The dynamic landscape of corporate training and talent development is witnessing the emergence of a silent yet powerful ally: psychometric testing. Imagine understanding your employees’ unique strengths, quirks, and hidden talents using nothing but an 18-minute assessment. You can decode their minds and reap the benefits of unlocking their untapped potential.
Psychometrics: Beyond Mere Numbers
It may seem fantastic that each test result can be a key to unlocking the untapped potential within your employees. However, when you consider that psychometric assessments are not mere numbers, it becomes simpler to visualise how cognitive abilities, personality traits, and emotional intelligence join forces to paint a portrait of individual brilliance.
Incorporating psychometric testing into corporate L&D programmes seems especially inspiring when you consider its ability to offer objective data-driven insights instead of traditional methods, such as interviews and self-assessments, that may yield biased or inaccurate results.
Your L&D team can design and deliver more effective and personalised learning solutions by accurately identifying your employees’ learning needs, preferences, and styles. For example, you can use psychometric tests to measure your employees’ ability and willingness to learn from experience and apply the lessons to new and evolving circumstances.
A deeper understanding of the degree of their curiosity and enthusiasm for learning new things can tell you how open your employees are to new ideas, feedback and perspectives. What could give an employer greater satisfaction than knowing that their employees are learning and learning well in their preferred visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or mixed mode?
So, without further ado, let’s explore the science behind psychometrics and its impact on L&D strategies in the corporate realm.
Unravel the Enigma: Understanding Employees’ Behaviour
Psychometric tests offer valuable insights into your employees’ behaviour patterns, preferences, and working styles. Based on a comprehensive analysis of test results, you can develop training programmes to suit individual needs, leading to better skill development and performance enhancement.
Popular Psychometric Tests to Improve Employee Performance
Famous examples include numerical reasoning tests that evaluate a candidate’s ability to work with numbers, interpret data, and solve mathematical problems. You can test your employee’s analytical skills and attention to detail based on how they analyse financial data or calculate percentages.
Abstract or inductive reasoning tests assess a person’s ability to identify patterns, solve abstract problems, and think creatively. Someone who excels in these can be expected to communicate effectively and understand complex written materials.
One of the most studied workplace psychometric tests is the Big Five (OCEAN) Test. It assesses the employees’ conscientiousness, extraversion, sociability, openness to new experiences, and emotional stability, so you can offer them customised learning interventions that leverage their strengths while addressing developmental areas.
Another popular option is Alison’s Workplace Personality Assessment. It measures people skills, motivations, work styles, and learning styles. Learners who complete the Workplace Personality Assessment are signposted towards courses that can help them upskill where necessary while steering them toward career paths that will match their strengths.
Alison’s psychometric test is a valuable pointer for delineating employee learning and development paths. Like everything else on Alison, it is free to take.
Elevate the Art of Recruitment
Companies can begin applying psychometric tests at the recruitment stage to identify candidates who, besides having the requisite skills, can align with the company culture.
For example, the Metti Personality Profiler (MPP) assesses underlying personality traits necessary for essential roles to ensure a good fit for the job. Businesses leverage MPP to make informed decisions during recruitment and selection.
With EQ (Emotional Intelligence) gaining in popularity worldwide, it’s time you added EQ assessments to your recruitment process. They are designed to identify individuals with high EQ who excel in collaborative, leadership, and conflict-resolution activities.
At the other end of the spectrum are Technical Skills Assessments, including coding tests, language proficiency tests, and typing tests to evaluate specific job-related skills and aptitudes. These assessments will help you select candidates with the necessary competencies for the role.
Nurture Unique Learning Journeys
L&D professionals can employ psychometric tests to create personalised learning paths for their colleagues based on the latter’s strengths and areas of improvement. A deliberately targeted approach like this, zeroing in on specific developmental needs, will allow you to maximise your organisation’s training initiatives.
It’s a classic win-win that ensures a better fit between your employees and their roles, ultimately contributing to higher job satisfaction and retention rates. Let’s look at some of these tests, which act like compasses, guiding employees toward their unique North Star.
