What We Do
We help our clients to get the most out of their talent management efforts, specialising in solutions that address the problems and opportunities associated with people at work, including psychometric testing, leadership/management development, team dynamics, assessment and development centres, competency modelling, 360-degree feedback and performance management.
1 Talent Management Strategy
Ensuring you have the right people, with the right skills and expertise, in the right place, at the right time.
Talent management can be seen as a combination of interdependent and mutually supportive processes – aligning your business’ efforts in recruitment, development, training, succession planning, high potential programmes and performance management – which together ensure you get the best out of the people who work for you and support the organisation’s strategic goals and values. We can support you to create your talent management strategy, to develop new practices to strengthen your existing strategy, or to revise, redesign or realign elements of it.
We also support organisations in ensuring their talent management practices are fair and equitable, that they support equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives and that growth opportunities are available to all.
Recent client projects in this area include:
• Supporting the design and implementation of a succession planning process; creating evaluation tools to measure potential and performance and developing fairer and more equitable assessment processes for promotion and succession planning.
• Acting as a ‘critical friend’ to thetalent team in a financial services company; helping them to challenge and critically evaluate talent management processes within the organisation and to create more diverse talent pools and leadership pipelines.
• Helping a law firm identify the key leadership capabilities to drive the growth and required change in the organisation, assessing the top three levels of leadership against this and identifying future successors for key board positions.
2 Capability and Competency Frameworks
What makes a person successful in your organisation? What sort of people do you need to drive your business forward and maintain success?
“It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it” – Fun Boy Three and Bananarama . 80s throwbacks aside, it’s important that you go beyond technical skills and tasks to understand which behaviours, soft skills, attitudes and knowledge are needed to get your business where you need it to go.
Competency profiling and job analysis can provide not only a greater understanding of what drives success in your organisation, it also provides the cornerstone for a range of HR and people management practices, such as performance management, recruitment, training and development. pH7 uses a range of job analysis and competency profiling techniques to provide frameworks which are specific to your business. This can also include identifying your organisation's values, specific leadership capabilities, or the markers of high potential in your company.
Recent client projects in this area include:
• Reviewing and updating a company’s competency framework to ensure a focus on future needs and shifting priorities.
• Developing a competency framework to support an organisation’s recruitment and performance management processes.
• Designing a values-based framework for a learning and development consultancy, for use across their talent management practices.
3 360-degree Feedback
Getting a holistic view of an individual’s performance, competencies and impact on others.
360-degree feedback is a really useful tool that can help people gain a deeper understanding of how they are doing at work, by gathering feedback from a range of respondents who have different relationships and interactions with the recipient. It helps to improve self-awareness and enables focused, targeted development plans to be created. In our view, 360-degree feedback is one of the most powerful and cost-effective tools that we have at our developmental disposal; used wisely, managed carefully and implemented responsibly it can help to embed a positive feedback culture and growth mindset.
pH7 has a wealth of experience in the development of 360-degree feedback and can support you in ensuring that both individuals and the organisation maximise the potential benefits of this process, through coaching, training, facilitation and personal feedback and development planning sessions. We have our own fully customisable platform for organisations that wish to use it, but we also have experience of working with dozens of different assessments and are ‘tool-independent’.
Examples of recent client projects in this area include:
• Design of a 360-degree feedback process to support personal development.
• Providing feedback and coaching using 360-degree feedback and a range of psychometric tests.
• Review and redevelopment of an organisation’s existing 360-degree feedback tool.
4 Leadership and Management Development
Helping the individuals at the top of your organisation to lead and manage effectively, enabling the business to adapt, change and grow.
When progressing through a company, a manager will face a growing number of challenges. Highly valued for their technical skill or contribution to the bottom line, they may not have devoted time to their development as leaders and can find balancing their business expertise or professional knowledge with skills such as motivating people, developing a team and managing performance, difficult.
pH7 can design and deliver bespoke programmes to support individuals in developing their people management skills and impact as a leader.
