1. Availability. “We often settle for what’s available, and what’s available isn’t always great.” This is a big hiring mistake. When there is a vacant position in your company, the team is compensating for the extra workload and productivity decreases, so obviously you want to fill the position as quick as possible. But that can be a dangerous mind-set when trying to find the best-fit employee. Managers might want to hire one of the first few candidates they see just because they’re “available.” Well, don’t. Make sure you take the time to meet with a variety of candidates. Look beyond their availability and look at their skills, behaviors and values. Will they truly be a great fit for the organization?

2. Ignorance. Knowledge is the heart of finding the best-fit employee and ignorance can get in the way. With prescreening assessments, employee background checks and social media, there is no excuse not get to know your candidates at a deeper level. And be prepared when you finally meet and interview potential employees. The ProfileXT®, a full-person assessment used for prescreening, training, managing and succession planning, takes the candidate’s results and provides helpful interview questions for hiring managers. The more data you have, the better hiring decision you’ll make.

3. Committees. When decisions can’t be made unless a whole committee settles on an agreement, decisions are often diluted. The best people to make hiring decisions are those who will be working directly with the new hire and who know the position and skills needed.

4. Comfort. Being too comfortable can also get in the way of success. “Why pursue greatness when you’ve got 324 channels and a recliner?” A mistake organizations often make is not actively looking for top talent because they’re comfortable. But being too comfortable gets in the way of innovation. In the article, readers were polled on which factor they thought was the biggest obstacle and, surprisingly, comfort had the most votes.

5. Momentum. “If you’ve been doing what you’re doing for years and it’s not-so-great, you are in a rut.” Don’t let your hiring process get in a rut! For example, if employee turnover is consistently high, take action and make a change. Find ways to innovate your hiring process: revise job descriptions, update your interview process and adopt comprehensive prescreening assessments.

6. Passivity. When it comes to hiring, there is no room for being indifferent! “There’s a difference between being agreeable and agreeing to everything.” When selecting candidates, don’t be too quick to agree with everyone. It’s important to trust your gut. Even if a candidate has a great resume and job experience, if they don’t connect with the team or managers, there will eventually be a problem.

Ultimately, the best approach to hiring is an “even-handed” hands-on approach. Be proactive and make sure the process gets you the best information to make a well-informed decision!

Average employee tenure at a company is approximately 4 years.  This is barely enough, or not enough, time for a company to fully recoup hiring and training costs. Companies cannot eliminate turnover; however, there are some items to consider when trying to retain quality people.

The following are 6 steps that an employer can take to attract and retain top talent:

1)      Evaluate Your Managers

Measure employee turnover by manager; this pinpoints the real problem. Poor managers cancel out all the good things that employers do to attract and retain the right people. Once the problem managers have been identified, help them! Use assessments or other tools to discover what these managers are doing to drive employees away and then provide training to develop them into better leaders. Good management can be better with CP360 tools and is crucial to employee retention.

2)      Create a Recognition Culture

Give your managers the responsibility for seeking out ways that employees go above and beyond. Create awards for excellent performance; this gives everyone an opportunity to be in the spotlight for doing a good job. Great examples of employee recognition include: thank you notes, employee of the month awards, newsletter recognition, service awards, etc. Look for ways to show that you are willing to meet them halfway in balancing their personal and professional lives- flexible hours, childcare facilities, birthday leave, etc. Last, but definitely not least, trust your employees. If you want people to trust you, then you have to trust them.

3)      Measure Your Turnover

The old saying says, “If you can’t measure it – you can’t manage it.” The easiest way to measure turnover is to find out how many W-2’s you sent out last year. Divide that number by the average number of employees throughout the year. Therefore, if you average 200 employees and you sent out 250 W-2’s (that’s including the 200 employees), they you had a 25% turnover ratio.  250/200 = 1.25 which is 25% more W-2’s sent than average employee count. You should further break that number down by departments, or locations, or some other measurable that relates to #1 above.

