Many organizations invest heavily in recruiting external talent while overlooking one of their greatest resources: Developing existing employees.
Periods of technological disruption create a particularly difficult challenge. Existing roles disappear while entirely new capabilities are required.
Recently, TTS’s best-of-breed assessment product partner, Saville Assessments, helped their client overcome just such a challenge.
In this article, we discuss the case study as well as important lessons learnt that contribute to an expanded view of assessments that go beyond just selection.
The client challenge
Ricoh is a global business services company with more than 78 000 employees and servicing more than 1.4 Million businesses, which includes 84% of the Fortune 500.
Faced with declining demand in its traditional office print business and an increasing need for digital capability, Ricoh chose to focus not only on external recruitment, but also on identifying employees with the potential to transition into emerging digital roles.
Rather than viewing its existing workforce as tied to legacy functions, the organization wanted to uncover employees who possessed the capacity to learn, adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing digital environment.
In response to this need, Ricoh introduced their Scala digital talent program and opened it to employees across the EMEA region. They placed particular emphasis on technical staff from the office print division, representing a potential talent pool of approximately 4,000 employees.
Saville’s solution
Candidates for the program were selected using a multi-method assessment process designed by Saville Assessments that combined measures of personality motivation, and workplace behavior (using the Saville Wave), cognitive ability and workplace English proficiency.
Importantly, the assessment process was designed not only to identify those most likely to succeed in the programme, but also to provide meaningful developmental feedback to every participant, regardless of the assessment outcome.
Successful candidates entered a structured nine-month development programme leading to recognized digital qualifications, followed by a three-month placement within their chosen digital discipline. This combination of objective assessment, targeted learning and practical workplace experience created a clear pathway for employees to move into strategically important roles while supporting the organization’s broader digital vision.
The outcome
The program produced encouraging results. Around 60% of participants in the first cohort had already transitioned into new digital roles, with subsequent cohorts showing similar early progress.
Beyond these placement outcomes, the initiative demonstrated the value of using evidence-based assessment to increase confidence in internal talent decisions.
In addition, assessment results were used to support employee development, based on objective feedback. The program was subsequently recognized through industry awards for both internal recruitment strategy (Best internal recruitment strategy at the Firm Awards).
Lessons learnt and future directions
Potential is not just current performance.
One of the oldest mistakes in talent management is assuming that today’s best performer automatically becomes tomorrow’s best performer. Competencies required for success often change dramatically during organizational and technological transformation.
As was the case with Ricoh, employees who used to excel in a traditional operational environment may come to struggle in a more ambiguous digital one.
Conversely, someone whose current role offers limited opportunity to demonstrate learning agility, reasoning ability or adaptability may possess precisely the qualities needed for future success.
Using objective assessments like the Saville suite, can help to identify future capability by measuring psychological attributes rather than relying solely on current performance ratings. Instead of making decisions based on manager intuition alone, Ricoh combined several complementary sources of information:
- Personality
- Motivation
- Cognitive ability
- Workplace English capability
By integrating multiple predictors Ricoh was able to arrive at a far richer understanding of future potential within their existing talent pool.
Assessment as developmental tool.
The value of using assessment goes beyond just gatekeeping. Every participant, irrespective of their success at entry into the program, received developmental feedback.
In this way, even employees who were not selected gained insight into strengths, development priorities and future career planning.
Objectivity builds confidence
The Ricoh case study shows how objective, scientifically robust assessments can enhance a talent development initiative. Traditional talent identification is vulnerable to various biases and assumptions (e.g. halo effects, favoritism, etc) that can lead to false negatives and positives.
Structured assessments, however, provide a common language for talent professionals and line managers alike that supports more transparent and defensible talent decisions.
Note that this does not replace managerial judgement, but rather enhances such judgements by making them less vulnerable to irrelevant information.
Final thoughts
For organizations like Ricoh that are facing digital transformation, the case study highlights several important principles. Perhaps the most important is that organizational transformation becomes considerably more achievable when talent decisions are grounded in evidence and objective assessment data rather than assumption.
As organizations continue to confront technological disruption, the ability to identify latent capability, invest in employee development and redeploy talent internally may become one of the defining characteristics of success. The Ricoh case study illustrates how psychological assessments like the Saville suite can play a central role in that process.
If you would like to know more about how Saville assessments can be a part of your talent development pipeline, reach out to us at info@tts-talent.com.