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Jon, Julie, Assessments, Expectations, Performance, and Preconceptions

November 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A Story for You to Consider as You Assess and Interact with Your Employees!

Employee #1

Let’s call her Julie

Julie has been with ABC Widgets for 10 years.

Julie is a stellar performer, always comes to work on time, gets her job done, her results are always excellent, and she’s a team player. It’s easy to like and depend on Julie because you know what she’s capable of and she always lives up to your expectations. Expectations and performance go hand-in-hand. Consequently, because Julie is expected to do well, encouraged at every step along the way, and receives positive reinforcement, she flourishes and her performance is stellar.

NOTE: There is absolutely nothing wrong with positive reinforcement and employees are not weak because they need it! Know your employees, let them know you appreciate and expect great things from them, and they will respond accordingly.

Employee #2

Let’s call him Jon

Jon is new to the company. During the hiring process, Jon blew everyone away. The way he carried himself was impressive, the results of his hiring assessment was nothing short of amazing, and his interviews were first-rate. To add to the overall excitement, Jon’s recommendations, all 12 of them, were the best many of the HR people at ABC Widgets had ever seen. In fact, the HR manager broke with tradition and introduced Jon to the president of ABC Widgets before the final hiring decision had been made.

In everyone’s view, Jon was a slam dunk!

Jon was going to be The Golden Boy and solve all of ABC’s production problems. Furthermore, the HR director, also a VP at ABC Widgets, and the president of the company felt Jon was just the guy to bridge the gap between sales, marketing, and production…a gap that had always been such a problem at ABC!

The future looked bright for Jon and for ABC Widgets!

Back Story

The title of the position Jon was interviewing for was Production Manager, but it was an executive-level position. And Jon was replacing a series of bad hires, production managers that really didn’t have the tools to get the job done.

Significantly, neither the title nor the job description had changed in decades. And over the past few years ABC Widgets had tried every hiring strategy in the book to bring in the right sort of individual to turn things around. In fact, the president had sequestered the entire HR staff at a local resort for a long weekend in order to brainstorm. They knew they had a problem and Jon seemed to be the solution!

The HR staff had one task that weekend:

Figure out why ABC Widgets cannot seem to get it right when it comes to hiring a production manager who will deliver.

Coming away from the weekend the HR staff had one goal:

Find, hire, and keep a Production Manager who’d measure up and, ultimately, turn ABC Widgets’ production department around.

Enter Jon

Jon emerged as a candidate who seemingly had it all.

It’s said that even the president of ABC Widgets went into his office, closed the door, and did a backflip after meeting Jon…maybe more than one!

PsyMax Solutions Employee Hiring Assessment Results Will Make Our Clients Do Backflips!

His son did a backflip!

PsyMax Solutions Will Have Everyone Doing Backflips

His daughter did a backflip!

Even the Families of PsyMax Solutions are Known to Do Backflips!

Well, his wife tried to do a backflip!

Mom Tries to Do a Backflip After Using PsyMax Solution's Suite of Assessments!

And even Tough Guy, their dog and company mascot, did a backflip!

So, how did Jon work out?

As Hamlet would have said…and did…

”Ay, there’s the rub!”

As mentioned, Jon was walking into a very complex situation, a situation that would entail overcoming a history of bad hires and several failed attempts to revamp the production of widgets at ABC Widgets. Jon had envisioned a complete restructuring of ABC’s production process because, without it, ABC would continue to fail…and Jon along with the company.

Jon knew all of that going in…but he was optimistic!

Furthermore, Jon knew his reputation was on the line. But all of that aside, Jon had been given the assurances we’d asked for during the interview process. As a result of those assurances, Jon was confident he could get the job done. Additionally, Jon was led to believe he would have the sort of latitude to make the necessary decisions, implement the necessary programs, and hire the right people to make it all happen.

So, what happened?

Well, the first time Jon did something a little different he was questioned about it.

In fact, he was grilled!

The first time the production department failed to reach their quota, Jon was chastised.

You see, Jon had taken a long view. He had to if ABC was going to turn around. In fact, it was one of the reasons he’d accepted the job, we was assured everyone had the same sort of vision. Jon believed he shared the same vision with the company president about how to turn things around. 

Jon was told more than once, and by more than one company executive, that they “had his back.”

Jon also realized, and right from the start, that if all he did was mimic what everyone else in the widget industry was doing, ABC would not make it!

So, based on the interviews, the assurances, and the absolute need of the company, Jon assumed he would have the budget to do what was necessary to get the job done.

Jon was wrong!

It wasn’t long before the backflipping president (remember him?) was complaining to everyone who would listen about every decision Jon made and expense the production department incurred.

Incredibly, almost from the start, the president of ABC Widgets was threatening to replace Jon!

Consequently, the first time the production department failed to meet their quota, and in fact showed a loss, Jon was grilled. In spite of the fact that the department was moving in the right direction, and losses were less than they had been at any point in the past 10 years, Jon felt as though he might lose his job!

