Amir Morshed
Managing Director & Co-Founder |
The fight against unconscious and implicit biases to help businesses create equality, diversity, inclusivity and fairness in the workplace has always been one of the core missions of Propel International. I strongly believe we need to act as guardians, advocates and executioners of best practice in all stages of the selection and development process. On a personal level, one of the reasons I became a business psychologist and co-founded Propel was to help people from all over the world to become the best version of themselves and reach happiness at work.
The fact that businesses can benefit from ethnic and gender diversity is backed by a plethora of scientific studies. Most notably, organisations in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15% more likely to have financial returns that were above their national industry median, and the companies in the top quartile for racial diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their national industry median (Diversity wins, how inclusion matters, McKinsey Global Institute, 2020). Regardless of these returns, we believe that every internal or external job applicant deserves a fair chance and should only be assessed on aspects that matter to the execution of a job and nothing other than their true capability, character and commitment to get the job done. As simple as that. This makes conducting a thorough job analysis prior to designing and commencing an assessment for selection or development process so important. Equally as crucial is selecting objective and valid psychometrics and designing or choosing business simulations that mirror the ‘Day in the Life’ of a target position as closely to real worklife as possible. Ensuring that a diverse team of assessors are properly trained and aware of unconscious biases is another quintessential step to take to ensure both a high predictive validity and fairness. Overall, I would like to highlight that we are proud to partner with so many of our clients who share the same passion and mindset as ourselves and see it as their mission too to create a corporate world where every talent is treated with dignity, respect and fairness. |
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
VIRTUAL ASSESSMENT AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRES
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The trend to convert in-person assessments to virtual ones continued throughout the last two month and we experienced many of our clients around the world, embracing virtual technology to deliver technologically enabled assessment and development solutions. We are proud to have partnered with clients such as Nestle, the RTA, and the Commercial Bank of Dubai for example to deliver successfully on virtual AC projects.
One of our key objectives and ultimately achievements was to maintain the integrity and validity of face-to-face initiatives and often even to increase the user experience. All virtual centres included online psychometric assessments through leveraging our Propel Talent Portal technology and an array of observed interactions and exercises. Whilst we centre managed all of the virtual centres, in other centres we enabled our clients to take on the role of the assessor whilst Propel supported with the provision of exercises and the smooth running of the centres. |
To provide a couple of highlight projects, we worked with our partners to successfully launch the below virtual assessment and development centres that span from Graduate level to C-suite:
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PROPEL SOLUTIONS:
ORGANISATIONAL HEARTBEAT SURVEY
We just launched a new exciting solution, the Organisational Heartbeat Survey (OHS). We are excited about the OHS as we believe it adds real value to businesses by providing them with insights into their employees' current emotional and cognitive well-being.
We are offering the OHS free of charge as we believe it is a duty of ours to give back in an area of our expertise and where there will be a real benefit to organisations.
The OHS is based on 5 core dimensions of well-being, with each dimension being evaluated through 4 short questions. The entire survey will take less than 10 minutes to complete. The idea is to allow businesses to measure their heartbeat and pulse more frequently than through annual or bi-annual long traditional engagement surveys.
We are offering the OHS free of charge as we believe it is a duty of ours to give back in an area of our expertise and where there will be a real benefit to organisations.
The OHS is based on 5 core dimensions of well-being, with each dimension being evaluated through 4 short questions. The entire survey will take less than 10 minutes to complete. The idea is to allow businesses to measure their heartbeat and pulse more frequently than through annual or bi-annual long traditional engagement surveys.
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An anonymised and aggregated report on your organisation’s heartbeat results will be sent to you at the close of the survey. Once you have evaluated how well your organisation’s heart is beating, you can decide how to best increase your employee’s well-being and engagement.
Click here to launch the Organisational Heartbeat Survey for your business.
Click here to launch the Organisational Heartbeat Survey for your business.
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Mana Ghasemi
Managing Consultant |
Propel Solutions
Coaching On Demand
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Introducing Propel Coaching On Demand - Pioneering the Future of Agile Development
We are very excited to launch our Coaching On Demand solution at the same time as we are entering a phase where individuals and businesses are beginning to re-emerge, recover, and re-invent.
In this phase, having a personal coach is more important than ever, and our commitment as an organisation is to make coaching services more accessible, adaptable, and affordable and to help as many as possible to transition from a surviving to a thriving state.
The inception of Coaching On-Demand
Natural curiosity coupled with a conscious intent to continuously seek to learn from other thought-leaders and contributors and to explore ideas and inventions that could make a difference in the marketplace is as I see it one of Propel’s core strengths.