4)      Create an Atmosphere of Continual Self-Improvement

Today’s job candidates want the opportunity to develop themselves and continually polish their skills, abilities, and experience. Invest heavily in training and employee development and encourage employees to take advantage of the programs offered. Give everyone access to training that will enhance his or her self-esteem, their value, and their skills. Prove to your employees that there is no reason to leave when they can receive training and development from within the organization.

5)      Put Your Best Foot Forward

This next statement may definitely throw some employers for a loop; pay employees as much salary and provide as many benefits as you can afford from day one. The goal is to reduce turnover and retain the right people, so if you scale back the initial offer by 15%, will the savings be enough to retain the employee when another company offers more money? Probably not. Put your best foot forward from the start and let everyone know that you are paying as much as you can afford for each position. As a person moves up the ladder, their pay should be adjusted accordingly. Know what each job is worth, and pay it early.

6)      Match People to Jobs

Ensure people are matched to their jobs in terms of their abilities, interests, and personalities. When people are placed in positions where job demand and abilities match, where job stimulation and interest match, and where cultural demands and personalities match, turnover decreases and productivity increases. Employers can use assessments to determine the requirements of each position in terms of abilities, interests, and personalities and then use the information to match people to jobs where they will excel.

In most cases, we want the quick, easy, and inexpensive fix, but unfortunately, that is not always possible. Attracting and retaining the highest quality people may take time, effort, and money. By applying the 6 steps from above, companies can eliminate a large percentage of why people leave and keep the people that are essential to their success.

Which of the 6 steps do you think a company should focus on first? What are some other steps that employers can take to reduce employee turnover? Let us know in the “Comments” below.

At these sessions, clients received in-depth training that outlines all elements of the science behind assessments (see below). Attendees learned how to use the products for maximum impact in their own organizations for activities such as benchmarking their employees.

In developing and selling assessments, there are strict rules and guidelines that must be followed. These are issued by government and professional associations, such as, The Association of Test Publishers and International Test Commission. These guidelines were established to ensure that all products are credible, reliable, and validated. Profiles International sees their job as not only creating and developing these assessments, but to certify all users and provide on-going support. Although certification is not required to use our assessments, our certification programs have been extremely valuable for our clients.

“Helping our clients improve their talent management decisions through the use of assessments is one of the primary areas of our business,” said Bud Haney, president and co-founder of Profiles International. “We emphasize certification for those who use and administer our assessments because using them incorrectly can have negative results. But if you know what you’re doing, the impact can be tremendous.”

This week’s program covered 4 assessments:

• ProfileXT®
• Checkpoint360°™
• Profiles Performance Indicator™
• Profiles Customer Service Profile™

As an assessment user, certification helps you:

• Solidify your knowledge
• Understand the science
• Ensure proper application
• Maximize your ROI
• Earn HCRI credits
• Gain a new credential

“A well informed user with a valid and reliable product will have a significantly better result than someone who is casual about it”, said Dr. Scott Hamilton, PhD, Chief Research Officer of Profiles International.

There were numerous breakout sessions taking place throughout the two days hosted by client services specialists, enterprise solutions representatives and the research and development team. Profiles International employees are passionate about sharing what their solutions can do for organizations and are actively researching new products and tools to assist organizations in effectively hiring, training and developing the right person for the right job.

“I knew the Profiles assessments worked. Now I know why I can trust the results. I understand the origins, how they are validated and the behavioral science and research behind them. I also understand how the assessment reports are written so that managers, without any special training, can read them to get the in-depth information they need to manage people more effectively.” – Profiles International Client

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The Science behind Assessments

Before making an investment, it is important to know that you are purchasing a product that performs how it says it will perform. Our assessments are tested through multiple statistical measures that ensure we meet the required scientific measures with our instruments. Our validity and reliability testing ensures investors that our assessments are accurate, consistent and reliable.

