Any company, without exception, is interested in personnel with qualifications corresponding to their position. It is not uncommon to come across a situation where a person’s resume shows him as an ideal employee and the main contender for the position, but in the end it turns out that the employee is not competent in the right matters. There is another situation when an ordinary representative of the “office plankton” has in his head a lot of ideas for improving business processes and has the opportunity for personal and professional growth, but for various reasons we do not notice the management. At the same time, even a competent manager cannot always reveal the potential of each employee, and labor efficiency, although it seems normal, can be much higher.
With the gradual (albeit sluggish) introduction of TQM into the process of managing enterprises in this country, there is an increasing demand to determine the real capabilities of each employee. A company seeking to optimize its work in all elements of its activities is interested in an unbiased and accurate assessment of its personnel. This is what the so-called assessment-center is doing, or in Russian the assessment center (which is almost a literal translation).
In general, it is optimal for the enterprise itself to maintain its evaluation department (it should even be a sub-department of the personnel department from a functional point of view). However, not every firm can afford the maintenance of an additional staff of “human resources assessors”. In this regard, an aspiring entrepreneur who seeks to work in the market for services for enterprises (in the market for offering business solutions) can open his own independent assessment center and play the role of an outsourcer offering assistance to other organizations. At the same time, this practice is actually not widespread in Russia, that is, the business of such a plan is new and promising.
You just need to immediately decide how much companies will be willing to pay for such services, because only large and prosperous companies can afford it. However, the orientation can also be made for those who are just experiencing problems with the motivation of employees and, as a result, with labor productivity. To reduce your risks, an assessment center can be opened on the basis of an existing training center – today trainings are popular and in demand, so customers will certainly be interested. How to engage in training is discussed in more detail in the relevant articles.
To work, it is necessary to register a business entity with the local tax authority; you can register as an individual entrepreneur or register as a legal entity, the preferred of which is a limited liability company. This is due to the fact that it is individual entrepreneurs and LLCs who have the right to use the simplified taxation system and thus pay 6% (of income) or 15% (of operating profit) in favor of the state.
There is no exact coding in the laws regarding the activities of the assessment center, but such activities are classified as (OKPD 2) 70.22 Advisory services in the field of enterprise management. It should be noted that this code is suitable for many types of training, so doing business is greatly simplified. This does not require any licenses or permits, which also greatly facilitates the work of the entrepreneur.
If your appraisal center will not perform any other services, except for appraisal and consulting, then you can also maintain a small office, which will be more like a simple representative office of the company. It is better to be located in the business districts of the city, which will allow the target audience to quickly learn about a new type of service; contacting an organization that is located nearby will also be preferred by many customers, and it will be much more convenient for company employees. Renting space in business centers can be a good guarantee of productive work (where some of the clients are located in the same building at all), but the cost of renting in such premises is much higher than in the whole city.
If you open a simple representative office, then 20-30 m 2 is enough to accommodate consultants, an administrator and a director. The trainers themselves, who will conduct a comprehensive assessment of the staff, are not required to be in their own office, moving directly to the client’s offices during the day. Some types of evaluation may, of course, involve activities at the contractor’s premises, but this practice is not required. However, here each entrepreneur makes his own decision, and in this case he will also have to rely on an audience that can accommodate two dozen people. Although it is easier and better to evaluate the team directly at its workplace.
The office is equipped only with furniture and appliances (office), if necessary, it will have to be renovated. In general, this problem, like the previous one, is completely solved if an assessment center is opened on the basis of a training center.
We should also mention advertising. Such a service is new and not yet familiar to the mass consciousness, so you will have to spend a lot of money to provide full detailed information about your methods and goals of work on the relevant portals and in thematic publications. The Internet, business magazines, business cards in business centers – all this is distinguished by efficiency and focus on a potential client. Advertising on television or radio will not be so useful for business development, because it will withdraw large sums, but the percentage of applicants will be extremely small.
You can order a search for “warm” customers (“lead” sales, which are carried out by special firms that find customers for a partner who are already ready to buy a product or use a service). Since the service is relatively new, it is better to already acquire a ready-made client, but not forgetting about your own campaign to find them. Here, as already in many modern types of business, it is preferable to use BTL marketing methods, rather than ATL methods designed for too large a population group.
It is also worth thinking about creating your own website, this is a powerful information and advertising platform for promoting your services. To create a site, you can contact one of the specialized companies, many of which, in addition to developing and registering, offer services to promote the site on the network. All this will require significant financial investments, but will quickly pay off due to the low level of competition and the withdrawal of the site when searching for information by potential consumers.
The key to success is, of course, the staff. Only truly competent and, not least, experienced managers who have specialization in enterprise management (this is a whole science) can conduct a comprehensive and correct assessment of the existing potential of the customer. Only a high-class manager who, not only in theory, but also in practice, has studied all the features of human behavior in a team and in his business environment, can evaluate employees and, moreover, managers themselves. Today there are too many “specialists” who pretend to be managers, but in fact they are nothing but self-confident ignoramuses with a diploma. It is relatively difficult to find such professionals in Russia, all good personnel have long been dismantled by large companies for their own needs. Here it remains either to engage in a rigorous search,
An assessment center can become a good business for the entrepreneur himself if he himself has completed training as a top personnel manager, but no matter how competent a specialist he is, he will need assistants. Therefore, it is worth thinking about the team even in advance, only at the stage of forming ideas and concepts for the work of the personnel assessment center. And the trainer cannot work alone for the whole organization, because the method of expert assessments is used during the mixing, that is, all managers will sum up the results of each project together.