Why?

Because, while Jon’s entrance had been heralded with celebration and praise, once Jon stepped into his new position, the same position every one of his failed predecessors was fired from, he was just another production manager! Sadly, every employee, from the janitors and machinists to the foremen and the executives, were just waiting for another production manager failure. In the minds of almost everyone at ABC Widgets, Jon was just another production manager. Consequently, all the baggage that came with the position was simply too heavy to crawl out from under…the expectations, based on the history of previous individuals who’d held the position, were just too low.

Remember Julie?

Well, Julie kept getting the praise she needed and, as a result, kept delivering. Julie was happy, content, and fulfilled…and her performance reflected it. But Julie had been hired into a newly created position…a very distinct difference. Significantly, Julie was not replacing several employees who had failed prior to her arrival. Consequently, when Julie arrived at ABC Widgets and took her desk, the employees she worked with saw only Julie…both as Julie and in the context of a newly created position.

Starting to see the picture(s)?

Jon was not so lucky.

And before long, Jon started to wonder why he’d taken the job. 

“How could I not have seen the signs? How could I have walked into this mess?” he asked.

Here’s the Key

When the employees at ABC Widgets looked at Jon they saw every predecessor. How could they not? He even had the same title! So, it wasn’t long before Jon hated coming into work and hated himself for making such a huge mistake. The worst part, at least for Jon, was that he felt trapped!

How did this happen?

Well, the mind is a powerful instrument and it is very difficult to think positively if all you can see are the failures of the past. The problem wasn’t with Jon, the problem was that everyone at ABC Widgets saw what they’d been programmed to see. In fact, most didn’t see Jon at all…they saw the production manager. Worse yet, they saw every production manager before Jon in some sort of production manager collage. Even if they wanted to see something different, all they could see was just another production manager…complete with the history and baggage of the past.

The fact of the matter is that many of ABC’s employees liked Jon and knew, on some level, knew were being unfair. But the harder they tried to get the other production managers out of their minds, and the harder they tried to remove the mistakes previous production managers had made from their thoughts, the more they saw that collage.

They saw only “white bears!”

The PsyMax Solution, The White Bear, and "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions" by Fyodor Dostoevsky 1863

“Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.” Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (Fyodor Dostoevsky 1863)

In other words, the more an employee at ABC Widgets tried not to see something, in this case a long line of failed production managers, the more they saw exactly that!

Here’s a current and perhaps more interesting way of looking at a very similar phenomenon…and the way we perceive the world.

I think you’ll agree, all the other employees of ABC Widgets saw was basketball passes.

The first time through, what did you see?

I’m betting you saw, as so many others before you, the basketball players throwing passes! However, once you were aware of the dancing gorilla, it was easy to pick out. It’s all about attribution!

Conclusion

The fictional Jon and Julie were hired into two very different positions at the also fictional ABC Widgets. Julie was hired into a newly created position with no baggage, no preconceived notions based on past successes or failures. Jon, on the other hand, was doomed from the start. He was hired into a position with heavy baggage and nothing but preconceived notions. Because every production manager before Jon had failed, and failed miserably, the employees of ABC Widgets couldn’t help but see Jon in that light.

Solution?

Well, for the sake of this article and the point we are trying to make, the wisest thing for the backflipping president of ABC Widgets to do would have been to hire Jon into a newly created position…one without preconceived notions and without the history of failure the production manager’s position carried with it.

Far too many times, an individual is hired to fill a position just like the one in our example above, the example of the production manager. As for Julie’s position goes? Well, Julie had a better than average shot of making it at ABC Widgets precisely because she was hired into a newly created position…one without preconceived notions and without a history of failure. In fact, in Julie’s case, there was no history at all…so Julie was free to carve out her own niche within the guidelines specified for her position.

NOTE: This is obviously a fictional account. However, this sort of thing happens throughout corporate America every day.

The use of hiring and performance assessments is crucial for success…that’s a given. But an awareness of how preconceived notions and the power of attribution can impact the hiring process cannot be understated. We hope this fictional account, the story of Jon and Julie, has helped to frame this point.

PsyMax Solutions, LLC
2000 Auburn Drive
Suite 200
Cleveland, OH 44122
Phone: 216-896-9991
866-774-2273 (toll free)
216-360-9907 (fax)

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Filed Under: Assessing Performance and Success, Employee Assessments, Employment Performance Assessment, Jon Julie Assessments Expectations Performance and Preconceptions Tagged With:

Mental Maps and their Impact Upon the Hiring Process

September 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Why a Great Interview Is Not Enough

Applications, Interviews, and PsyMax Solution’s Employee Hiring Assessment

Abbott and Costello: Who's on First and the Hiring Process - The Need for a Pre-Employment Assessment

Who’s on First and the Hiring Process

Over the past 6 months, we have analyzed much of the current literature and popular thought related to how we seek out, interview, hire, train, and retain the best people…what we will refer to from this point forward as the hiring process. While there is still a great deal of debate concerning the hiring process and how to put a system in place that will ensure objectivity, fairness, and a good result (i.e., hiring a candidate who fits and sticks), there are several reoccurring themes.

