Horses for Courses? Deploying the right person is harder than you think

Organisations recruit personnel to address skill and competency requirements related to the projects that they are likely to undertake. This can be a challenging endeavour. Ask any HR professional. Depending on the field, finding a good match can be extremely hit and miss due to uncertainty built into an organisation, industry or operational context.

Take post-disaster reconstruction. Organisations undertaking projects in a post-disaster context can face an extremely volatile and fragmented situation, with unique and complex problems arising quick and fast. It is very difficult to even characterise, prior to a scenario arising, what an appropriate professional might be to cover the range of skills and behaviours necessary.

During field work in Bangladesh, 2009

Since 2007 I have been researching competency in non-government organisations (NGOs) relating to post-disaster reconstruction projects. The project has taken me to South Asia and allowed me to interview dozens of NGO project managers. My field work inspired the overall concept and allowed me to generate the essential data for a system that could simulate the likely performance of post-disaster project managers in disaster scenarios.

In 2014 I took the concept further and designed a beta software tool (with a lot of help from my friends). We are delighted to have just published a paper in Disaster Prevention and Management, describing the system development process. The tool allows administrators a high degree of functionality; creating project manager, disaster scenario and competency variables and values. As a user of the tool, the options are more limited. You can simulate various disasters against personnel profiles and calculate likely performance.

Example of tool interface

At the moment the tool is a bit buggy and limited by my field data, but I'm excited about what the future holds for the idea. Watch this space for the next Phase (anyone want to fund it?!). The key message is that if we have the knowledge to reduce the risk of deploying the wrong people to deal with disasters, we must use that knowledge. This research will help us to develop tools that add significant value for organisations; particularly those that understand the need for 'horses for courses', in a disaster context and potentially in any project based activity.

Click here for the full paper

Key barriers in post-disaster reconstruction projects

In the 5+ years that I have been examining the operations of NGOs in post-disaster reconstruction, there have been significant moves made to combat some of the issues that have been heavily criticised in the past- skill deficiency, cultural ignorance, resource 'stretch' mentality among others. Some of the key outcomes of my work in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have been to identify the key PDR barriers that NGOs face in seven key areas (see image below), and to provide evidence that organisations must deploy certain configurations of organisational and operational competencies in order to effectively develop and implement strategies to address these barriers.

The research argues that the utilisation of these competencies, deployed in targeted clusters, has the potential to create positive outcomes for beneficiaries as measured by PDR Project Success Indicators (PDRPSIs). If dynamic tools can be developed that effectively model competency and predict success, all organisations involved in disaster response and recovery could benefit. In addition, the knowledge is highly transferable to other sectors and environments.

If you are interested in the research, check out my new paper.