The checklist for a successful assessment project

There are many variables to think about when initiating a new Genos EI Assessment. This checklist has been formulated by the Genos Support Team based on their own extensive experience in executing successful survey projects to help Genos EI Practitioners create a smooth and valuable training experience for participants.

Whilst this checklist may not cover every detail for all projects, it certainly makes for a good place to start and to be prepared, stay organised and proactive in preventing any hurdles.

1. Choose the assessment type.

Emotional intelligence can be integrated throughout all stages of the employee life-cycle from selection and new hire, through to development and talent management Initiatives in human resources, through to transitioning people into other positions. For more information about this, please visit the Selection and Talent Management section of the Member Portal.

The Genos Emotionally Intelligent Workplace Behaviour survey measures how well participants demonstrate emotionally intelligent workplace behaviours in comparison to others.

• The EI Workplace Behaviour Self Report is based on personal reflection and designed for introductory workshops, conferences or front-line employees.
• The 180° EI Workplace Behaviour Feedback Report is based on feedback from colleagues and designed for introductory workshops, conferences or front-line employees.
• The 360° EI Workplace Behaviour Feedback Report is designed for EI development based on reflection and feedback from multiple peer groups.

The Genos emotionally intelligent leadership survey is the best measure of emotional intelligence for leaders. It measures how well they demonstrate emotionally intelligent leadership competencies in comparison to others.

• The EI Leadership Self Report is based on personal reflection and designed for emerging or front-line leaders.
• The 180° EI Leadership Feedback Report is based on feedback from direct reports and designed for front-line or supervisor development.
• The 360° EI Leadership Feedback Report is designed for middle to senior leadership development based on reflection and feedback from multiple peer groups.

2. Pre-purchase your assessment tokens.

To calculate how many tokens you would like to purchase based on the number of reports you need, please visit the Token Pricing Calculator in the Member Portal. This calculator will provide you with an instant quote and lists the volume pricing options.

READ MORE ABOUT TOKENS

3. Would you like to include a self assessment or the Engagement survey?

By default this is not included in the 180° assessment, but there is an option to include it.

Also by default this is included in the 360° assessment, but there is an option to exclude it.

The employee engagement survey feature can be switched on during the group creation process for Leadership 180° or 360° surveys and can be generated when there are at least two (2) participants and at least five (5) engagement surveys completed by any direct reports within the group. For more information about group reporting and other complimentary features, please visit our Group Reporting information page.

 4. Will the participants nominate their own raters?

Genos Surveys provides the capability for participants to nominate their own raters using the nomination of raters task.

In our experience the most successful surveys are those in which each subject talks to their raters about including them in the survey process and then enters their rater data directly into Genos Surveys. This approach has the following benefits:

• Each subject knows who provided feedback for them and in which categories. This helps them link the feedback in the reports to actual interactions that they’ve had with their raters, which adds another layer of insight into the debrief process.
• It drastically reduces human error.
• If a subject does make a mistake, that mistake is confined to them.
• If a subject makes a mistake, the liability for that mistake rests with them.

However, if you are running the assessment within your own organisation, you may need to be the one to specify the raters for participants.

If you are going to specify the raters, the Participant Email Body will need to be updated. Please refer to the ‘Products’ video tutorial in the Genos Surveys section of the Member Portal to learn how to edit survey emails.

5. List the participant details in the correct format.

Open an Excel or Numbers document and enter the participant details as shown in the screenshot below. Once you have confirmed the participant details and you are ready to import this information into Genos Surveys (or upload it to the survey request form), click File > Save As > Comma Separated Values (.csv).

For more guidance and example/template files, please visit this page.

6. Choose the start date.

What do you need to think about when choosing a start date? This question has several factors to consider:

1. If you will be running an Introduction to Emotional Intelligence Session with participants to introduce them to the Genos Model of EI and prepare them for what to expect in the assessment, you will need to ensure there is enough time (approx. 1 week) to generate the complimentary Introduction modules and run the session before the survey commences.
2. To ensure that all your participants receive a reliable, high quality service, it is ideal to process the reports for each assessment survey in a single batch. This means that if the deadline needs to be extended for one or more participants to complete their feedback, the printing and delivery of the entire batch of reports will be delayed.
3. Although 360° assessment surveys can take up to four weeks to complete, we recommend setting the survey start date to be one week earlier than required, which leaves one week for extensions if they are necessary.
4. Printing and delivery of reports typically takes 3-4 days depending on locations, so we recommend allowing time for this step as well.