Examples of recent client projects in this area include:
• Designing a succession planning process, delivering development centres to identify future leaders and working with individuals to develop their leadership skills.
• Individual coaching and development planning with future leaders as part of a wider leadership programme.
• Delivery of a range of management and leadership development programmes, on key skills such as coaching, performance management and interviewing skills.
5 Assessment and Psychometric Profiling
Adding objectivity and rigour to assessment and selection processes, or providing rich data for personal development purposes.
Assessment for selection and development – designing and delivering processes that help to maximise your investment in recruitment.
Employee engagement is more than satisfaction or happiness at work: it is a complex concept into which multiple factors feed, but the research agrees that engagement is important for productivity, creativity, wellbeing and levels of motivation.
We can work with you to really understand what drives engagement – or lack of it – in your organisation, measuring what makes the difference and developing strategies aimed at bringing about an improvement in how employees feel about work and the workplace.
Recent client projects in this area include:
• Designing an employee engagement survey tool to identify areas of good practice and areas for improvement.
• Working with HR and senior leaders to develop an engagement plan to respond to the feedback gathered during their annual engagement survey.
• Developing a programme aimed at measuring, tracking and improving the levels of engagement within different teams, linking this to the broader growth strategy and forthcoming merger.
6 Employee engagement
Getting the best out of your talent, and ensuring your talent get the best out of their experience of work
The cost of hiring the wrong people can be high. We are experts in the design, delivery and evaluation of assessment processes, helping you to ensure you make the most effective decisions and employ people who can make a difference in your business, maximising your investment in recruitment processes. Assessment processes can also be applied to development, helping to identify the individuals who have the potential to grow, or to take on more senior roles, and working with them to build focused personal development plans which will support that growth. We can provide end-to-end assessment strategy and design services, or we can bring objectivity, experience and an outside-in perspective to support your inhouse assessment team.
The growth in the use of psychometric, or occupational, tests in the work environment is testament to the value they can add. Applied properly, tests can support the recruitment process or be used as part of a development programme, to give you a broader and more in-depth understanding of an individual’s strengths, interests, values, motivators and likely ways of behaving and working.
pH7 has extensive experience in the application of psychometric tests to a wide range of work situations, including selection, assessment centres, development centres, coaching, personal development, the identification of high potential, succession planning and team building. We have access to a wide range of psychometrics and are not wedded to specific ones; we select the best in the market, the tools that are most suited to your needs, and use them responsibly, backed by professional judgement and rigour.
Examples of recent client projects in this area include:
• Developing an assessment centre strategy and selecting tests to support recruitment decisions.
• High potential coaching and development using feedback from psychometric tests combined with a 360 to help individuals understand underlying motivators, preferences, strengths and growth opportunities.
• Carrying out senior executive interviews and assessments using personality questionnaires and ability tests to determine likely fit with the role and organisational competencies.
7 Team dynamics
Creating high performing teams that fully leverage individual and collective strengths.
Teamwork is great when it works. But, sometimes it doesn’t, and we have a track record of working at an individual and group level to identify ways in which people can collaborate more effectively and get the most from individual and collective talents.
We apply psychological principles, theories, research and models to find ways to unlock a team’s inherent strength and to allow diversity to be an enabler for success. We work with mature, intact teams – or those who are newly formed or shortly to come together – at all levels in the organisation, engaging people in the creating their team charter, or template for how they are going to work most effectively together, allowing the team to take things forward in a psychologically safe space.
Recent client projects in this area include:
• Coaching senior leaders individually, using 360-degree feedback and psychometrics, to identify ways in which they could become more effective within their team.
• Creating a team blueprint for an executive committee, in line with their organisation's values, using different approaches and activities to set out ways in which they would work more effectively together, challenge each other supportively and influence decisions more effectively.
• Using a 'team 360' approach and psychometrics with four interdependent teams, aligning their activities and priorities with the company strategy and with each other, to promote better teamworking and collaboration.