading, but those who are willing to keep learning (learn), let go of their past understanding of the subject matter (un-learn), and are willing to relearn things they have learned before (re-learn). (hjtp)
Niken Ardiyanti, Mpsi., psychologist, head of Human Capital Studies at the Management Institute, FEB UI
(lem)