Assessment for Profile takes a similar form to assessment for the Standard. The focus is on finding out about the organisation’s approach to managing and developing people through a combination of talking to people at all levels of the organisation and examining any relevant existing documentation. Taken together, this evidence helps determine whether the requirements of Profile are met and at what level. Paperwork is kept to the absolute minimum – what matters is that the organisation can give practical examples of how it meets the requirements, not just having a paper policy.

There are also some important differences with a Profile assessment:

• It will be a much more extensive and in-depth process, which is why it’s so valuable. But for this reason you should expect it to take more time
• There could be benefits to including a staff survey in the process – your Assessor can discuss the pros and cons of this
• The assessment could involve a consensus meeting with the top team. This is a workshop format facilitated by the Assessor, where you will jointly look at the organisation’s practices against key Profile criteria. This can be very valuable in engaging the top team in the process right from the start, and it helps to get everyone’s expectations clear. Again, the Assessor can talk you through this and help you to decide the potential value.
• It may involve an assessment team, but this would depend on the size of the organisation.

Preparing for an assessment
To arrange an assessment, contact your local Quality Centre and complete an assessment application form.  You will need to provide: 

• Basic details about your organisation
• A full list of employees including names, job title, length of service, working hours and whether they are a Trade Union representative

The Quality Centre is responsible for allocating an Assessor to individual projects and will quality assure the process. There are currently 13 Quality Centres within the UK.

While no extensive preparation is necessary for a Profile assessment, an Assessor will normally hold a meeting with you in advance to discuss what is involved, explain what they will want to see, and who they wish to interview. It usually saves time if you are familiar with the content of the Profile framework and have ideas ready of what information (e.g. copies of existing plans or strategies) will be useful as evidence for the Assessor. It may also help if you can provide some information in advance about what the organisation does, so the Assessor can gain an early insight into the organisation and its approach.

Your Assessor can also discuss whether you wish to be assessed against the whole framework, or whether you wish to take a more flexible approach – both the Quality Centre and the Assessor can discuss these options with you to make sure that a coherent, valuable assessment can be undertaken. The Assessor can then draw up an assessment plan in line with these priorities to ensure the assessment and subsequent feedback focus squarely on your needs and interests.

The assessment itself
The majority of evidence will be collected by the Assessor by confidential interviews with a percentage of the organisation's employees. All assessments must involve these interviews, but the proportion of staff involved varies significantly according to the size of the organisation.

Various other methods can also be used such as focus groups, written evidence and observations. Investors in People has developed an employee survey to be used as part of the assessment process. Robust information collected from a larger number of people in this way can enable feedback to be provided, for example, by department. In all cases, the process will be defined and agreed with you, prior to the assessment.

A Profile assessment is a thorough process, based on a rigorous methodology. It typically takes longer than an assessment against the Standard, though this will vary according to the size and nature of the organisation. Because of the scope and range of Profile, it may be that the Assessor needs to come back to talk again to some interviewees – especially those in top management roles – in order to verify or explore further the detail of management systems.

Feedback and recognition
Your Assessor will provide immediate feedback at the end of the assessment. This is intended to give you an outline of the findings and to highlight the Assessor’s initial response to what they have seen and heard. The Assessor will indicate whether or not, in his or her view, the level 1 evidence requirements have been met, and therefore whether the organisation should receive or retain its recognition against the Standard.

However, the Assessor will also need to reflect on the findings, to digest and evaluate all the data they have collected. A final comprehensive Profile report will then be compiled and presented to you with the opportunity for a detailed discussion of the findings. Suggestions about possible strategies and priorities for improvement will be made as part of an action plan for the organisation.

At your convenience, the Profile Web Tool can provide additional information, showing how the evidence collected relates to the evidence requirements of Profile, and enabling you to benchmark the organisation against averages for organisations of a similar size, sector or region. Because the benchmark data in the Tool is continually updated as more organisations and assessments are added, you can see how your relative performance changes over time.

In the case of successful first time assessments, the Assessment report will be submitted to a Recognition Panel (which consists of 2 senior people from recognised Investors in People organisations) for approval, following the Assessor’s initial feedback. The main duty of the Panel is to provide an objective view of the work of the Quality Centre so that the integrity and credibility of Investors in People is maintained. An organisation can not promote their 'Investors in People' status until confirmation has been received from the Recognition Panel.