- How personality assessments can influence your business strategy and improve productivity
- Tips for those managing a business
- Help identify your own leadership style and evaluate employees’ natural propensity
Every manager takes on something of a human resources role in their work. They’re charged with finding the right employees for a role, putting together teams that will help the company succeed, and resolving conflicts. If they can’t do so effectively, it increases the chances of employee turnover and other harmful effects on the business.
Assessing your employees’ personality types can help you find out the strengths and weaknesses of each employee or job candidate. This allows you to make the best hires, improve job satisfaction and productivity, and even assess your own personality to see how you might improve your role in the company.
Evaluating personality traits can help you determine the best candidate for a job; creativity, drive, and open-mindedness are among the most valued traits. Having a better grasp on employees’ personality traits can also help you match them to company roles, such as having a person with good organizational and interpersonal skills lead a team, and adjust your approach to get better results during discipline, guidance, or other management tasks.
There are numerous personality tests available to evaluate employees, most notably the Myers Briggs test which identifies 16 different personality types. These tests can be incorporated into performance reviews or simply distributed to employees.
Look for a test that identifies strong personality traits that are unlikely to change. The most effective tests will also be reliable enough to produce the same results if a person takes it multiple times, can be used comparatively with other employees, and are a valid predictor of job performance.
One potential drawback of personality tests are that respondents may put down answers they think the employer wants, not truthful ones. For this reason, it is important to find a test that encourages respondents to be candid.
Personality tests can be helpful for hiring or management, but they shouldn’t be the sole determining factor in your decisions. You should also be cautious in how you use the tests, as you might open yourself to legal action if an employee thinks you have used them for discriminatory purposes.