Indeed, in addition to the appraisers themselves, other people will be required. Firstly, these are psychologists who know how to understand a person and determine his needs and motivations. Of course, the manager also has sufficient knowledge of psychology, but his bias is still a professional sphere, and not a personal sphere. It is possible that some classes will be conducted separately by a leader, a coach, who is not necessarily a manager or a psychologist who simply collects information and passes it on to the evaluators. To work with incoming applications, at least one person must always be in the office, who will become the administrator. You can shift this responsibility to your coaches, who will alternately “on duty” in the office, but the problems of their own team management are solved by each businessman individually. Also does not fit the work and the programmer,
In order to form full-fledged HR specialists who can work directly with the assessment of the information received and be able to analyze it, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with some documents. Thus, in 2013, the “Russian Standard for the Assessment Center” was formed, which reveals in detail the methodology of work and the principles that should guide the coach, reveals the correct criteria for assessment by experts and helps to better approach the task being performed. Such standards have been developed in other countries, and the company’s specialists (and the entrepreneur himself) are obliged to study them if they did not have a chance to learn this at the university.
Thus, a novice entrepreneur already has a practically ready-made guide (and not even one, but in other languages) on how to conduct his business. Studying all this is highly recommended; but we must not forget about constant improvement and innovation. Which are worth trying to develop within the walls of your enterprise, and not just to comprehend what is already ready.
Conducting an assessment is a complex undertaking that lasts approximately two months, although different methodologies may have different deadlines. Typically, companies agree on the period of work with the customer, because he may require a study of varying accuracy, limiting himself to a superficial assessment, for example. Also, the partner may not be interested in conducting a general analysis of his enterprise, wanting to evaluate only some employees. This usually applies to top managers or people in key positions. The project is developed within a certain time, it will not work to develop a program in one day or have a typical one – we are still talking about a full-scale study, taking into account the specifics of each enterprise. Therefore, managers convey all the necessary information, on the basis of which the foundations of the program are formed,
In general, the stages are divided into preparation, implementation, evaluation and post-maintenance. The latter is also very important, because it will allow not only to help the customer in his further work with the staff, but also to evaluate the effectiveness of the applied method. After all, the assessment allows you to change the tactics of management, which will certainly affect the performance of the company. Both the manager himself and the hired HR specialists need these statistics to improve the technology of their work, and the assessment center itself for subsequent advertising, which will clearly present the results of the activities at the customer’s enterprise.
The assessment itself is carried out in several stages, which include games and simulations of situations, passing tests and compiling a questionnaire, as well as individual (sometimes even group) interviews. In addition, you can set hours during which the expert can answer the questions of the analyzed group, help her in solving even personal issues (up to certain limits, of course) and, thus, receive immediate feedback. A good manager and psychologist can already at this stage correct some aspects of the program and conduct a more accurate assessment.
As already noted, they share the assessment of the entire enterprise as a whole (or some of its departments) and individual work with people in certain positions. But even in a full analysis, you will have to work at least briefly with each employee individually, because no one has canceled such concepts as emergence, synergy, decomposition, and other phenomena, and here you need to work through each element separately in order to find problems in the entire system.
Due to the fact that the service of the personnel assessment center is relatively new, the opening enterprises are oriented so far only to large firms and non-poor corporations that are ready to order rather expensive services for analyzing the effectiveness of personnel. A new and untapped market allows entrepreneurs to skim the cream before too many competitors emerge. Their appearance is also constrained by the fact that running such a business requires real knowledge and experience in operational management and psychology, and at a fairly high level.
For a progressive entrepreneur, surrounded by a team of highly qualified specialists, many prospects and development opportunities open up. So, you can find offers from existing personnel assessment centers that are ready to take on a project whose cost starts from 50 thousand rubles (the simplest and “easy” analysis) to 250 thousand rubles (for only a relatively deep analysis), all other amounts are calculated individually. This is understandable, because the cost will be different depending on the scale of work (which is determined, first of all, by the number of people in the state), as well as on the very complexity of the structure of the organization being analyzed. It is much easier to identify problems in a simple hierarchical structure than in a matrix structure consisting of many departments.
However, here the new entrepreneur is free in pricing, and you need to keep an eye on newly emerging competitors and their price levels. After all, no one can quantitatively determine the real cost of such work, so the concept of “overpriced”, “normal” and “low” prices is relative.
Those who are especially strong in personnel management can engage in such activities. Even having competent specialists, it is better to understand this issue on your own, this will allow you to be involved in the business, work in your favorite field and earn money on your own by conducting assessments (after all, expert trainers will take a significant part of the proceeds from the project). It will be especially difficult for a person who is far from managing an organization in this endeavor, and given that the business is only developing, it will not be possible to shift all responsibilities to some competent specialist by appointing him as a director and go to enjoy passive income. Here you need personal direct involvement in all stages of your work.
Of the dangers of such an undertaking, it is worth highlighting the risk of not getting your client, and even the task of one client will be stretched for several months. At first, you will probably only have to deal with advertising, which may require the involvement of a marketer from a third-party company or a permanent job in the enterprise.