"Self-Assessment Surveys and Development of Leadership Talent"

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1. Debate the usefulness of self-assessment surveys to determine employees with high potential within the organization. Create a list of five (5) critical areas in which high-potential candidates would assess themselves to be included in the talent pool for promotion and discuss how you would use the assessment.

The usefulness of self-assessment surveys is a long debated practice in today's work environment. Essentially managers are asking employees to tout their own skills and giving them an opportunity to highlight achievements that may have been overlooked (CRM, 2011). The risk many see in self-assessments is that employees tend to over-hype their skills and rarely admit to areas that need self-improvement. In order to create an environment that fosters the usefulness of self-assessments, managers need to use them in a manner that merges the performance management process used by supervisors.
One key study has found that when employees do self-assessments, they tend to rate their performance quite opposite of management. Often employees that perform poorly rate their performance higher than actuality, and employees who perform well have a tendency to rate their performance lower than actuality (Bowers, 2009). This is the discrepancy that managers against self-assessments often tout. However, in order to assess the employee properly, management needs to use their input and compare it against actual results and then build a performance plan from that framework.
The greatest usefulness of an employee performing a self-assessment is that these assessments quite often aid in the development of the employee. The assessment gives management the opportunity to see what the employee is thinking and what their needs and wants are as an employee. The manager can also see what areas the employee wants to progress and where they feel they need further training. Used properly, the self-assessment can be a great employee development tool.
There are five critical areas that I would have the employee self-assess to develop them further. The first area is training. I would have the employee assess whether they need or want additional training. This would reveal potential areas to further develop the employee. This would also help in identifying what the employee needs to grow further. Employees are usually very honest ...