Discover Workplace Success with Personality Assessment Tools

Are you eager to energize and motivate your employees? Then you might need to know more about their strengths, weaknesses, and personalities. When your employees can gel as a team, the sky’s the limit in terms of workplace success.

But you’ll need the right methods to gather information to help your employees and company thrive. Keep reading to learn how personality assessment tools can improve workplace productivity and cohesion!

What Are Workplace Assessments?

First, it pays to understand a little bit about workplace assessments and how they work. Workplace personality tests are mechanisms that can measure different elements of a person’s personality. They can measure how agreeable or extroverted someone is, for example.

Assessments also can cover skills needed for a given job. You may need a candidate with knowledge of particular computer skills, for instance. As another example, you may want candidates with strong analytical skills.

Sometimes these personality traits or skills don’t come through in an interview. That’s where assessments come in as a valuable tool.

These tests can be administered during the hiring process or well into an employee’s tenure. They can measure personality traits, job skills, and other attributes. They’re an excellent way to take stock of an employee’s areas of strength and areas of need.

Most importantly, the results of these tests can help a company create a better workplace culture. Workplace assessments offer a more concrete tool than written or in-person evaluations.

Assessments can be developed entirely by a third-party organization. Alternatively, they can reflect specific questions developed by a workplace.

Workplace assessments create an opportunity for collaborative reflection. Or they can be very individualized. Overall, they help companies understand themselves more.

If the assessments are reviewed with care, you might just see improved workplace productivity. Assessments can help cultivate better communication and empathy among employees. And they can nudge employees to greater heights.

Consider Your Assessment Options

Not all assessments are alike. More than likely, you will choose the type of assessment depending on the situation.

Maybe you’re going through the hiring process. Perhaps you’re trying to determine promotions. Different assessments can inform your decisions.

You can assess individuals on particular topics related to their job. This could include anything from data entry to nursing skills and web development. That way, you’ll be able to ensure that an individual has the necessary abilities to complete the job.

You can test for emotional intelligence and adaptability. Employees who do well on these assessments will be equipped to handle challenges, change, and different personalities.

When you’re trying to decide how to create teams, assessments are helpful. You’ll want individuals who are willing to let go of preconceived ideas and able to receive feedback.

Other types of assessments may cover leadership skills or specific aptitudes. After all, you want individuals in your organization who can troubleshoot problems and balance responsibilities.

Some individuals may be better suited to customer-facing positions. Others may work better behind the scenes.

Look for personality tests that come with guides or explanations of the results. Tests can be designed to be taken in a few minutes. Other versions of assessments can be more elaborate, with questions that require a bigger time investment.

Use Assessments in the Hiring Process

When your HR department is tasked with hiring and onboarding candidates, you know that is a time commitment. From sifting through applications to setting up interviews, the process can be long. That’s especially true if the search stalls for one reason or another.

When investing time is inevitable, it’s critical to get the most from that time investment. That’s why evaluating your hiring process is important, too. While interviews are valuable, a more objective form of assessment can make the process better.

You want to do everything you can to make sure you hire a candidate who’s qualified and likely to stick around. Personality assessments can be helpful in this situation.

Pre-employment tests can accompany interviews when you’re screening candidates. With these processes working in tandem, you’ll be able to gauge whether a candidate is a good fit for the company. And that can reduce turnover — and bad hires.

Administering skills-based tests ensures that a promising candidate has what it takes. Tests that assess soft skills can help make sure a candidate fits your culture. You’ll be able to get the results quickly with scores that can inform your hiring decisions.

Ultimately, you want work environment harmony. You don’t want to hire candidates with unrealistic expectations. And you don’t want someone with insufficient skills or behavioral red flags.

Using assessments during the hiring process can help you weed out risky hires. These are people who might say the right things but lack the essential qualities you want. Instead, candidates who are the right fit will rise to the top.

Build Better Team Cohesion

One of the key benefits of personality assessments is that you can build better teams within your workforce. To work toward a swift and effective solution, you need the right dynamics in teams. Trying to determine how employees will mesh, especially if they’re new, isn’t always easy.

Assessments can help you make more strategic decisions when it comes to the composition of internal teams. You may be trying to form a team to evaluate a new product or streamline a process, for example. You’ll want individuals whose personalities complement each other in this scenario.

Additionally, workplace assessments can be given to existing teams as an exercise in understanding. Team members can take a common test and share results. The act of doing so can help individual team members understand how their team members think and react.

Knowing these details of a person’s personality makes it easier to react appropriately as a team member. For example, a team member may realize they should listen more actively.

And knowing these details about oneself can help reshape responses with greater sensitivity in mind. Assessments build greater awareness, which builds greater trust and compassion.

Help Remove Biases

It’s easy to make assumptions about individuals and their potential for success. Everything from educational pedigree to a person’s name can trigger biases.

As a result, some extremely qualified candidates might never get the chance to join a particular team. Or they might get passed over for a promotion. In some instances, a person might not even get hired.

Personality assessments can be a tool to help reduce this problem. In fact, they can help enact an important cultural shift within a company. Assessment tools can level the playing field if given to all candidates or employees.

Fairer evaluations encourage a culture of inquiry and acceptance. They also demonstrate that an employer values a diverse, qualified workforce.

For applicants considering a particular company, that can go a long way. Companies should publicize their assessments to applicants. Applicants will appreciate the effort to create a fair and balanced approach to company culture.

Encourage Self-Improvement

Finally, assessments are a great tool to spur employees to new heights. Sometimes employees may not have enough confidence in their roles. And sometimes they might have too much.

Assessments can offer a balanced perspective. And that can help both employees and their managers. Employees can set goals for personal growth and develop a mindset of continuous improvement.

Managers can administer tests designed to align with a particular employee’s goals or career path. For instance, maybe an employee is poised for a promotion to senior customer success manager. Perhaps they want to move from marketing to admissions.

Test questions can be put together to fit the employee’s intended paths. The test results can help managers see jumps or lapses in an employee’s development. The results might help a manager see areas, like time management, where an employee could improve.

You can use assessments to identify employees whose skills are above their current roles. This can help with placing employees into areas where they can use their strengths more fully.

Assessments can be tied to employee performance. They can be part of monthly or quarterly evaluations. And performance can be tied to promotions.

Assessments can build better self-awareness. An employee may realize they need to be more adaptable. Or an assessment may show soft skills, like an analytical mindset, that an employee never thought they had.

In short, assessments can help frame strengths, weaknesses, and unique attributes. For an employee to advance within the organization, or in their desired career path, an assessment can point the way to improvements.

Assessments should be given regularly to get the most from them. Employees will be able to see and celebrate improvements. Plus they might just discover something new about themselves.

Turn to Personality Assessment Tools

The right skill and personality assessment tools can help organizations make more strategic decisions. Assessments can make hiring processes more effective and remove biases. They also can build better teams and help employees set goals.

At Success Performance Solutions, we’ve been partnering with businesses since 1996 to offer the best workplace assessments. We can help you find and keep your best talent. Contact us today to learn more!