Validity

Validity is the extent to which an assessment measures what it intends to measure. There are serious organizational and legal issues tied to the validity of an assessment. Organizations and business leaders who make decisions in accordance with the results from an invalid assessment could face serious financial consequences. Profiles International employs full-time psychologists and psychometricians who conduct ongoing research to ensure that our assessments exceed all employment assessment guidelines. Profiles’ assessments exceed the thirteen requirements set by the Department of Labor for assessments and meets all of the EEOC, ADA, DOL and Civil Rights Act requirements. The validity process involves a thorough analysis and testing of each item in each assessment. We ensure that our instruments are measureable, objective and relevant to success on the job.

Reliability

Reliability refers to the consistency of test items as selected by test-takers as well as the scores obtained when re-tested with the same assessment on different occasions. There are different types of reliability analysis, but all are concerned with a degree of consistency. The first reliability test measures the consistency of individual test questions. The second reliability test compares the consistency of the test as a whole. Profiles’ instruments meet all of the scientific recommendations for reliability based upon these two tests and other statistical analyses. Our assessments can be used with confidence by businesses all over the world due to the strict guidelines placed on the reliability of the assessments. Executives can invest with confidence knowing that our reports are based on updated measures and statistically valid and reliable scales.

The sports team concept is similar to the mentality managers have in the workforce. When playing for a team, if an athlete consistently underperforms, the coach will remove him/her from the game. When an employee underperforms in the workforce, he/she may be removed in order to make room for fresh talent. In order for the company to maintain good standing in the public eye and remain successful, it is important that its employees are working their best for the welfare of the company and its customers. Average performers would not cut it on the playing field, so why should they in the workforce?

In today’s world, the talent pool is overflowing with valuable, all-star caliber employee prospects. When it comes time to reorganize your talent, it is important to consider replacing lower performing employees with top-talent candidates who can be found both internally and externally. If possible, it is usually best to internally promote eligible individuals; however, sometimes a company needs fresh insight and new perspectives from new, external hires. The company should take its time in interviewing, assessing, and considering candidates in order to choose the best option.

Recent research from Aberdeen’s Human Capital Management (email to get a copy) shows that businesses must hire, retain and deploy the right talent to meet business challenges, grow the organization and keep customers happy. The research outlines how the Best-in-Class organizations shared several common characteristics relative to effective talent management strategies

To achieve this Best-in-Class performance, learn how companies:

• Can use talent to impact the business by understanding which roles are critical to business growth and performance
• Hold the business accountable for talent management activities as part of everyday business
• Provide the right data to all stakeholders to understand, measure and monitor the effect of talent decisions on the business.

The guide is organized around 13 important assessment principles and their applications. This final chapter brings all the principles together. They are listed below in the order of their appearance in the text, with the chapter number in parentheses. Together, the 13 principles provide a comprehensive framework for conducting an effective personnel assessment program.

1. Use assessment tools in a purposeful manner

2. Use the whole-person approach to assessment

3. Use only assessment instruments that are unbiased and fair to all groups

4. Use only reliable assessment instruments and procedures

5. Use only assessment procedures and instruments that have been demonstrated to be valid for the specific purpose for which they are being used

6. Use assessment tools that are appropriate for the target population

7. Use assessment instruments for which understandable and comprehensive documentation is available

8. Ensure that administration staff are properly trained

9. Ensure that testing conditions are suitable for all test takers

10. Provide reasonable accommodation in the assessment process for people with disabilities

11. Maintain assessment instrument security

12. Maintain confidentiality of assessment results

13. Ensure that scores are interpreted properly

Next Step – Speak to an Assessment Expert

Kestly Development has been in the assessment for over 12 years and we know that purchasing an assessment solution is a big decision. We encourage you to contact us for a risk-free consultation to ensure that you are making the best possible choice for your organization. Please call us today at (734) 483-6453

Email Mike Kestly for a complete review of the 13 Essential Principals for Assessment Buyers at mike@kestlydevelopment.com

There is no people “side” of business. The most neglected fact in business is that we’re all human and virtually everything we do in the context of business can be distilled down to the emotions and whims of people, just like you and me.

