Have you ever thought about the real costs to your business when a staff member resigns? What about the employee who lingers around unproductively, upsetting other employees and general morale?
Recent research by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) and LinkedIn examined the cost of staff turnover in Australia. It found that nearly 1 in 4 new employees leave their job in the first year, leading to an estimated $3.8 billion in lost productivity and $385 million in re-hiring costs.1
The cost of unproductive employees isn’t so easy to measure, but Ernst & Young found the most unproductive group of workers spend only 50% of their time on meaningful work. Time wasting overall is estimated to cost Australian industry over $41 billlion.2
Employee mismatch
High staff turnover and unproductive employees often indicate a problem in the hiring process. There is a mismatch between the person and the job.
Hiring a new employee is a minefield and too many companies rely on gut feel and a standard list of questions. So what can you do to hire the best person for your job vacancy?
Recruitment assessments
Research by Aberdeen Group showed that the use of recruitment assessments results in a 39% lower turnover rate among high potential talent.3 Recruitment assessments are certainly a good place to start if you choose the right ones and use them properly.
Psychometric assessments help to paint a picture of the candidate’s softer skills: skills that are not obvious from a resume or interview alone, such as problem solving skills or the ability to motivate others. These tests can be very helpful but do your research about their relevance to the vacancy because some assessments only generalise about personality types, rather than drilling down to specific skills.
If you start with a clear idea of the soft skills required for the role, you can select the most suitable psychometric assessment. For example, if the ability to handle stress is important, the MTQ48 assessment will be a valuable test. It identifies how a candidate will respond to stressful situations by examining four distinct areas:
- Challenge
- Control
- Commitment
- Confidence.
Resilience and mental toughness are becoming increasingly sought after soft skills because the most experienced employee in the world can fail to progress in an organisation if they lack mental toughness.
Tailored interview questions
Importantly, psychometric tests should not be seen as the Holy Grail of recruitment assessments. They are particularly useful for determining which questions to ask a candidate during an interview. The MTQ48 assessment will provide you with tailored interview questions based on the candidate’s score, so that you can explore potential mental toughness strengths or weaknesses in greater depth.
The wider appeal of assessments
Although psychometric assessments are typically used during the hiring process, there is value in using them within the general HR function. They can help to identify training needs and those staff best suited for promotion. The MTQ48 will highlight which employees might perform better with mental toughness development. It can also reveal the best candidates for managerial promotion.
Keep records to identify how well a new hire’s ongoing performance matches the results from the recruitment assessments. The Aberdeen Group research showed that companies that do this are 24% more likely than everyone else to have a greater percentage of employees who exceed performance expectations.4
In summary, recruitment assessments can help take the guesswork out of recruiting and help you ask the right questions at interview.
Contact us for more information about assessments generally or to learn more about mental toughness programmes and recruitment assessments.