Prior to this global shift, we were exploring ways to make coaching more accessible, adaptable and affordable and were able to couple this aim with optimising the transition to virtual communication channels which became the ‘modus operandi’ during the last few months. In order to create and align remote coaching to meet individual and organisations needs, we sought wide-ranging perspectives to gain insight into what clients may be looking for from a coach, when and what they would be willing to invest and how sessions would work best. We also drew on our internal coach cadre for insight. Now, being a coach and having a coach are two completely different things. In fact we often say that if we are a coach ourselves, we would likely benefit from a coaching experience to focus on our own personal growth as well as upon others. As a coach and coach-facilitator myself, I had the privilege to have some incredible coaches around me in my professional world through various points of my career. I experienced both longer coaching engagements when I aspired and attained stretching goals and also one-off powerful conversations for me to figure out the way forward. |
These experiences of mine and other Propel coaches and psychologists enabled us to consider and shape our newest coaching offering to be as accessible and valuable as possible to both individuals investing in themselves and businesses looking to provide self-directed development opportunities for their talent. Our research highlighted the need for complete flexibility and the opportunity to explore and experience a coach and their style without committing to months of sessions. However, possibilities to keep your coach-pro available for those critical times when you need them as well as options to develop the coaching engagement into a longer series were also posited as important options and choices by many.
How it works
Our on demand coaching offering enables you to initiate a coaching session literally any time, any place and for any topic. Time efficient simplicity was foremost on our minds as we created a simple three step process enabling an individual to determine their priority - either selection of their coach or time and date of session to fit their schedule.
Using an intuitive integrated booking platform, Coaching On-Demand enables you to select your preferred time, date and duration of session or coaching package. Our aim is to increase autonomy and choice by enabling flexible virtual coaching appointments, individual coaching sessions for thirty or sixty minutes, options to try out a coach, experience differing coach-styles and to use smart technology that suits you best such as mobile or laptop. Once the session is booked, a client receives automated communication in the mode of their preference that also shares the virtual platform link to access their coach and their session. Check out our coach on demand videos here for simple steps to the booking process. World-class coaches
I’ve been asked before how virtual coaching compares to an in-person interaction. Often, our coaching presence, listening abilities and powerful questioning skills activated when we engage virtually with a client means a coach is likely to be more effectively attuned in a remote session.
Our global coaches are highly experienced in remote coaching and very attuned to extending and building trust through a non-judgmental mind-set and a real quality of presence, whether it’s for a 30 minute session or a longer-term coaching engagement. Engendering trust and psychological safety is found to be one of the most important factors in effective virtual interactions such as coaching (Reynolds, 2020). Building this relational field enables an individual to minimise the need to protect or justify and opens up the brain to thinking and exploring more openly and creatively toward change solutions. Click here to book your coaching session.
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Propel Training
BRAIN BASED COACHING CERTIFICATION
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In collaboration with our partner Neuroleadership Institute Middle East, we will be launching a fully virtual Brain Based Coaching Certification on 14th July. The BBCC enables you to gain all of the guided learning hours required for an ICF Coach Certification.
We have customised our program to be able to deliver on an exciting virtual platform which keeps our high quality standards, covering the following units during a period of around 5 months:
Learn cutting-edge, research-based tools and skills to understand the neuroscience behind insight-drives conversations. Learn how to apply groundbreaking skills in real-time to generate measurable results. |
Ask yourself:
Do you want to invest in your professional and personal growth? Do you want to be more solutions focused and generate energizing insights for yourself and others? Do you want to learn more about the brain? Do you want to bring your conversational skills to the next level? Do you aim to get certified as a professional coach? Or are you looking for ways to succeed in an agile, self-organizing team? 
What is Brain-Based Coaching?
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Strategic Solutions Partners
Hogan Assessments & Propel International
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Hogan’s suite of leading psychometric tools have long formed the backbone of Propel’s leadership and C-suite assessment solutions, helping organisations globally to better select, develop and motivate leadership talent to excel. It is with great excitement that we announce the evolution of our long collaboration as Propel joins the Hogan Solutions Partner network.
This means a closer strategic collaboration, from product and report design to the planning and execution of joint events. This partnership combines Propel’s depth of expertise talent assessment, high potential identification, and succession planning with Hogan’s market-leading suite of assessment instruments, data assets, and scientific acumen. |
We look forward to the benefits this partnership will bring to Propel clients globally as we join forces with Hogan to conduct joint R&D efforts and architect world-class assessment solutions based on over three-decades of validated research, extensive benchmarking and psychometric rigour.
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MEET A PROPELLER
HISHAM HARASH
Hisham Harash
System & Security Administrator |
Why are you passionate about Propel?
I am passionate about Propel because here we don't just do our job but do it with the highest quality standards in mind. Year after year this became our premium goal, and this reflects in the relationship between us and our clients as they consider us partners more than simply talent management providers. Moreover, I like the culture of Propel that focuses on the people and considers each individual part of the Propel family, and gives them the opportunity to grow and become their best selves. What do you believe is the biggest challenge for IT in talent management today?
I think the biggest challenge with the current situation with the COVID-19 outbreak is to push the technology to create pioneering solutions to continue providing companies and individuals with development and assessment services with the same level of quality and privacy. Here in Propel, we are offering the largest variety of online assessments, remote selection tools, and virtual development centers with the flexibility to customise models, tools, and reports to meet clients’ needs. And we insist on providing the same level of credibility by updating our data security policies to ensure our client privacy. What pioneering projects have you been working on?
As part of the technology team, I'm working now to enhance our portal data security, following the best world security practice and latest data protection regulations, adding new features like enhanced multi-factor authentication. I am also working to continue to provide our clients with the streamlined technical support they need with the current situation. |