BIS Blog

In his article, Employee life cycle not one of burn-and-churn Marc Drizin, former Vice President of Walker Information, mentions that the average employee stays with their employer 3.5 years.  He also mentions that the average employee will hold 13-15 jobs during the course of their career.  Further, he says it costs employers 18 months of a salaried employee’s wages to replace them and six months for an hourly worker.  With all of those statistics in mind, we have found using assessments to be a key tool in helping employers retain good employees.  We use assessments to put people in the “right job” based on their thinking style, behavioral traits and occupational interests.  By “fitting” people in a position that they have the potential to succeed in based on their assessment results, we’ve found employees are more loyal, are happier and less likely to leave their employer.

I recently reviewed an article that discusses how to hire great employees on the Entrepreneur magazine website.  Bill Bartmann, the article’s author, suggests there are five fundamental characteristics to look for when hiring new employees.  These five characteristics are Aptitude, Attitude, Intelligence, Intensity and Integrity.  He believes he was able to determine a potential new hire’s characteristics in the interview process.  I believe you can find out the “tip of the iceberg” during the interview process but what lies beneath is what causes company’s many problems either with their human capital or in lawsuits.  In my experience of hiring over 1,000 people I have found a people insight tool that helps dig beneath the surface of a person’s resume and interview to find out their true characteristics.  I have used an employee personality test to help do just that.  The pre-employment assessment I use is a profiling tool that assesses a person’s integrity, work ethic, attitude towards substance abuse and reliability.  The assessments test for, among many, the five characteristics Bill mentions in this article and these tools have proven to be much better predictors than an interviewer.  I also use a learning assessment to discover a person’s ability to grasp information quickly which can affect their job performance.  Although I agree with Bill that those five characteristics are fundamental, I believe assessments do a better job of screening good and bad candidates.

A number of articles have talked about employees becoming less engaged over the last 12-18 months.  Other studies and polls have indicated that some very high percentages of people, if they have a chance, will go to work somewhere else.  According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in Feb/Mar/April more workers voluntarily quit their jobs than were discharged.  Based on the article in the Puget Sound Business Journal called Employers now worry about losing key workers it looks like that may actually be happening!  If companies are NOT paying attention to what may be happening in the workplace, this could be happening to them.  It is a great time to assess departments so managers can actually get to know their people better and let employees know that someone IS paying attention to them.  It is a great opportunity to look at…and DO SOMETHING about succession planning.  It is a great opportunity to pick a POINT in time to CHECK on how people are doing as leaders and managers and actually do something to help them.  Our assessments can do all of those things.