We will touch upon many of the themes important to the hiring process, themes we’ve discovered over the course of the past 6 months; and, over the past 30 years.

We will also explain how many businesses currently seek out, interview, hire, train, and retain the best people…and how they can do it better.

Interestingly, there has been a great deal of attention paid to and written about the team concept over the past four decades. The concept of team, and how important teamwork is to a successful business, is discussed daily in both online and offline media. The team concept has become a cornerstone concept for many businesses and it affects and impacts the hiring process in a profound and lasting manner.

We have also reviewed an equal amount of subject matter related to the hiring of star or linchpin employees.

  • Is the idea of hiring an outstanding individual at odds with the notion of team?
  • Is it possible to hire a quality candidate who is both an outstanding individual performer and team player?
  • What does a corporate executive, business owner, and/or human resources manager look for when hiring a team player?
  • What tools will make the task of identifying and hiring team players easier?
  • When should a business owner focus on individual qualities, those we use to define a “star” or “linchpin” employee over those of the team player?
  • Are the two, individual and team, mutually exclusive?

We will attempt to answer the above-mentioned questions, and many more, over the course of this series.

Interestingly, there is also a great deal of excitement surrounding the emerging sub-discipline of Psychology known as Happiness Psychology. Consequently, we will introduce many of the concepts relevant to Happiness Psychology and analyze the current wave of enthusiasm surrounding the idea of happiness, particularly as it relates to the hiring process and its application in and around the workplace.

Additionally, we will examine how important happiness is and how it affects the health and productivity of a business, generally, and its employees, specifically.

The notion that a happy employee is an efficient and effective employee is gaining popularity and examples of companies engaged in importing happiness into the workplace, companies like Google and Zappos, just to name two, will be discussed.

Finally, Stephen R. Covey discusses the mental maps we use and lenses we see the world through in The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.

Covey asserts that our mental maps and lenses shape our perception in a very fundamental way. Furthermore, Covey maintains that We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are…or the way they should be.”

Consequently, how we perceive our world and the people in it has a profound and lasting impact on how we view and assign value to others, including the interviewees we evaluate during the hiring process.

So, what’s the point?

The notion that anyone can make an objective decision based solely on a personal interview or series interviews is flawed, if not impossible! 

Furthermore, the hiring process is affected, for good or for bad, by our mental map or maps and the lens or lenses through which we view the world. 

Why?

Simply put, we carry our mental map with us into every interview; and, in fact, into and throughout the entire hiring process!

Like it or not, we carry the baggage associated with a lifetime of experience with us day in and day out. Significantly, that baggage, in the shape of our life experience or mental map, affects our assumptions and perceptions. Ultimately, our ability to make an objective decision is directly affected by our mental map and the perceptions and assumptions they shape.

Sound a bit convoluted…a bit little like Abbott and Costello in “Who’s on First?”

Well, if you listen to many of the experts you will feel a bit like you will after watching Abbott and Costello in “Who’s on First?”

For the youngsters in the audience…and for everyone else as well, here it is:

Once again, the issues, topics, and questions raised above will be discussed over the next month.

Hopefully, by the time we have completed the series, you will know exactly who is on first! And, more importantly, who to hire first!

So, check back daily and we will share what we’ve discovered about the hiring process over the past 30 years.

If you are charged with hiring one or more individuals?

The PsyMax Solution is a complete, affordable, and easy-to-use suite of employee assessment resources guaranteed to make the hiring process smoother and more productive. The PsyMax Solution can and will help you hire the right candidate for the job…one who fits and sticks!

Click this link for more information on PsyMax Solution’s employee hiring assessments and employee performance assessments.

PsyMax Solutions, LLC
2000 Auburn Drive
Suite 200
Cleveland, OH 44122
Phone: 216-896-9991

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How to Tailor Your People’s Talent to Fit Your Business

June 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Talent and Fit are Crucial for Business Success

Difficult economic times have put many businesses, as well as their managers and owners, in a tough position. Tough times magnify errors, thus leaving even less of margin for mistakes.

HR personnel often face the greatest challenges during difficult times. Human resource managers are often under tremendous pressure to deliver not only good candidates, but those that are the “right fit,” the proper match for job requirements.

The reasons for this are myriad!

A tough economic period means that there is a demand for excellent performers, employees who can positively impact the bottom line in a relatively short period of time. There is relatively little or no room for mistakes and the resultant costs that replacing a bad hire entails simply cannot be tolerated.

According to a recent study of 444 businesses, it was found that replacing a bad hire costs as much as 5 times the individual’s annual salary in recruitment, training, severance and lost productivity.

