English summary:

Information about the Danish work on establishing standards for fair and ethical personnel assessment in a business setting

A brief historical view

In 1997 an initiative concerning personnel assessment and selection was taken by the test publisher Saville and Holdsworth Ltd Denmark and Center of Leadership (former Danish Center of Leadership) – a Danish organisation of public and private firms.

The initiative addressed the increased use of testing and structured personnel assessment and aimed at presenting quality norms relating to interviewing, testing and reference taking. A draft of suggested standards was written and everyone who had in interest in personnel assessment and selection, i.e. test publishing firms, consultancy firms, private and public organisations and the end users (job applicants) were invited to attend a conference with the aim of debating and refining the standards.

Prior to the initiative quite often criticism of the lawless practises of personnel assessment had made headlines in newspapers and other media. It seemed that many job applicants had stories to tell of malpractice of selection procedures or of obscure personlity tests which added little or no value to the final hiring decision.

The first initiative was backed by large parts of the Danish consultancy world, by firms and by organisations. After the first conference held in September 1997 a group (called the Reference Group) was formed to further discuss the proposed standards and to rewrite them. Also the members of the group were to be a sort of unofficial ambassadors of good personnel practise and to ensure that all opinions were taken into account.

The standards have been reviewed and rewritten on an ongoing basis. They can be seen on the Internet (unfortunately only in a Danish version) on www.personvurdering.dk.

Every second year new conferences have been held – and always with an open invitation to everyone interested to participate and to give resources to the further work.

In 1999 the theme again was setting a Danish standard for the use of Testing, Interviewing and Reference Taking.

In 2001 the theme centred on Personnel assessment and the use of the Internet.

Since the first conference The Reference Group has consisted of between 15-25 persons that have been active debating and writing standards and preparing conferences. They represent firms and private and public organisations. Apart from the two main initiators the involvement of the Danish Psychologist Organisation should specifically be mentioned. The involvement and support of the DPO has definitely furthered the knowledge of and the acceptance of the suggested standards. And not less important has prevented a rather useless discussion of who might be the rightful guardian of good personnel assessment (read: a discussion of whether academics/psychologists or practitioners should decide in this area).

Present situation:

As the historic view should indicate quite a lot of activity has been going on and results have been made. However, realistically the standards still exist on a fragile basis:

The debate and the maintenance of the standards is totally based on voluntary work from people who think that this is such an important issue that they give their own and their firms’ time to further the issue
The standards are still a “hidden secret” to many firms and organisations. As a voluntary organisation the Reference Group” has not had sufficient resources to market their knowledge and views professionally
The standards have no legal or other consequence. Any firm can sign up that they adhere to the standards, but there is no guarantee that this is actually the case. The work is thus based on a very high degree of trust, which sometimes has given rise to frustration when stories of malpractice arise.

The conclusion of the Reference group has been that it is about time that a new setting, maybe an official organisation should take over from now. The role of the Reference Group in the future setting might be one of an advisory board – but also this to be debated.

Aim of the conference “Who should set the standard” Sept. 25th 2003

The aim of the conference is to influence the itinerary of a future official organisation for professional and ethically sound personnel assessment. The day will be divided into two. The first half of the days contains of information and learning from others. Here the German experiences will be of great use. The other half of the day will facilitate discussions on the themes:

Who are the stakeholders of the standards
Evaluation of the present standards – what might be added
Organisation of the present and future standards – what should the primary task of such an organisation be, what responsibilities should it have and how could it be financed.
Hopefully at the end of the conference or shortly after a new chapter of how to practise fair and ethically sound personnel assessment and selection in a business setting can be written.