Faced with a less favourable economic environment, the management team became aware of the company's internal rigidity. Encouraging salaried employees to participate in building the new dynamic, BPI developed a skills assessment system and set the changes in motion.

Context
Growth and Rigidity
Following 20 years of prosperity, the company's profits were diminishing in the early Nineties. The growth of the past had led to the problems of the future: salaries reached very high levels, functions were frozen in branches which prevented internal mobility, and social relations were based on an archaic model that neglected dialogue. Management knew that internal operations needed to be made more flexible to allow the company to adapt itself. When two very big contracts postponed the company's economic difficulties, they decided to initiate a profound change with the participation of the company's 500 employees. BPI proposed an approach based on skills assessment. The unions were open to an approach that aimed for greater transparency and that considered the workers first.

Task
Structure through Preparation
As the first step in the process, consultants visited all of the departments to set up job descriptions with the employees and line managers. Grouped around a few reference positions, they provided a precise description of the situation as well as a clearer presentation of the organisation. Then, with the aid of a preliminary reflection on professional values, the pilot committee listed a series of skills that were common to all occupations. In this way, in an organisation that up to that point had been compartmentalised, the will to create transverse references was established. The elements gathered made it possible to develop an evaluation grid: seven transversal skills and a job-based approach became the spokes of a "wheel" that the entire staff quickly adopted.

Building Constructively
Step-by-step, the consultants developed the stages of a process that channelled the reflections made at all levels of the company, resulting in a totally adapted tool - definition of the technical assessment criteria by occupation, detailed description of the levels of assessment, etc. At each stage, the consistency of the whole was studied together with the steering committee. The full system was set up for the workers before being rebuilt for the executives. The group building of the tool was an education in itself - when the system was implemented, everyone in the company was able, using the guide that had been prepared, to prepare and conduct the interview they were to undergo as an employee or conduct as a manager.

Perspectives
An Integrated System
As planned, the relationship between the assessment tool and the classification and compensation system was progressively established. The tool was already integrated when the consultants returned to the company to begin discussions on the 35-hour work week.