The results of the study were as follows:

  • 42% of the companies said that a bad hiring decision cost them twice the person’s annual salary
  • 26% said it cost them 3 times the annual salary
  • 11% said it cost 5 times the annual salary to correct the mistake
  • 15% reported that a poor choice cost them something equivalent to the annual salary

So it is very important that organizations be able to identify the right talent, a new hire who can hit the road running, and easily adapt to the needs of the business.

The key question is:

How do you sort out the best possible hire when there are so many factors to be taken into account?

The answer is simple, practical, and cost-effective:

Employee assessments!

Employee Assessments provide employers the information they need in order to select and manage newly recruited team members, managers, and top level executives.

Employee Assessments are perfect for identifying the critical assets and warning signs that need to be considered before making a selection decision.

Employee Assessments assist in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of a candidate and provide helpful developmental suggestions that can lead to improved performance.

Employee Assessments clearly indicate how good a match a potential candidate is for the position under consideration:

  • His or her interests
  • Work ethic
  • Critical reasoning skill
  • Adaptability to working with new teams and learning new skills

Adaptable talent can easily be trained to fit your business.

Once the correct candidate has been identified, the rest of the work is easy.

Employee Assessments can be used to help bring new hires on board, providing them with useful information on how to fit into an organization.

Employee Assessments can also help new hires objectively build on their strengths and address their developmental needs. It has been demonstrated that employees who have a positive onboarding experience are more likely to stay with an organization longer than new employees who experience difficulty during the assimilation process.

Consequently, more and more organizations are turning to employee assessment tools to increase their ability to properly identify the talent who will help keep their businesses successful, even in a recessionary market.

PsyMax Solutions offers business owners, corporation executives, and human resource managers the ultimate suite of pre-employment assessments, employee and management performance assessments, work style assessments, and an array of related resources for small and medium-sized businesses and professional practices.

PsyMax Solutions, LLC
2000 Auburn Drive
Suite 200
Cleveland, OH 44122
Phone: 216-896-9991
866-774-2273 (toll free)
216-360-9907 (fax)

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How to Use Employee Developmental Coaching for a Competitive Edge

June 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Employee Developmental Coaching and Assessment: 

Priorities for Every Organization

Today’s Global Marketplace is Dynamic and Competitive.

Consequently, organizations will only prosper by focusing on building developmental coaching partnerships with their employees. A long term competitive edge can be achieved by building a talent pool of team leaders and managers; and, by helping them develop their skills through effective communication, developmental coaching, and employee assessments.

The Goal of Employee Developmental Coaching

The goal of employee developmental coaching is to help employees grow both professionally and personally; and to instill a sense of being a stakeholder in the company’s success. In addition to developing their skills, employee developmental coaching leads to a significant positive change in empowerment, team involvement, and performance enhancement.

Employee Developmental Coaching to Build Collaborative Relationships

Employee Developmental Coaching helps to break down the various boundaries and barriers within an organization. Additionally, it  helps to coordinate the focus towards a common organizational goal, which can be attained with the double thrust of individual and team achievements.

As an organization builds and assesses its employee bench strength, people at all levels get the feeling that they are contributing to the success of their organization in tangible ways. Employee developmental coaching helps to generate a deeper sense of partnership among all employees. Significantly, relationship building fosters stronger bonds among various employee groups, reinforcing cooperation among team members. The collaborative relationship building promotes a long term investment in people that yields dividends in the form of increased quality and productivity…thus giving the organization a competitive edge in the marketplace.

Achieving a Sustained Competitive Edge

By concentrating on effective relationship building, employee developmental coaching unclogs the lines of communication within the organization. As a result, a channel for dialogue and feedback is created across all levels of the organization.

Unfortunately, in far too many organizations, only top tier management is involved in defining mission statements and objectives, solving high priority organizational issues, and dictating appropriate solutions.

Encouraging the rank and file to get involved in the collaborative decision making process leads to a shared commitment and a common vision. This shift in focus helps to build future leaders, individuals who will carry the torch and support the organization’s vision in the long term; and, in so doing, it will assure the implementation of an ongoing, and strategically-developed focus for years to come.

Significantly, identifying potential leaders who can help maintain the organization’s competitive edge in the future is best achieved with the help of employee coaching and development assessments and developmental feedback sessions.

These employee assessments and feedback sessions help employees understand how their job aligns with the organization’s vision and strategic goals. By clearly delineating the connection between an employee’s performance in light of job responsibilities, and the organization’s strategic vision and direction, the mission statement becomes meaningful and is not just a set of vague or ambiguous words that no one really understands or relates to.

The results derived by integrating employee developmental coaching and employee assessments become apparent as employees, management, owners, executives, and organizations become more effective, competitive, and successful. Significantly, the results are based on applying the aforementioned resources in a positive environment that is sustained over time. In addition to the resources applied and the environment developed, results are also based on mutual understanding, respect, and trust. Interestingly, when applied properly, the various developmental components serve to create a feedback loop; and, in doing so, future growth and development tends to be rapid and ongoing, if not exponential. Ultimately, the entire process is both rewarding and exciting!

