Human Assets

1. Procedural Justice (PJ) refers to perceptions of fairness in the procedures used to make the decisions. Procedural Justice therefore refers to satisfaction with a system - selection, promotion, pay, appraisal.
2. Interactional Justice (IJ) refers to people's beliefs about the fairness with which they have been treated by authority figures - the HR department, assessors, appraisers. It relates to people's perception of how they were treated, the way they felt, and the views they hold about the people who manage the system.
3. Distributive Justice (DJ) refers to people's beliefs about the fairness of outcomes - a selection, promotion or pay decision. Two important factors relate to DJ. a) Equity - whether the decision is deserved based on past success, experience and qualifications: b) Equality - whether the individual feels they had the same chance as others to be successful.

Voice - Do the people affected by the decision have an opportunity to express their views?

Inviting feedback from candidates on the process itself is one way to ensure they are given a voice. Other ways are to use application forms and interviews which give candidates a chance to 'sell' their skills and abilities. Often in graduate selection processes the first stage of assessment is psychometric testing. This helps to manage high numbers of applicants, but threatens perceptions of procedural fairness due to the absence of any chance for the candidates to interact with others.

Consistency - Are procedures applied consistently across persons and over time?

Criteria or competency based assessments show how people are assessed against the same yardstick. Centres run in different regions or at different times of the year should use the same rating scales and level of expectation. Good assessor training is the underlying factors to assist in consistency of assessment.

Bias-suppression - Can the biases / self interest of decision makers enter into the assessment?
Checking that the centre's design encourages and embraces diversity is vital to suppress any biases to particular groups. Also, ensuring assessors work in pairs to 'double-mark' candidates, and then together as an assessor team to make the final decision also helps to combat self interest or biases.

 

Accuracy - Are decisions based on good information and informed opinion?
Assessment centres, by their very nature, enable assessors to gather high quality information from various sources e.g. role plays, group exercises, written papers, to come to an informed decision.

Correctability - Do opportunities should exist to reverse bad decisions?
This is the most difficult. However, the assessor team will come together to make their decision based on all of their objective assessments, so you would expect any biased decisions made by individuals would be balanced by the others in the group.

Justification - Can your decision makers provide clear and adequate explanations for decisions?
This can range from the HR department justifying the use of an assessment centre approach e.g. for an internal management promotion if centres have not been used previously. The more transparent the process and the more successful the communication strategies which form part of the process, the more likely it will be seen as fair. This also relates to the ability of assessors to provide clear information about their ratings and decisions to whoever provides feedback to the candidates. If those giving feedback are restricted to generalities and limited by poor records, they cannot provide useful information to support decisions and thus perceived fairness of the assessment centre process will be at risk. This is critical when your unsuccessful candidates are also internal staff who have to remain motivated and feel valued.

Consideration - Do decision-makers treat people with dignity and respect?
This factor can be linked to timetabling of the centre - allowing breaks, testing capabilities rather than endurance, using supportive centre managers etc. However, it also relates to minimising the time between attending the centre and hearing the final decisions. It also includes how decisions are announced. In some city firms the decisions are announced organisation-wide via email!