The Client

NFU Mutual provides insurance and financial services products to its members across the UK. Its purpose is to protect the lives and livelihoods of its customers and support rural communities, and its vision is to be the UK’s most trusted insurer.  

The Challenge

To support these objectives, the Mutual aims to ensure that recruitment and promotion into its senior leadership roles is as fair and effective as possible. As part of this, Pearn Kandola conducts individual assessments with shortlisted candidates to provide hiring managers with in-depth information about candidates’ current capabilities and their future potential.

The Solution

Our individual assessments for NFU Mutual involve three stages:

1. Pre-assessment activity

Where we speak to the hiring manager about their vacancy and the critical success factors. This ensures that our assessments focus not only on the benchmark expectations for the relevant leadership grade but also include the role-specific context and requirements. In addition, candidates complete two online personality profiles in advance of the assessment, providing insights into their key preferences and habits.

2. The assessment

Which involves a three-hour biographical interview and a one-hour reasoning test to assess intellectual capability. The biographical interview focuses on exploring candidates’ thinking and actions across a range of past experiences. This allows us to identify consistent patterns of thought (such as ‘self-talk’, which shapes people’s assumptions, actions, and emotions), and behaviour, highlighting the skills that a person most readily deploys as well as the behavioural ‘gaps’, where there is less flexibility or focus.

3. Post-assessment activity

Where hiring managers receive a detailed assessment report alongside a follow-up call with the Pearn Kandola assessor. The assessment report includes benchmark data against leadership capabilities as well as Pearn Kandola’s GIFT model of future potential. This follow-up call is crucial, as our ultimate objective is to help hiring managers at the Mutual make effective decisions. The call allows hiring managers to ask follow-up questions based on the report content. This is especially helpful when considering the merits of two or more candidates.

The Outcomes

Our individual assessments lead to three important outcomes:

1. They support effective decision-making

This is true for both hiring managers and candidates. In one situation, a hiring manager was able to confidently select one of two candidates on the basis that, although they had similar capabilities, one candidate had much stronger future development potential. In another situation, an internal candidate reviewed their assessment report and realised that their current capabilities needed further development before progressing into a more senior role. The individual was able to self-select out of the process, rather than investing more effort in a process they were unready for.

2. They support clear and targeted development activity

After each assessment process has concluded, candidates receive a copy of their Pearn Kandola report and have a follow-up coaching call with their Pearn Kandola assessor. This enables strengths and development themes to be explored, and for specific development actions to be planned.

3. They support the onboarding process

The follow-on coaching call supports the onboarding process for successful candidates. Whether a candidate is joining the Mutual from another organisation, or an internal candidate is being promoted to a more senior role, having clarity around the key success factors, and how the person’s existing preferences, habits, and capabilities fit with these is critical in supporting an effective start to a new role.

A word from the client… 

Kenny Graves, HR Director at NFU Mutual, says, ”Pearn Kandola’s assessments are a critical part of our senior leadership recruitment and development process. As psychologists who have insight into our business and the wider finance and insurance sector, they provide us with deeper insights that support fair and effective outcomes”.

Louise Morris, Head of HR at NFU Mutual, says that “a comprehensive assessment of candidates – be they internal or external - is crucial for us to ensure we appoint the best talent into key roles within our business. Having Pearn Kandola, a trusted partner who understands us well enough to add value to that process, is a huge win.”  Louise adds, “I’ve been a hiring manager using this assessment activity as well as a candidate undergoing the assessment. This means that I have a 360-degree view of the benefit it brings and how it helps us to appoint, onboard and develop employees into their roles. In all aspects, Pearn Kandola’s assessments set us and our employees up for success.”