By way of example, we would recommend the following time line for a 360° assessment survey:

• Create (or request) the survey 1 week prior to the commencement date allowing you to download the Introduction modules and run a short Introduction session with the participants.
• Allow 3 weeks for the survey to remain open – Welcome emails will advertise an appropriate survey close date.
• 1-week contingency – so if anybody fails to provide feedback within the initial assessment period the survey can be extended.
• 2-3 business days for printing and delivery of the reports.

Helpful Tip: Information for Participants and Raters is available in the Member Portal and is provided to participants as part of the Introduction to EI module; or as a preliminary email before the commencement of a survey.

7. Whitelist for a superior survey experience.

With the advent of sophisticated hacking and phishing techniques, all mail servers have become much more ‘suspicious’ than they have ever been, with SPAM filters increasingly designed to err on the side of caution – rejecting even legitimate mail messages that might have suspicious characteristics.

Any sort of assessment process can fall foul of such algorithms. A typical assessment project run on a platform like Genos Surveys will generate a large volume of messages, all having a similar look and feel, to multiple people within an organisation. e.g. a single 360° assessment for a Participant who has 2 managers, 6 direct reports, 6 peers, and 6 ‘other’ raters, will result in 21 such messages. Now imagine that you have 10 Participants – it’s easy to imagine how 210 largely similar messages, addressed to as many as 200+ people, arriving within seconds of one another, could be misconstrued as SPAM, or even an attack – especially by increasingly sensitive systems.

The time to deal with this eventuality is before it arises – reporting that a failure to deliver email invitations is an issue with the server after participants report non-receipt of invitation messages is less than ideal. That is why we strongly suggest that you make a discussion about whitelisting Genos URLs and mail servers – having the recipients’ IT department ensure their server recognises emails from Genos as ‘friendly’ – a standard part of your initial conversation with clients.Taking the responsible step of a whitelisting discussion with the recipients’ IT team shows foresight and professionalism and saves issues later.

If you have previously whitelisted Genos, please check you have the latest whitelisting information. For more information, our technical white-paper (with the date it was last updated) is available in the Genos Surveys section of the Member Portal.

8. Provide your logo(s).

If provided, Genos Surveys will insert your logo (and your client’s logo) on the front cover of the reports and all workbooks.

Please follow these steps to prepare and upload your logo:

1. Ensure that your logo has a white background (not a transparent background).
2. Ideally your logo should be cropped (ie. unnecessary white space removed).
3. Ideally your logo should be no larger than 800px wide and/or 800px high.
4. Recommended size is between 400px to 800px wide and 400px to 800px high.

9. Nominate a contact person.

Genos Surveys will send automatic status reports according to the frequency you specify to the nominated email address allowing the contact person to follow up with any participants (or raters) who are yet to complete their assigned task.

10. Determine the final date you will need the reports.

Small self-assessment surveys (e.g. 1-5 people) can usually be completed within five business days. We recommend two weeks for larger self-assessment surveys, as you need to allow for participants who are on leave, off sick, at training courses, etc.

180° or 360° assessment surveys generally require two to four weeks.

When requesting a Genos-managed survey, the initial survey close date is five (5) business days before the date you would like to receive hard copy reports. This allows a survey extension of 2 days if needed, plus 2 days for printing and delivery.

11. Read the terms and conditions.

To request a Genos-managed survey, you will need to agree to our terms and conditions. However, regardless of which service you will use, these terms and conditions are best practice for survey management and are really great guidelines to follow to achieve a successful and valuable assessment experience for everyone. Here are a few that have not yet been mentioned:

• Process all reports in a single batch after the survey has closed
• Facilitators – Some facilitators find it helpful to review the reports the afternoon before the workshop, so consider forwarding them the email that contains the details to download the soft copies of the reports.
• Email Addresses – Every person using Genos Surveys MUST have their own, unique email address. Although generic email addresses are discouraged (e.g. sales@acme.com.au), they can be used but only by one person and cannot be re-used by someone else in the future.
• Additional participants – We will happily add participants to a survey that is already in progress, however, if the deadline needs to be extended to accommodate late entrants then the entire batch will be delayed. It is imperative that you inform your client of this policy at the outset of the survey.
• Re-opening a survey – Occasionally, Genos is asked to re-open a survey and re-print a report so that the feedback of an additional rater can be included. If the original report has already been shown to the subject then re-printing their report with additional feedback will compromise the anonymity of the additional rater, therefore Genos will not process such a request in this case.

Please visit the Genos Surveys section of the Member Portal to download a one-page version of this checklist.

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