Douglas McGregor, who wrote “The Human Side of Enterprise” fifty years ago, suggested, “Behind every managerial decision or action are assumptions about human nature and human behavior.” McGregor was the management guru who popularized Theory Y management, or the idea that people long for a workplace that allows them to actualize their greatest potential.

Humans are trustworthy, motivated, and collaberative. Unfortunately, most of us come from the Frederick Taylor scientific management school of thinking. Taylor famously suggested 100 years ago that, “In the past, man has been first; in the future, the system must be first. The first object of any good system must be that of developing first class men.” I’m sure Henry Ford was a big Frederick Taylor fan. Theory X management is based upon the premise that men, by nature, are moldable and need to be trained because, left to their own devices, men are lazy losers. Have you ever worked at a company that had this kind of underlying assumptions about its people? What was the effect on the work climate over time?

The intersection of psychology and business is typically seen as being as congested, stressful, and emotionally barren as a peak commute traffic day on the LA freeways. But, thankfully, we live in an era in which neuroscientists are teaching us about the malleability of our brain and the emotionally contagious nature of our workplaces. We are not robots and, yet, when we’re treated as such, we can lose our passion for our work and our compassion for our fellow employees and customers.

Yet, companies that create a healthy “psycho-hygiene” are able to tap into the full potential of their people. These companies evaluate their leaders not purely on financial results but on scales for both results and relationships, they create cultures of recognition knowing that positivity has a ripple effect just like negativity does, and they create a sense of purpose and meaning that helps employees feel that they’re motivated by an internal calling or inspiration as opposed to being a trained seal who only performs when financial incentives or awards are offered.

In sum, we’re finally starting to realize that organizations are purely the sum total of the relationships that make up that organization. The companies we admire are like the people we admire: resilient, authentic, personable, collaborative, ambitious, and humble. Daniel Goleman has proven that two-thirds of the success in business is based upon our Emotional Intelligence as opposed to our IQ or our level of experience. As we look for the next crop of future CEO’s, maybe it’s time for America’s corporations to start interviewing grads from the Psychology masters’ programs rather than the MBA programs.

Written by Don Moore, an associate professor at the University of California Berkeley, the article discusses the flaws of traditional job interviews and how evaluations and assessments are needed to aid in hiring the best job candidate.

2 Common Flaws of Traditional Job Interviews 

Favoritism. Even if it’s unintentional, interviews are bias. Interviews are based on “good” first impressions, which means the most poised, charming and attractive candidates are more likely to be selected by the interviewer. As Moore points out, consequently, those individuals do not always have the best job performance.

Overconfidence. Managers tend to be overconfident when it comes to hiring. Everyone wants to believe they are experts at judging character. But sole judgment, like that taken away from an interview, is simply not enough to predict successful job performance. Instead of relying on gut instincts from an interview, it’s better to base hiring decisions on evidence so there are no surprises once the candidate is onboard.

So to hire the best candidate, in addition to interviews, pre-screening assessments are needed to figure out if the person does in fact fit the job! When discussing job fit, Moore highlights the fact that, “the best approach is to determine exactly how fit matters and explicitly assess that using a structured test or structured interview questions.”

In evaluating candidates, pre-hire assessments are useful in looking at skills, competencies and behaviors. In addition to a simple skills report, some assessments offer insight for hiring managers in preparing for interviews. For example, the ProfileXT®, a total person assessment used throughout the employee life cycle, includes an interview guide.

With the use of assessments, having a prepared and structured interview increases the efficiency of your hiring process and will help you hire the best-fit candidate possible!

We’ve all heard the saying that “failing to plan is planning to fail.” The traditional strategic planning process often focuses heavily on large capital expenditures, technology, and marketing investments. But that traditional process focuses too little on the organization and the human resources necessary for sound execution.

It is almost as if the business takes for granted that it already has people with the necessary capabilities. The truth is that it can take several months, if not years, to get the right people into the right jobs, which can seriously hinder the execution of even the most well-thought out strategy.

