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What is a reasonable adjustment in assessment ?

Ian

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23 Oct, 2023 10:53

Ok, so we do recruitment assessments

It has always been our policy to say we would like to talk to people carrying out the assessments and help then work out what a reasonable adjustment is depending on the situation and the assessment.

One of the reasons for this is our first assessment was simulated call handling for 999 Fire control operators using real audio and for them the level of error that can be accepted in for example the spelling of a location is far less than it would be for a customer service rep making notes in a CRM about an issue a customer has with a toaster.

We now provide far more assessments covering numeracy, literacy, spelling, logic etc etc

Over the last couple of months we have had more and more companies asking us for definitive adjustments - now we can simply have a button/toggle that allows an organisation add a certain % time for an applicant or add a certain % to the "score" but to me that seems a bit of a blunt instrument.

What are people's approach to reasonable adjustments in assessments - is 25% extra time fair or just fudging the question ?

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  • Keith

    | 0 Posts

    24 Oct, 2023 06:48

    Fudging I am afraid and there is no easy answer

    It's a bit like what is a reasonable adjustment in terms of absence triggers for colleagues with higher absence due to their disability.

    In both cases "one size fits nobody" - and whilst at face value it is attractive to have a simple answer, all that really does is gives the semblance of making an adjustment but is likely to result in equally unfair results.

    In reality (in both situations) the correct answer would be to seek professional advice and tailor the adjustments to the particular characteristics of the individual based on some validated data. In the real world I recognise this isn't often possible so in your case the "ideal" solution might be to get some generic specialist advice and offer some bands of adjustments based on that specialist advice rather than doing it every time.

    To be fair I am not sure anyone does this well

  • Ian

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    24 Oct, 2023 08:34

    In reply to Keith:

    Thank you - i very much get the idea companies are trying to offload having to think on someone else.

    Rather than look at individuals as such and think how they might need to adjust scoring/time or even type of assessment they just want a big button they can press marked "Universal Adjustment" which doesn't exist.

    Your thoughts are very much the same as our MD's - there is no magic bullet which gets you out of having to ask questions and make tailored decisions but doing properly doesn't just help that individual it makes your entire assessment/recruitment process fairer and fit for purpose.