The PsyMax Solution includes a suite of online assessments, reports, and programs creates solutions based upon proprietary work style assessment inventories to help companies identify and interview prospective employees as well as develop and coach employees to maximize performance.

PsyMax Solutions, LLC
2000 Auburn Drive
Suite 200
Cleveland, OH 44122
Phone: 216-896-9991
866-774-2273 (toll free)
216-360-9907 (fax)

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Filed Under: Developmental Assessments, Employee Assessments, Employee Development, Employee Development Programs, How to Use Employee Developmental Coaching Tagged With:

How to Improve Employee Motivation through Developmental Assessments

June 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Many Organizations Have a Tough Time Grappling with Employee Motivation Issues.

  • Are financial incentives motivation enough?
  • How much motivation is necessary for it to be a primary driver of performance?
  • Again, if money is not the main motivator, how else do you improve employee motivation?
  • Can organizations develop cost-effective motivation programs for improving performance across the board?

The reason why this leads to so many questions is because research shows that motivated employees have a direct correlation with increased profits.

The more companies work towards increasing employee motivation, the better their people are likely to perform at a higher level, deliver effective results, and stay with the organization.

Identifying the Developmental Needs

Financial incentives are often not enough to act as the primary drivers of performance. Different types of employees have different motivational needs, and they perform best when these needs are appropriately addressed.

But if different employees are driven by different factors, how do you effectively motivate them?

When you have to address each employee’s unique needs and desires, it can really become a tricky proposition. This is where tools like employee assessments come into the picture.

Developmental Assessments can be used to improve employee motivation as they can help to extensively measure the various intrinsic needs, skills and attributes that are important for successful performance.

These include:

  • Motivation
  • Energy Level
  • Cognitive Abilities
  • Leadership Qualities
  • Decision-making Abilities
  • Problem-solving Skills
  • Interpersonal and Communication Skills
  • Work-style Behaviors
  • Flexibility
  • Stress Tolerance

For utilizing human resources effectively, precise assessment of an employee’s strengths and developmental priorities is very important.

Improve Employee Motivation through Developmental Assessments

Do we have employee motivation wrong or do we simply need to shift our focus and change how we assess it?

Using Developmental Assessments to Improve Employee Motivation

With the help of developmental assessments, employees can be properly evaluated and their developmental profile mapped.

Based on this analysis, managers can accurately assess an employee’s knowledge, ability, skills and strengths, and limitations. After this developmental audit, managers can also use feedback from other sources like managerial and peer evaluations and behavioral ratings to identify specific developmental needs.

Developmental Assessments can also help to measure engagement levels, job satisfaction, and employee values and motivation across a department, a division, and even an entire organization.

The information collected through this process provides managers with a central perspective on the existing situation in the workplace; and, it helps to identify critical areas of concern that are affecting the total work experience.

Using these tools, managers can specifically identify the key components that motivate each employee. For example, you can identify the exact job match for an individual and put him in a position where he is a perfect fit. When a job profile matches an employee’s abilities, interests, and personality, job dissatisfaction goes down and productivity increases.

Developmental Assessments can thus provide a road map for developing employees one at a time, in addition to engaging the total workforce. Additionally, Developmental Reviews offer organizations a means to audit their present workforce and determine which employees can benefit the most from different kinds of training and development programs.

We will add more as we reveal just how important The PsyMax Solution can be “to a department, a division, and even an entire organization.”

The PsyMax Solution: The Ultimate Suite of Pre-employment and Employee Performance and Work Style Assessments!

PsyMax Solutions, LLC
2000 Auburn Drive
Suite 200
Cleveland, OH 44122
Phone: 216-896-9991
866-774-2273 (toll free)
216-360-9907 (fax)

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Leveraging Employee Development to Gain a Competitive Edge

June 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Employee development means different things to different people.

For some, it’s a medley of training programs, employee coaching, educational seminars, and sermons by management gurus. Some believe it’s a waste of time, while some others are dubious about the benefits. But it is not without reason that employee development programs have gained so much traction in recent years.

Employee development programs are not only of tremendous help to individual employees, they lead to massive positive impact on the organization’s bottom line. Furthermore, recent research has proved over and over again that such initiatives boost employee morale and lead to lasting loyalty.

So how can your business leverage employee development programs to gain a competitive edge?

1. Identify the Star Performers

Who are the people in your organization who stand out from the crowd?

These employees are your leading lights and are most important in boosting your bottom line. Your employee development programs should initially be targeted towards these star performers, so that they can benefit from these experiences and transmit their knowledge and efficiency down the line. They are most likely to raise the bar for all, resulting in greater productivity across the organization…helping your organization continually improve and achieve a competitive edge.

2. Make Sure Employees are in the Right Jobs

Many apparently weaker employees can deliver excellent results if they are properly trained.

