If you could see into the future when you’re hiring a new employee, you could save countless hours and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in turnovers.
Unfortunately, it’s not possible to see into the future. And even if you could, there’s no single solution that’s guaranteed to make every hire a permanent one.
But using the right assessments can significantly increase your chances of hiring success, and improve your retention levels as well as loweryour cost-per-hire ratio—which is certain to keep your hiring managers happy.
Behavioural assessments are pre-employment tests that assess the temperament of potential employees, to predict how they will behave in their role. That is, they give insight into the candidate’s future work potential by assessing their core personality traits: their typical behaviour, work ethic, decision-making processes, and communication style. These traits are thought to be enduring throughout the individual’s life—so how they have behaved at work in the past is a good indicator of how they will behave in future roles.
There are three important ways that the information from behavioural assessments can lead to better employee retention rates.
1. Behavioural assessments can distinguish candidates:
If your job vacancy attracts candidates with virtually identical education histories and levels of work experience, it can be difficult to decide which ones to choose to interview. By getting insight into their personality, you’ll be more likely to see whether they’ll fit the position in regards to their typical behaviour.
It can also help you to differentiate which candidate’s behavioural profile stands out from those with similar qualifications, and to see whether they’ll fit into your particular corporate culture.
2. Behavioural assessments can guide the interview:
Traditional interviewing methods have a notoriously low success rate in predicting the candidate’s future performance—and they’re often responsible for failures in retention. By contrast, behavioural interviewing attempts to deliver insight that will help you make an informed hiring decision, by discovering the past behaviours and future potential of the candidate.
It provides a framework of personalised questions designed to assess the candidate’s natural behavioural traits, and determine their fit and their potential for success within the requirements of the role.
3. Behavioural assessments can help the manager with coaching:
Different personalities respond to different management strategies, and successful coaching and management depends on a unique approach for each individual. Behavioural assessments can give valuable insights into how each individual responds and relates to others, which can help managers to better understand and connect with their employees. It enables managers to use their own styles more effectively with each individual, and foster more positive outcomes and happier employees—which means better retention rates.
You might already be using behavioural assessments for candidate testing and staff development, but if you take a good look, you’ll probably find you’re not getting the full benefit from them. And if you’re not using them yet, you should have a go and see what a difference they make to your hiring and education. Contact Rogers Group for advice on how to get the best value from the assessments you already have, or to find out more about our assessments and how they can help you—when you notice the promising shift towards better retention rates, you’ll be glad you did.