The Strategic Workforce Planning Process

We polled our experts and asked them to define a simple, straightforward strategic workforce management process. They outlined the following 6 steps:

• establish where your business is going
• understand where the labor market is going
• understand your future talent demands
• assess your current talent inventory
• identify your talent gaps and strategies to close them
• implement your strategies

1. Understand your business strategy. The first step in the strategic workforce planning process is to have a clear understanding of your business strategy. At the end of the day, your workforce is there to implement the strategy and achieve expected business results.

Strategic change fails when the people implementing the change don’t know what they need to do differently in order to support the new strategy. These disconnects create confusion, conflict, and stress, and put even the best people in a position to fail. Make sure that you have thought through the operational details of your strategy, and that you have sufficient facts and support to make a good decision.

Know how far and how fast you can reasonably move. It takes time, money, and thought to design and build technological infrastructure, production facilities, and distribution capability. Similarly, it takes time to hire, deploy, and train talent. This is even more true when your workforce requires special skills or credentials, or when your jobs are located in a talent-poor or highly competitive region.

The bottom line is that you need to know your business strategy, and the impact of that strategy, before you can create a meaningful workforce plan.

2. Understand the labor market. Understanding the labor market for the jobs necessary to drive your strategy will help you better understand the length of time it will take to fill a job, the salary you should expect to pay for the job, and potential challenges to filling the job. For example, a growing suburb might be in need of a new school, but the area is expensive and difficult to attract teachers. You need to take these factors into account as you build your strategic workforce planning.

Common factors to consider include macroeconomic forecasts, demographic trends, regulatory changes, and talent movement trends within your industry.

3. Understand your future talent demands. Once you have translated your business strategy into operational requirements, you must design the organization and the jobs necessary to implement the strategy. If you contrast this with your organization and jobs as they stand today, you can identify jobs you will need to create, jobs you will need to phase out, and the optimal timing of that transition.

Critical roles are those jobs that are mission critical to your future business strategy. If you don’t have a solid plan for filling these roles with capable people, the business strategy simply won’t come to life. For example, a new cardiac ward in a hospital needs cardiologists and acute care nurses in order to function.

Critical employee segments can include mature workers, visible minorities, members of Gen Y, ethnic groups, veterans, aboriginals, and others. They can be strategically important to certain organizations that need to fulfill requirements for certain types of government contracts or grants, or that want to meet the needs of key customer groups. For example, if a retail organization wants to position itself in areas with growing Latino populations, then they need to have Latino employees.

4. Assess your current talent inventory. Once you understand future demand, the amount of change needed, and the optimal timing of that change, you should inventory your current talent pool. This will help you determine how to eventually transition people into new roles. It will also give you insight into who won’t fit into the new organization and help you create an exit plan.

5. Identify talent gaps and strategies to close them. After you have assessed your internal talent inventory and understand the jobs necessary for executing your new strategy, you can identify your gaps, determine a time frame for closing those gaps, and create specific tactics for closing gaps.

6. Implement your strategies. The last step is to run scenarios in order to understand how the availability of these critical roles or segments impacts the rest of your business plan. Then determine how your workforce plan will be impacted. Timing is important, which is why we examined the labor market earlier in the process.

More Like Painting a Bridge than Building One

Strategic workforce planning is a process, not a one-time event. Like other business processes such as Total Quality Management (TQM) or Six Sigma, strategic workforce planning requires a continuous improvement mindset. By standardizing our approach to a very important and challenging business problem, we reduce errors and better understand the factors that drive success. This ultimately reduces costs and increases effectiveness.

Finally, remember these three key lessons that will help your strategic workforce planning efforts succeed:

• Secure top-level executive sponsorship — don’t attempt to swallow the entire elephant at once and establish and track leading metrics.
• Inspect what you expect, starting with a few key metrics.
• Start simple and stay the course. This discipline will help you make informed decisions that maximize benefit to the business.