But to achieve that end, you need to determine the correct job match for your employees. If someone is not the “right match” for a particular job, no amount of training and development is going to make them perform at their best. When people are a good fit to their job roles, they deliver their best results. Use scientific and cost-effective tools like employee assessments to determine the job match for your employees. This will not only help you put people in the proper positions where they are well suited to perform successfully, but also show you exactly where each person requires developmental assistance as time goes on.

3. Build Commitment from the Top

Your employee development programs can only succeed if your top management is convinced about the usefulness of these initiatives.

Their total conviction and support is crucial for you to put your plans into effect. The benefits of employee development programs can be systematically computed to find out the actual gains. Use specific, objective measures to determine the return on investment (ROI) of your development programs to get your top management team on board. Instead of just saying a developmental program is going to make a positive impact on the organization, you need to back up your words with tangible and measurable results.

4. Take a Long Term View

As the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

In the same sense that developmental initiatives take time to pay off.

You need to start with the idea that the person has the necessary skills to do their job successfully. If this is the case, then daily or weekly developmental efforts over time will pay far greater dividends then going off to a training program once or even twice a year. This doesn’t mean your employees should not participate in these training programs. Of course they should participate. But, a training workshop taken every once in a while is never going to be a strong substitute for ongoing developmental action steps practiced daily over many years.

With the help of employee assessments and focused, ongoing training initiatives, you’ll soon be able to leverage your employee development programs to increase individual and organizational productivity, and gain a competitive edge over your competitors.

And watch for The PsyMax Solution’s 100 Day Challenge, coming soon!

PsyMax Solutions will be offering Free Online Assessments and a number of additional surprises as we celebrate the launching of our new blog…watch for details.

Or contact us today for more information about the ultimate in effective, easy-to-use, and affordable assessments.

The PsyMax Solution: The Ultimate Suite of Pre-employment and Employee Performance and Work Style Assessments!

Dr. Wayne Nemeroff
PsyMax Solutions, LLC
2000 Auburn Drive
Suite 200
Cleveland, OH 44122
Phone: 216-896-9991
866-774-2273 (toll free)
216-360-9907 (fax)

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How to Conduct an Assessment: Interview and Hire Great People

June 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A Step-by-Step Guide for Managers and Business Owners

Every employer knows the value of good employees. Good employees create the foundations on which an organization stands. They create a difference, a  difference reflected in their performance. Additionally, good employees deliver the required results, perform well, and function as responsible team members.

How to Conduct an Assessment: Interview and Hire Great People

The importance of the employment interview cannot be overstated.

Like most managers and business owners, your selection process for new employees would most likely rely primarily on the employment interview.

The importance of the employment interview cannot be overstated!

This is the stage that allows you to identify and hire great people, but a wrong judgment call at this juncture can also result in a bad hire…with disastrous consequences for your organization.

“The cost of replacing a ‘misfit’ far exceeds the dollars in salary. Replacing an employee typically impacts morale, ongoing workload, and possibly re-training other employees. Be aware that the cost of replacing an employee could be several times the person’s salary in hours and recruiting.” Harvard Business Online (Employee Retention: What Managers Can Do)

Right Management, a global provider of integrated consulting and research solutions, recently conducted a study of 444 companies. The study focused on hiring practices and the cost of a bad hire.

Significantly, the Right Management study revealed that replacing a bad hire can cost as much as five times the employee’s annual salary in recruitment, training, severance and lost productivity.

The Cost of a Bad Hire

  • 42% of the firms studied said a hiring blunder cost them twice the employee’s annual salary
  • 26% said it cost them 3 times annual salary
  • 11% said it cost 5 times annual salary to correct the blunder
  • 15% reported that a poor hiring decision cost them as little as one times annual salary

In a report for the IPMA Assessment Council, management consultant Dr. John Sullivan lists the Business Impacts of a Bad Hiring Decision, and how different aspects of regular operations are affected:

  • Increased Management Time and Effort
  • Training Time and Costs
  • Customer Satisfaction and Error Rates
  • Product Development Problems
  • Competitive Advantage Loss
  • Other Employee’s Productivity
  • Company’s Image and PR
  • Fill in Time
  • Out of Pocket Costs
  • HR Time and Image

Without a doubt, even a single bad employee will negatively impact your business, and cost a lot of time and money, in addition to a lot of frustration and aggravation.

So what is the solution to this predicament?

This article will show you how you can avoid such costly hiring mistakes during an interview, using the scientific Assessment Interview Approach.

The Assessment Interview Approach

The Assessment Interview Approach is one of the best tools available in the hands of modern day recruiters, human resource managers, small and medium-sized business owners, and professional practice office and/or business managers.

The Assessment Interview Approach provides a set of psychological tests and interviewing techniques that closely assess the overall characteristics and makeup of a candidate. Thus helping the interviewer determine whether or not the individual being considered is the right candidate for the job.

