Department of Community Services
Casework Manager and Casework Specialist promotion assessment centres
Situation
With over 10,000 children currently in care in NSW, DoCS operates in the challenging environment surrounding the protection of children at risk and must daily manage very difficult family situations while under constant media scrutiny.
Casework Managers and Casework Specialists are right in the front line, giving leadership to the teams of Caseworkers who are responsible for delivering services to clients.
DoCS realised that conventional selection processes, interviews and referee reports were no longer adequate for identifying the people best suited to work in this difficult and highly stressful environment. In line with NSW Premier's Department merit selection guidelines, they decided to use an extended selection process based on assessment centre methodology.
Solution
We undertook job analysis with a wide cross section of staff and managers in DoCS. From this we developed two assessment centres, each a day long - one for Manager candidates and the other for Specialist candidates.
All the simulation tasks were designed specifically for DoCS and research has shown they have high content and face validity for both assessors (senior managers from DoCS) and candidates.
The process also included use of the new WAVE personality questionnaire delivered online and a Verbal Analysis test. CF&A Psychologists trained DoCS managers as assessors, then facilitated the assessment centres and subsequent results meetings and provided feedback to candidates once decisions had been announced.
Outcome
Candidate reactions to the new assessment centres have been extremely positive with over 95‰ saying they believe the assessment centre is fairer than the old promotion processes. Managers are also feeling much more confident that they are promoting the most talented people.
The client is now strongly committed to continuing the use of assessment centres and to date 70 assessment centres have been conducted for the Casework Specialist and Manager positions. There has been just one successful promotion appeal from the population of nearly 700 candidates and the appeal was unrelated to the use of an assessment centre.
This project is also a good example of CF&A's ability to partner with recruiters who provide recruitment administrative support, which in this case was provided by NSW Businesslink.