For more information – email us to get a copy of “The Executives Guide to Strategic Workforce Planning” Executive Briefing mike@kestlydevelopment.com

In today’s economy, even the most complex and profitable healthcare organizations are in a constant state of flux. Despite high growth and booming profits, turnover levels and ineffective management can have a significant impact on even the strongest companies. In the healthcare industry, it is crucial to hire people that genuinely care for the welfare of others, and that these people are hired into the right jobs.

In this 4 part series, we will summarize the research and findings from a recent Bersin & Associates report titled: Selection Assessments for Acquiring and Developing Talent in the Healthcare Industry.
With such a large pool of qualified candidates in the healthcare industry, why is it that so many HR professionals are challenged to identify job candidates best suited for a particular position? This challenge can be overwhelming.

If we look at proven hiring techniques and best practices from those experiencing fewer people challenges, we can see the tremendous value of investing in assessments for the hiring process.
These selection assessments provide the tools and technology that enable organizations to evaluate whether or not a person has the right behaviors, attributes and interests to perform a unique type of job. 77% of organizations across all industries include some form of selection assessment in their overall acquisition strategy. A recent Bersin research report reviews the current state of selection assessments, specifically in the healthcare industry.

The global medical industry is one of the world’s fastest growing fields encompassing an array of services including hospitals, physician offices and nursing homes. The workforce is so large that one in every eleven US residents is employed in the healthcare industry. Another Bersin report, “2010 Talent Management Factbook” outlines how although a booming industry, healthcare appears to be one of the least mature when concerning overall talent issues. According to Bersin, when compared with other industries, the healthcare industry is playing ‘catch-up’ in regards to talent acquisition strategies.
Best Practice: Improving quality of selection requires an in-depth understanding of what the essential qualities are for successful performance in every position.

The best way to identify essential qualities for a job role is to study them among top, middle and bottom performers. Creating a benchmark allows you to more effectively identify these traits. The company must also create a checklist of that particular job profile including:
• Characteristics of the position
• Organizational culture
• Core competencies
• Business model
• Past barriers for success
• Team environment
• Expectations
• Career tracks/succession plans

Assessments that measure predefined skills, behavioral traits and interests are a science-based means of ascertaining job and culture fit. These assessments can also be leveraged by using a variety of assessments throughout the organization, from executive-level positions to front-line workers.

In part two of this series on selection assessments in the healthcare industry, we will cover:
• The current state of assessments
• Case study example with Mountain States Health Alliance.

Original material sourced from Bersin & Associates 2011
– For the complete Bersin report contact me and I will email it to you.

Method One

• You examine the candidate’s resumes and find many points that suggest they are right for your company…you select the top 3 candidates.
• You call the candidates in for an interview and spend a long time reviewing the resume and interspersing the interview with questions about his/her likes and dislikes. You also tell the candidate what your organization is all about.
• You call the candidate’s references and hear rave reviews.
• You offer “your favorite” candidate the position at a top salary. You negotiate other benefits.
• You advise everyone in the office that you have found the perfect person for the open position.

Method Two

• You post an opening internally and externally. An external candidate looks promising, so you also examine his/her credentials.
• You ask all 3 candidates to take a “Job Match” assessment that provides you with more information to consider, and questions to ask each one during an interview. The external candidate, reportedly a superstar, is still in the running.
• You interview all the candidates and examine assessment results, paying particular attention to job interests and skills of candidates, and whether those interests and skills match those of people who have done this job well before.
• You conduct background and social media checks, and call people at previous jobs (not only those on the reference list) to find out if your finalists’ resumes are accurate and truthful.
• You hire the best person for the job. It may or may not be the purported superstar.

The second method may take a bit longer than the first, and it may even cost more at the outset. The advantages over the first method include the fact that it allows you to gather information about all candidates aside from the information that they provided to you. This allows you to make a better, more informed, decision because it is based on objective facts (not your gut). The process saves you money the long run because you are certain you hired the person with the best job fit. It also protects both the organization AND the candidate. The organization is protected because you have made a fact-based and fair decision. The candidate is better off because he/she accepted a job they are interested in and able to do.