What is an assessment for and when is it good?
The aim of the assessment is to determine how “fit” your organization is in competition. You should also receive useful inspiration on how to improve your fitness can continue to improve. Many organizations also simply want official recognition or a Certificate of Success. But that alone is a shame, because this attitude wastes a lot of potential benefits.
Since an assessment involves time and effort, it is worthwhile generating as much benefit as possible. Whether you strive for this and succeed is entirely up to you. Typical potential benefits of an assessment are as follows:
Taking stock of the situation
Through an assessment, you can find out exactly where your organization is right now. It’s like a map that shows you where you are and how far away you are from your goal.
Receive valuable tips for improvements
An assessment not only helps to show where you are, but also indicates the areas in which you can improve and the direction you should take to reach your goal.
Provide the required proof
Sometimes you have to prove that you meet certain standards or that you handle government money well. An assessment can do just that and show that you are doing a good job.
Benchmarking
With an assessment, you can see how you compare to other organizations. This is useful to see whether you can keep up or whether you can learn something from the best.
Motivating employees
Involvement in a good assessment can motivate employees. It shows them that their hard work is recognized and that they are part of a successful team.
Get prestigious stars
The better you do in the assessment, the more stars you receive. These stars are like medals that show that you are really good.
Receive an official award
If you are good enough, you can receive official recognition and even an award or prize. This is a great official confirmation that you are doing a really excellent job as a team.
Strengthening the organization's image
A high rating, stars and awards from the assessment can help to strengthen your organization’s image. They show others that your organization is doing high-quality work and is constantly improving.
During an assessment, trained experts, known as assessors, visit you. During the on-site visit, the assessor team primarily wants to understand your organization. The assessors want to get a picture of how systematically you do your work in your day-to-day work and how much benefit you achieve with it. To do this, they will talk to you and inspect selected work documents as well as information and data systems.
To ensure that the assessors do not proceed arbitrarily, they use a fixed framework for their work. You do not need to know the framework itself. It is the assessors’ job to translate the framework into your context and express it in a language that is understandable to all participants. What will help you a lot for the assessment and your work, however, is if you know the principles of “business excellence“, which are also the foundation of the assessors’ framework.
The aim of the assessors is to gain a neutral and fair picture of the situation, evaluate your current state of development and provide motivating impulses for effective improvements in the future.
The task of the assessors is not to reproduce individual opinions, point the finger at weaknesses or advise the organization.