The Assessment Interview Approach include a series of questions that delve deep into the candidate’s motivations, operating style, and values, revealing their inner workings.

The Work Style Personality Questionnaires can determine the candidate’s work strength potential, and also unearth the candidate’s negative traits and developmental needs.

Why Use Assessments?

Traditionally, employers have depended upon references, resumes, interviews, and background checks to find out all the details about a potential employee in order to make correct hiring decisions.

Unfortunately, these methods have proven insufficient for consistently choosing top grade A employees!

Too many times, these approaches lead to bad hires and mismatch employees to the job. Consequently, the system needed to be changed, changes that would enable employers to make the right decisions and hire the best candidate for the job.

The Assessment Interview Approach enables an employer, and/or its agents, to be better informed, thus leading to consistently good recruitment and hiring decisions.

Using the assessments approach is crucial for employers who:

  • Want to make correct hiring decisions
  • Train the existing workforce effectively
  • Help managers deliver better results
  • Matching new hires with the position they are best suited for

Using assessments leads to a substantial improvement in productivity in both the short and long term.

Other benefits of making good hires consistently include:

  • Better Employee Relations
  • Less Turnover
  • Less Anxiety
  • Less Stress
  • Fewer conflicts
  • And a reduction in overall HR expenses

Traditional methods of hiring do not succeed as well or as often because many facets of an employee’s emotional framework are guarded, hidden beneath the surface. Consequently, an employee’s emotional framework is often hidden from the employer, HR manager, and/or office or business manager during the hiring process as candidates work to put their best foot forward in order to secure the position they are interviewing for.

Unfortunately, resumes may contain misleading or inaccurate information and references are often of limited value for a number of reasons. In other words, resumes and references often fail to provide a complete picture. Additionally, during the interview process a candidate may not provide information about a work style behavior that has been neglected; and is therefore inadequately developed. And finally, background checks, although very important, provide just a partial picture as well.

A skillful recruiter, HR manager, or business owner may overcome a number of these limitations during the interview process. But even interviews are not without their own set of shortcomings.

Unfortunately, there is a very low correlation between the ability to do well in an interview and the capacity to deliver on the job.

In fact, interviews have a 14% success rate in identifying superior people (Hunter & Hunter, Validity & Utility of Alternative Predictors of Job Performance, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 96, No.1)

New Employee Interview Process and New Hire Failure

The Assessment Interview Approach is one of the best tools available. Bad hires are a costly mistake!

Sadly, HR managers and business owners are well aware of all of the shortcomings noted above!

Unfortunately, most consider these mixed results as a business reality that has to be taken in stride…but it doesn’t have to be.

This Is Where Assessments Come Into the Picture!

Management consultant and trainer Dave Kahle provides an overview of the benefits of using an integrated assessment approach while hiring:

Hiring/Promotion Decision Based Upon Success Percentage

Resume and Interview Alone: 14%
Add Background Checks: 26%
Add Assessment of Behavioral Traits: 38%
Add Assessment of Thinking Abilities: 54%
Add Assessment of Occupational Interests: 66%
Profiles Integrated “Job Match” System: 75%+

Given Kahle’s findings, the best results are achieved when a comprehensive Job Match assessment approach is used in the hiring process, measuring:

  • Behavioral Traits
  • Work Style Behaviors
  • Thinking Abilities
  • Occupational Interests

The appropriate use of professionally developed assessment tools enables organizations to make more effective, employment-related decisions, particularly when compared to the use of simple observations or random decision making (Testing and Assessment: An Employers’ Guide to Good Practices, US Department of Labor).

Significantly, while the usefulness of the assessment approach is well established, few employers know how to effectively hire great people.

The Assessment Interview Approach in 5 Simple Actionable Steps

Step 1 – Set Realistic Goals to Manage the Assessment Interview Process

The first step is to develop realistic goals to manage the assessment interview process.

These goals determine the success or failure of the hiring process. If accurate measurement is not used during the process, managers can only rely on general, subjective, impressions in order to make the hiring decision.

Goals can include ways to:

  • Accurately measure the candidate’s ability to perform on the job
  • Influence a good candidate’s decision by selling the positive aspects of the job
  • Assist the candidate to arrive at the correct decision by providing him with an honest overview of the organization’s challenges and rewards and with the job.

All of these goals help the candidate decide if this job opportunity matches his or her strengths and weaknesses; and, is a good fit based on the position he or she is looking for.

Step 2 – Determine the Critical Job Requirements

Predicting whether or not a particular candidate will meet your performance expectations is one of the primary measurement objectives of an assessment interview process.

For this, you need to determine the critical job requirements and find out whether the candidate can deliver accordingly.

  • You need to find out what the work behavior requirements are for any job
  • Then measure/determine whether or not the person has the requisite work style behaviors
  • The greater the match, the more likely the person will be a good hire and be successful

Using an employee assessment tool is critical at this stage of the process!

