Development Centre is a method of assessing competences and development potential of employees with regard to their current and future responsibilities, as well as planning their career paths. This method provides information about knowledge, skills and attitudes of the Development Centre’s participants. It identifies both the competences which are on an appropriate level and those which development will increase the level of professional effectiveness.

The Development Centre results are discussed in detail with company management as well as with direct superiors of DC participants in order to indicate for each employee the most effective methods of work and development.

Furthermore, due to feedback given to the participants both in writing and during individual face-to-face sessions, each employee has the opportunity to find out more about their strong and weak points. At the same time, they have the chance to deeper reflection about their development plans within the organisation, prompted by the training and development recommendations.

Together with the Client, we define the competences which constitute the basis for Development Centre methodology, including a wide range of simulation techniques, psychometric tools, as well as tasks similar to those in Assessment Centre. The most important element of DC is the diagnosis of professional potential and most effective development methods. To carry out an accurate and objective evaluation we use sets of tasks and exercises corresponding to the specific nature of the Client’s company and competences to be examined.

The tasks and exercises may include:

• group discussions – with or without specific roles assigned,
• group or individual tasks,
• presentations in a larger group forum or in front of assessors alone,
• simulations of ‘difficult conversations’, e.g. with Clients, employees, superiors etc. Specially prepared ‘actors’ play the roles of conversation partners,
• written tasks – ‘case studies’, ‘in basket’ studies (an analysis of a large number of documents and decision-making on this basis), ‘fact-finding’ (establishing facts on the basis of given information),
• knowledge tests,
• tests of the ability to analyse verbal and numerical information,
• tests of creativity and perceptivity
• professional personality questionnaires (e.g. OPQ by SHL, the Thomas International method).

Selected assessors observe, analyse and assess the realisation of the tasks. The assessors have relevant business experience and skill to conduct in-depth assessment and analysis of current behaviour as well as to suggest future development directions.

Development Centre enables us to achieve full information about employees’ key competences, strengths and weaknesses related to their positions and responsibilities. It also shows the areas of necessary development and allows us to build individual plan of increasing efficiency in present and future tasks.