Camden Delta was engaged to provide change management support for a strategic initiative, “the Talent Roadmap” in Talent Acquisition at Assurant. The organization’s leadership team had developed the Talent Roadmap and wanted to align work activities and recruiter competencies to achieve the strategic vision. With budgetary limitations and increasing demand to recruit top tier talent that would be critical to Assurant’s future success, Talent Acquisition leadership recognized the need to study the current workload and priorities, identify appropriate staffing levels, redefine recruiter role descriptions, and develop recruiter competencies.

Our Process and Methodology

The engagement began with a study of current state activities being performed to manage job requisitions. The study involved a half day workshop with recruiting leaders, pulling available measurement data from the Taleo system, surveying recruiters to document time spent on various activities, and then conducting a final leadership workshop to review the data, identify efficiencies, and make recommendations regarding work distribution, priorities, and organizational design, and staffing levels.

After aligning activities and priorities with the Talent Roadmap, Camden Delta consultants facilitated development of a competency development initiative for the organization to align recruiter capabilities with the strategy for the future. The process for competency development included leadership focus groups to define recruiter competencies. In addition, for each competency, four levels of recruiter proficiency were behaviorally defined to reflect the different expectations for each level of Recruiter.

Once the competency model was finalized, Camden Delta worked with Assurant to design and implement an assessment and development process that would provide recruiters with feedback, development planning, and development opportunities to support the future desired state. Managers participated in training on how to make effective ratings using the new competency framework. Managers then completed an assessment for each direct report recruiter and Camden Delta facilitated a calibration session for the manager assessments to ensure the leaders were aligned in their standards and rating expectations across the organization. Recruiters also received training on the assessment process and were then asked to complete a self-assessment of their current proficiency level on each competency.

To promote buy-in and engagement in the change initiative, Camden Delta prepared managers and recruiters to have effective coaching meetings by delivering coaching and feedback training to managers followed by receiving feedback training with the entire organization. Managers and recruiters then met one-on-one to discuss the assessment feedback, including strengths and development needs as well as gaps and consistency in ratings. Each recruiter then worked with his/her manager to write and implement an individual development plans.

Tangible Benefits/Results

Leadership saw increased engagement in the organization and commitment to the new strategy as well as enhanced recruiter competencies. Due to the success at the recruiter level, the process and methodology were subsequently applied to all jobs in the recruiting organization.

Why Camden Delta

Camden Delta was selected by Talent Acquisition leadership because of its deep expertise in building effective Talent Acquisition organizations and understanding of how to effectively define “future state” competencies and leverage these competencies to develop recruiter proficiency to a level needed to ensure success of the Talent Roadmap. In addition, Camden Delta offered an important perspective on how to manage the change process and gain acceptance from Recruiters to new role definitions and competency expectations.