The importance of knowing your current and future employees better

Companies no longer look for employees who only have good technical skills. They are also concerned with the bigger package – namely, the individual and how his or her personality makes them react to the working environment around them, especially when it comes to career advancement and assigning current employees to new tasks within am organisation.

One of the most effective ways of getting to know a current or future employee better is through the application of psychometric assessments. These assessments attempt to objectively measure not only the employee’s skills and aptitude but also their personality traits. This is essentially the reason for which psychometric tests are becoming increasingly popular for personnel engagement and assessment. Recently published data shows how it is now used by over 80 per cent of the Fortune 500 companies in the USA and by over 75 per cent of the Times Top 100 companies in the UK. Tests are used by numerous employers across a vast array of sectors, including IT, engineering, energy, banking, consultancy and accountancy, throughout the civil and public sectors, fast moving consumer goods and retail.

Through its professional association with Profile:Match, a UK-based company providing online assessment tools, Micro Consulting has been offering psychometric assessments for the past seven years.

“Although we have been offering these tools to assist clients for over seven years, we have recently experienced a surprising and interesting surge in demand for psychometric testing,” says Joanne Bondin, Head of Selection & Recruitment Unit.

“There are a number of reasons for this significant rise in interest. Employers nowadays seem to be keener on knowing their employees better, not only with regard to their qualifications and work aptitude but also in terms of their personality and social interaction patterns. Another reason is an acknowledgement of the importance of more scientific evalutations. HR functions have also assumed a more strategic role within organisations and this is another factor in the increased demand for scientific-based methods of assessment,” Ms Bondin added.

“A number of advantages have marked the successful take-up of Profile:Match’s people assessment tools. Profile:Match is a competency-based tool that is designed to be able to assess people in day-to-day roles and duties, and because the test results are scientifically based, they enjoy a high degree of accuracy. “If, for example, I am an employer looking for an employee with great decision-making skills, how do I go about assessing this quality in people? The best way is through a scientific process that a tool like Profile:Match can offer. Assessments conducted through Profile:Match can also be tailored and customised depending on the skill being sought and an interesting point is that Profile:Match tools do not require the users to be qualified assessors, because the process taps into the full power and capability of the internet to generate tailormade, highly statistically-based reports,” explained Ms Bondin.

“MISCO Consulting’s professional collaboration with Profile:Match stems from the high quality tools that are made available to the end-user – the employer – in an easy ‘click and go’ interface that gives instant access to the expertise that has kept our team at the cutting edge of online assessment. Whether an employer is using these tools to develop staff, to predict future performance, to identify leadership potential or to identify training needs and objectives, Profile:Match offers the technologies to assist in assessments for the full employment cycle within one common framework and to help base decisions on objective and standardised results. It can be appreciated that the above decisions are crucial to the individual involved and also critical to the company concerned,” she concluded.

Profile:Match will be running an online webinar session about its suite of psychometric assessments on 1 November from 10.30am to 12noon. It will be addressed by Grace Walsh, who will give a presentation on Profile:Match followed by useful tips for more effective use to facilitate HR processes including team analysis, recruitment, succession planning, etc. The webinar will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

For the webinar access link and for more information about the online psychometric assessments provided by MISCO Consulting, please contact Joanne Bondin on jbondin@miscomalta.com or 2205 4503.