How do you Assess Values?
Neil Thompson
Dealing with abstract and often emotive issues like values can be very challenging, especially if you are called upon to assess values, as indeed S/NVQ assessors are in some vocational areas (health and social care, for example). How on earth can we assess something that is so abstract, so subjective and so potentially fraught with difficulties? And yet this is something we have to do if we are to make sure that a home care assistant going into the home of a vulnerable elderly person is going to treat that person with respect and dignity and not exploit them.
Values are abstract entities so it is very difficult to assess them directly, but this does not mean that it cannot be done. Very often they can be assessed by the trail they leave. Like the invisible man who leaves footprints where he walks, values also leave ‘footprints’. For example, the fact that someone takes the time to listen to someone who has communication difficulties can be very indicative of a commitment to the values of respect and dignity. Similarly, a commitment to equality and diversity can be sought in the behaviours and attitudes of staff – the fact that they say they are committed to these values is – as we have learned the hard way in the past – not enough.
Of course, there are no guarantees that someone who appears to be acting in a way consistent with the required values will do so in all relevant circumstances or over time. But then, of course, when we are dealing with people, there are few guarantees anyway.
One objection I have encountered a great deal is people objecting to being told what their values should be. The objection generally goes something like this: ‘My values are personal. What gives someone else the right to tell me what my values should be?’ And they are right, because one person does not have the right to tell another what their values should be but there is more to it than this. This is because an employer does have the right to insist that staff employed to undertake a particular role subscribe to the values necessary to undertake that role successfully. For example, it is legitimate for a retail employer to insist that sales staff are committed to the value of customer care. But the values do have to be relevant – the same retail employer cannot insist that staff have a commitment to, say, his or her political values.
So, if you are called upon to run training courses or provide assessment services in relation to values, you will need to be clear about what those specific values are and how they are relevant to the work the staff concerned will be expected to undertake. If you are not aware of the relevance yourself, you will struggle to make them aware of this – and therefore find it very difficult if not impossible to gain their commitment to making it work.
Values are the things we find important – literally, that which we value – and so we need to make sure there is clarity about which values are important for a particular role and why.
Neil Thompson is Professor of Applied Social Studies at Staffordshire University and managing director of Avenue Consulting Ltd (www.avenueconsulting.co.uk). He is the editor of the British Journal of Occupational Learning.
This article was first published in Training and Learning (www.trainingandlearning.co.uk) in June 2005 and is reproduced with the kind permission of the Institute of Training and Occupational Learning (www.traininginstitute.co.uk)
© Neil Thompson 2005
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