Personality Tests: Can They Help Our Productivity at Work?
How are businesses using personality tests and can they enhance my talent pool?
As we look inward with hopes of improving our well-being, confidence, and lifestyle, many organizations and individuals are turning to personality tests to identify where they can strive for self-improvement.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, it became clear that not only do we all work differently, but we’re also searching for more choices in the way we work. Across the globe, professionals have started looking for roles with more flexibility to facilitate a cleaner work/life balance.
One-size-fits-all corporate solutions are being taken less seriously as we come to understand that everyone has unique productivity habits. Many businesses are embracing the ethos that bespoke solutions and work styles facilitate our best work and enhance our daily well-being.
As a tangible example, you’ll notice it’s becoming increasingly common to find remote, hybrid, and flexible working on job listings in order to attract the best talent. Organizations such as Flexa have popped up as a result of this, highlighting where professionals can seek flexible working.
That being said, many companies are still searching for predictable, reliable, and productive work from their talent. And for many businesses, in our world of continuous growth, the stakes have never been higher. Many are looking for prospective employees with a consistent level of productivity; someone who can get more done in less time.
“It is not uncommon for employers to seek candidates with whom they feel a sense of familiarity or like-mindedness. For predictability of performance and fit into a corporate culture, employers rely on tools such as Myers-Briggs, DiSC, The Enneagram, and others to determine communication styles, behavioral tendencies, and characteristics that can meet a corporation’s culture and job requirements.
Due to the fact that behavioral tendencies are apt to change and candidates can be enticed to alter their responses during assessments, these methods have met with criticism.” Source: The Rework Sessions
Talent, leaders, and teams have turned to the web in search of the latest productivity hacks, but they’ve been met with tips and tricks for time management, bio-hacking, apps, and productivity affirmations, all of which are generic solutions.
Maximizing Productivity at Work
One of the most efficient tools in gauging and predicting productivity (and also curating a bespoke solution to waning productivity at work) is a personality test. These tests offer validation for what we may already know about ourselves, but also a sense of clarity for what we don’t know.
Especially in this post-pandemic world, it benefits organizations to recognize and celebrate their people, their individual flare, and their creativity. Corporate responsibility and empathy have never been more under the microscope. By being open to the concept that each person is unique and has a different approach to managing their productivity, we can all become more efficient and positive in our working patterns.
How are Personality Tests Used by Employers?
Many organizations have adapted personality tests into their way of working for several reasons.
Mostly, employers adapt a personality test into the hiring process as a way of reducing risks while making decisions. During the recruitment period, a personality test may be given to assess what does or doesn’t work with the current team chemistry. These tests may help identify candidates who fit the role and company culture, but they could also allow an employer to construct more cohesive teams within their organization.
Beyond hiring, these tests have been useful to employers by way of trying to predict productivity in times of political and economic uncertainty. These tests claimed to have helped to predict productivity across various working models (home working, office, or a hybrid approach). In some instances, an employer may issue a team building personality test to examine any team challenges in need of resolution.
Hiring managers and employers search for predictability in personality and productivity methods for a myriad of reasons. Employee turnover can be a costly process due to the resources, time, and money it takes to onboard and train talent. It also costs an organization time and money when employees haven’t optimized their productivity.
Ultimately, organizations need cohesive teams. Personality tests can be a useful tool to narrow down the talent pool to find the perfect candidate for their culture.
What to Keep in Mind About Personality Tests
While personality tests can be extraordinary tools for both individuals and businesses alike, there is much to keep in mind when considering how accurate they truly are — especially if you are making serious decisions based on their results.
Personality tests (and the summaries of a person they may produce) are highly theoretical. They can only predict how a person might react to any given set of circumstances. While the individual filling out the personality test may give honest answers, they can often oversimplify an actually quite complex answer.
These tests also don’t factor in our unconscious reactions, responses, and biases that come as a result of our lived experiences. Life experience can have an enormous physical effect on our nervous system, training us to act in different ways to ensure our mental and physical survival. Often, as individuals are exposed to new and different stimuli and life experiences, their responses to these tests might shift over time.
There are other variables to consider. A personality test may not factor in lifestyle choices and other facets of the human experience that impact mood and emotional stability. In this instance, you’re only receiving small pieces of someone’s full picture.
As these tests are all self-assessments, it’s important to consider that questions will be answered based on how someone perceives themselves. This is crucial to differentiate how they may act in any given situation.
While they may produce somewhat objective results, no personality test is 100% accurate. Because there is such a high demand for predictability and good team chemistry, an employer may be keen to enact policy based on the results, which may not produce consistent productivity from your people.
Simply put, while you may be interested in asking prospective and current employees to fill out a personality test questionnaire, it’s important to remember the human experience is difficult to condense down into just a few personality categories. While these can be incredibly useful indicators to see who a person is, human beings are constantly evolving, shifting, and changing as we walk through life.
Personality tests can offer significant benefits to employers, leaders, and managers, but it’s crucial to consider that in some instances, these tests can be counterproductive.
You may end up filing unique talent in the ‘not right for you’ category, but they could end up being your greatest asset.
To find out more about how you can get the most from your people, take a look at my process.
This article was originally published on reworksessions.com.
The Rework Sessions offers Professional Transformation Coaching to help you and your team map your innate professional skills and strengths and improve the quality of your working style and culture. To learn more about how The Rework Session can help you or your team, send an email to info@reworksessions.com or book a call here.
