Late in 2011, ISO introduced a new standard ISO 10667: Assessment service delivery -- Procedures and methods to assess people in work and organizational settings. How could this help people using online or other assessments within SAP?
Do you use quizzes or tests called from SAP LSO / Enterprise Learning?
Do you deliver skills or other assessments to candidates using SAP's E-Recruiting?
Do you use psychological tests to evaluate current or prospective employees?
Do you give 360 or 180 appraisals or other performance appraisals, using Success Factors (about to be part of SAP) or other software?
Do you use assessments within SAP GRC process control or otherwise use assessments to help manage compliiance?
Do you assess employees (singly or in groups) in any way from SAP or other software?
If the answers to any of the above are yes, then you might be interested in the new ISO 10667 standard. There is no legal requirement to follow an ISO standard, but the importance of privacy of personal data, there are significant advantages of considering being compliant with it, including:
- Assessment in the workplace lets you see into the minds and hearts of employees and other stakeholders, but also potentially discloses sensitive and private data that requires privacy. The standard covers issues such as informed consent and what to do to ensure proper treatment of assessment data; it will help you ensure you are following best practice.
- If you make decisions on employees (e.g. hire, fire, promote) as a result of assessments, then following the standard could be helpful if any such decisions are disputed (by trade unions, courts of law or individual employees).
- When people cheat at assessments, they often rationalize the cheating to themselves that it’s fair to do so because the assessment programme is unfair. Publicly committing to a standard like ISO 10667 can help you promote your assessment programme as open, fair and reasonable and so make it less likely that people will rationalize cheating on it.
- The standard has been written by experts in assessment, following it lets you learn and follow best practice.
ISO 10667’s is a wide-ranging standard that covers all kinds of assessments in the workplace from appraisals and coaching through psychological tests, it includes knowledge and skill quizzes, tests and exams in recruitment, training and compliance. There are three key roles defined in the standard: Service provider, Client and Assessment participant as shown in the diagram below.
The standard is split into two parts. Part 1 sets requirements for the Client and part 2 sets requirements for the Service provider. You have to purchase ISO standards, here are some potential places to obtain it:
- ISO (part 1, part 2)
- ANSI in the USA (part 1, part 2)
- DIN in Germany (part 1, part 2)
- BSI in the UK (part 1, part 2)
The standard sets out processes and procedures to follow, you can use it with any software or even with paper assessments. And it's organizations who have to comply with the standard, not SAP or other software. If you want to find out more about the standard, you can also read a white paper (free with registration) from Questionmark, which gives more detail on ISO 10667 and how you can use Questionmark software to help comply with it.
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