Development Centre
Development of specialists and executives
Simulation-orientated procedures can have different objectives.
We will advise you on which process best suits your needs.
- Assessment Centres have a strong focus on requirements and the aim is to assess the fit of applicants or employees with these requirements in personnel selection.
- Development Centres are geared towards development. They not only relate to current skills, but also recognise the potential to successfully master future challenges.
- Our systemically orientated processes - such as the Systemic Development Days - are orientation processes and combine learning, diagnostics and self-reflection. The individual perspective takes centre stage, requirements play a subordinate role.
Professional personnel development as the cornerstone of corporate success
- Would you like to provide employees and executives with customised support for their personal development?
- Do you want to identify high-potential employees and prepare them for upcoming professional challenges?
- Would you like to help employees decide whether a specialist or management career is right for them?
A well-founded requirements analysis is the basis for a competence-based Development Centre (DC). From this, we derive the appropriate tools for you and you get a clear picture of the strengths and learning areas of the participants. Based on your needs, we conduct the DCs on site or virtually over distance. To increase efficiency, we can also offer you paperless, digital formats that map all documents in modern, GDPR-compliant software. This ensures a high level of acceptance and effectiveness of the process for both participants and observers.
The core principles of successful Development Centres
Development Centres combine well-founded and differentiated diagnostics with learning opportunities. With this combination, we develop your talents, promote professional personnel development and thus make the greatest possible contribution to the company’s success, e.g. by retaining employees, increasing satisfaction or improving performance. In doing so, we emphasise clear principles:
- Differentiated feedback at eye level
- Appreciative attitude
- Everyday elements and transfer assurance
- Promoting strengths
- Alignment with corporate goals
Our procedures are also characterised by a variety of methods: We put together simulation elements and modern personality and performance tests from our Online Assessments to suit your needs.
Find out more about our online tests for the development of young professionals here
Find out more about our online tests for the development of young professionals and (prospective) executives.
Development Centre as an enrichment for all involved
What all Development Centres have in common is that participants are given a variety of opportunities to explore their strengths, areas of learning and potential with professional support. The benefits for employees are manifold: employees gain clarity about their own profile, they compare their image of themselves and others, reflect on decisions about the right career path for them and define priorities for their personal development. The result is a differentiated profile of strengths and learning needs as well as a development plan that recommends suitable measures.
A Development Centre can either be tailored to a more homogeneous group of employees, e.g. team leaders in production who are to be prepared to take over the management of a department. This allows participants to exchange ideas with colleagues who are facing similar challenges. Or it can appeal to a very heterogeneous group of participants, for example when project managers and technical experts come together with managers from different areas. In this case, the focus is particularly on cross-divisional networking and “thinking outside the box”.
Observers and HR managers also benefit equally from participating in Development Centres by sharpening their focus on assessment processes and feedback. They are prepared for this in special training courses. Increasingly, it is not only the classic “observation” that is being used, but observers are acting as sparring partners with whom the participants also establish a trusting relationship beyond the DCs.
Symbiosis of diagnostics and developmental thinking
In our Development Centres, we combine sound diagnostics with the idea of development. First, we use requirements analyses to align the diagnostic content with the challenges that your employees will have to overcome in the future. We design situations with typical and critical requirements, such as feedback discussions or team exercises, which are very close to everyday working life.
On-site development takes centre stage:
- The focus is on feedback from different perspectives, e.g. from colleagues (peer feedback), observers or moderators. Compared to an Assessment Centre, for example, short feedback sequences are therefore woven into Development Centres at many points, e.g. immediately after exercises or learning situations or in reflection rounds. The more differentiated and varied the feedback is, the more helpful it is for an accurate self-image and subsequent changes in behaviour.
- Participants receive a wide range of learning opportunities, such as short training sequences (e.g. on leadership, dealing with complexity or feedback), which are tailored to the individual challenges of the participants in an interactive and everyday way.
- Coaching units can also be part of Development Centres. All of this directly triggers self-reflection, initiates the learning process and activates strengths.
And of course, the perspective of the participants themselves should not be missing: We support participants in drawing a coherent conclusion from all feedback and ensuring the transfer of what they have learnt into their everyday working life.
The end result is a practical development plan - and motivated employees
With our specialist expertise and wide-ranging industry experience, we create a practical results report that describes strengths and learning areas. In the spirit of positive psychology, we also look at how you can further promote your employees’ strengths. The recommendations can be implemented on the job and immediately. This promotes employee motivation and ultimately also their loyalty to the company.
Our innovative systemic Development Days are a special form of development-orientated process in which the design of the process is largely in the hands of the participants. Find out more about our Systemic Development Days here.
