In terms of scale and complexity, there are few organisations who
are capable of carrying out over 82 million transactions each
working day - and even fewer who deliver each of these by hand.
The Challenge
In 2008, responding to an increasingly competitive landscape and
ongoing regulatory challenges, Royal Mail underwent a major
business transformation, restructuring the sales and marketing
functions – some 3,000 employees. Critical to the success of this
project was a swift, valid and robust assessment process to ensure
Royal Mail had the best people in the right jobs, as quickly as
possible.
The Solution
Royal Mail engaged AMS’s Assessment & Selection team to
deliver assessment services through three stages of
the restructuring exercise. This specialist team has extensive
experience in supporting organisational restructuring and
transformation activities. Their approach follows a structured
methodology, which is important given the legal and ethical issues
surrounding the use of objective assessment in this context. The
team designed a job-relevant, fair and predictive process that
reflected the changing needs of the Royal Mail. The process ensured
employees were provided with the best opportunity to demonstrate
their fit to the new roles and legal risks to the organisation were
minimised.
The Results
Stage 1: The first stage
involved the delivery of assessment services for the Executive
team. This included designing assessment materials suitable for a
senior management population, delivering a high-touch process to
retain engagement of this key group and delivering training to
enable self-sufficiency moving forward, all within challenging
timelines.
Stage 2: Required a similar
solution for approximately 120 of the Executive team’s potential
direct reports.
Stage 3: Required the
engagement of a far more significant assessment capability, with
nearly 500 assessments to undertake in a short, six-week period.
Despite being given just three weeks notice, AMS was able to
leverage the Assessment & Selection team’s unique structure and
competency and quickly deploy a project team of 25.
All of the assessments were delivered within the tight
timeframes and a complex operating environment. Candidate and
hiring manager feedback was positive – the solidity and consistency
of the assessment process reassuring both parties of its
validity.