1. The VIA-IS: Unveiling Strengths
Dr Martin Seligman and Dr Chris Peterson developed the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths Test (VIA-IS). Their research on positive psychology evolved into 24 character strengths grouped into six categories:
- Wisdom and Knowledge
- Courage
- Humanity
- Justice
- Temperance
- Transcendence
The VIA-IS can help you identify your employees’ unique strengths, paving the way for personalised learning journeys with a particular focus on areas where they can thrive.
2. High-Potential Identification
You can also use psychometric assessments for high-potential identification. A multi-faceted view of an employee’s cognitive abilities, personality, and behavioural tendencies will help you quickly pinpoint those with high potential, design their customised development journeys, and measure their progress. Which organisation wouldn’t leap at the chance to get valuable insights that can effectively nurture talent and drive sustainable growth?
3. Strengths-Based Leadership Assessment
Derived from Gallup research on leadership, the Strengths-Based Leadership Assessment allows current and potential leaders in your organisation to understand their strengths and tailor their learning paths to emphasise growth areas while leveraging the qualities that make them exceptional.
The Magic of Team Synergy and Collaboration
Organisations keen on forming well-balanced teams can use psychometric tests to take advantage of their employees’ diverse skills, personalities, and communication styles.
If collective achievement is your goal, look no further than the following tests to foster a collaborative work environment where team members complement each other’s strengths. Bear in mind that their effectiveness depends on how well they are integrated into the team processes and how leaders use the results to create a productive and cohesive workspace.
- Workstyle offers personality tests and tools to help members of large and small teams better understand each other’s working styles so they can work together harmoniously and energetically. You can avail of valuable psychometric insights into individual communication styles and peak productivity hours.
- The popular Clifton Strengths Personality Test can help you identify each team member’s unique strengths so it becomes easier to allocate tasks effectively and encourage collaboration based on the latter’s collaborative abilities.
- The DISC (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness) Assessment analyses behavioural styles to help team members recognise their own and others’ communication preferences, adapt to different styles, and collaborate more effectively. Team members can use the Belbin Team Role Inventory to identify their natural roles, such as coordinator, implementer, and team worker, and assume them to enhance collaboration and productivity.
A Capability Compass
The proof of the pudding is in the eating! What better way to showcase your training programmes than to have their effectiveness evaluated by psychometric tests? Your L&D team can conduct pre and post-training assessments to easily gauge the impact of specific learning interventions on employee performance and skill development. The assessments facilitate data-driven decisions and customised future training programmes.
- Your sales team can undergo a pre-training assessment so your L&D team can assess the former’s current knowledge of sales techniques, product features, and customer interaction skills. After completing the training, you can evaluate their negotiation skills, ability to handle objections, and performance in simulated sales scenarios.
- If relevant, you can have a pre-training assessment to identify individual employees’ proficiency in specific technical skills, such as coding, data analysis, or project management. A post-training assessment will prove handy in gauging skill enhancement and application in real-world tasks.
- Psychometric testing serves as a valuable tool in shaping corporate L&D strategies. It offers comprehensive insights into employee behaviour, facilitates recruitment decisions, personalises learning paths, promotes teamwork, and assesses training outcomes.
Alison’s Unstinting Support
A leading provider of free online learning resources, Alison not only provides a range of psychometric tests to support employees but also assists organisations in making the best possible use of the courses offered through its recently launched revolutionary Free Learning Management System (Free LMS).
Alison’s Free LMS can be customised to suit any organisation’s training needs, regardless of its size and budgetary constraints. You can onboard an unlimited number of employees onto the platform at no cost, ensuring their equitable access to crucial training resources. A CPD-accredited learning provider, Alison is able to offer over 5,000 high-quality courses with custom learning paths and certificates, allowing your team to upskill effectively.
An intuitive interface means that you can set up your Free LMS in under five minutes without having to use sophisticated IT resources. Add real-time analytics and detailed reports to help you track your team’s learning progress, and you will understand why Alison’s Free LMS is used by 2,000+ organisations spanning 65+ industries across 100+ countries.
Create your own Free LMS and get convenient and profitable access to the resources.
