Case Study - PAS Review and Assessor Development
Scene setting
The action
I included the new assessor at all stages in the process, this in my experience being the best way to ensure that she was fully equipped and confident to run her own PAS assessments going forward. I encouraged her to feel free to ask her own questions in the preliminary online conversation.
The assessment location forced me to have two overnight stays, and I asked permission to include the new assessor so that we could have two evenings, first to plan the assessment and then afterwards to share the completion of the report and scoresheet.
Unfortunately, I was told that the CIPP would only fund one night’s stay for me, so I decided to pay for a second night personally and I arranged to spend my two nights in the new assessor’s home city. This allowed us a good planning session which paid dividends on the day of the assessment when our new assessor felt very confident in her role.
We shared the discussion, and both contributed questions and suggestions. We subsequently shared the report writing, partly in person and partly online, and when the countersigner raised queries, I ensured that we both agreed our response.
I promptly informed the CIPP that I was fully confident in the new assessor’s ability to conduct assessments on her own.
Without sight of our report, I recall two specific issues which had for some reason not arisen in previous reviews. We found first that the firm had no clear view of why re-runs were necessary each month, so we encouraged them (with helpful practical suggestions) to create a record analysing the causes so that they could work to reduce re-runs in future.
We also found that larger clients were offered a special NMW/NLW calculation tool to ensure that the effect of multiple salary sacrifice schemes was correctly included. We argued that this was unfair to smaller clients and should be offered to all or none.
The results
The overall outcome of my assessment was that the firm were pleased to be reaccredited and to learn of a number of areas where they needed to improve. And CIPP now had an assessor based in Scotland, which should reduce travel costs in future.