Step 3 – Formulate a Relevant Job-Related Q & A

Interviewers often operate under a set of assumptions while conducting a job interview.

These assumptions can finally determine whether the interview will be effective or not. Faulty assumptions can lead to an ineffective questioning strategy, a strategy that will not help to establish whether or not the candidate will meet or exceed performance expectations.

There should be a close link between the questions and the performance expectation. To keep the interviewer focused, prepare a list of behavioral questions and a sample of the positive and negative indicators of the answers for each set of questions.

The behavioral questions and answers should be prepared before the interview starts!

Formulating relevant job-related Q & As beforehand will help the interviewer go over the pros and cons of the position the candidate is interviewing for. Additionally, this strategy will help protect your company against complaints of discrimination.

Step 4 – Conduct an Effective Assessment Interview

You have already used an assessment tool in the second step.

At this stage, you need to use an integrated assessment approach. An effective assessment developed by experts will be invaluable at this step.

Key Point: Make sure that you use one of the best solutions available in the market!

Only a professionally constructed set of assessment tests and resources can help you select the best candidates. That is, those candidates who are likely to turn out to be successful, both short term and long term, because they are a good fit and match, as noted above.

Once again, the professionally developed assessment tests and resources should evaluate fit and match and be based on the organization’s culture and a well-thought out set of job requirements.

Step 5 – Make Successful Hiring Decisions Based on a Degree of Fit Score

Once you’ve used a proper assessment tool, thus arriving at a hiring decision based on the degree of fit score, the hiring process becomes more objective and effective.

Key Point: You need to base your decision on all the information gathered and analyzed.

Make sure you use a structured approach throughout the hiring process and record your decision making. Finally, be sure to review the decisions and processes applied during the hiring process using team interviews, when and where appropriate. The final review will be particularly useful for companies and professional practices using more than one interviewer during the hiring process, thus allowing for inter-rater reliability.

Using the Assessment Interview Approach will significantly improve the quality and success of all your hiring decisions.

How Do You Find the Perfect Assessment Tool for Your Specific Needs?
Don’t Worry, We’ve Done All the Research for You…
…So Hire the Right Person Today!

Watch for The PsyMax Solution’s 100 Day Challenge, coming soon!

PsyMax Solutions will be offering Free Online Assessments and a number of additional surprises as we celebrate the launching of our new blog…watch for details.

Or contact us today for more information about the ultimate in effective, easy-to-use, and affordable assessments.

The PsyMax Solution: The Ultimate Suite of Pre-employment and Employee Performance and Work Style Assessments!

Dr. Wayne Nemeroff
PsyMax Solutions, LLC
2000 Auburn Drive
Suite 200
Cleveland, OH 44122
Phone: 216-896-9991
866-774-2273 (toll free)
216-360-9907 (fax)

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Filed Under: Assessment Interview Approach, Employment Performance Assessment, How to Conduct an Assessment: Interview and Hire Great People, Pre-employment Testing, PsyMax Employee Assessments, PsyMax Work Style Assessments, The PsyMax Solution Tagged With:

Food for Thought: Passion and the Assessment Process

May 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

PsyMax Solutions would like to acknowledge the sacrifice of all of the men and women in uniform, past and present.

Happy Memorial Day and Thank You for Your Service!

*****

The May 25, 2012 HBR Management Tip of the Day is certainly worth passing on as today’s Food for Thought.

Today’s Food for Thought is a pre-employment assessment tip adapted from the Harvard Business Review, the HBR Blog Network, and “Talent, Passion, and the Creativity Maze” by Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer.

Entitled Hire for Passion, Not Just Talent, the HBR Management Tip of the Day points to something we have touched on as well…the importance passion must play in the hiring process.

Amabile and Kramer note that passionate employees are “driven by interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, or a sense of personal challenge.” The authors continue by noting that these employees “are more likely to take risks, look for multiple solutions to a problem, and seek out the best one rather than the easiest.”

As part of the hiring process, we too encourage employers to get to know their candidates well. The assessment process in its entirety, and the right pre-employment assessment, have never been more important, and for myriad reasons. Passionate new hires will bring new energy and excitement into almost any company.

The cost of hiring and training a new employee, at any level, can be considerable. We encourage you to consider The PsyMax Solution, a suite of employment assessments that are easy to use and affordable, early on in the hiring process.

The cost of making the right hiring decision, both in terms of dollars and time spent, is minuscule when compared to the cost of hiring mistake. Hiring, training, and either losing or firing a new hire because a crucial step in the hiring process was ignored or overlooked may have a huge impact on your bottom line.

As  Amabile and Kramer state, and we at PsyMax Solutions agree: 

“Get to know potential hires as thoroughly as possible, even before you have an opening for them. Ask them why they do what they do, what disappointments they’ve had, what their dream jobs would be. Look for fire in their eyes as they talk about the work itself, and listen for a deep desire to do something that hasn’t been done before. When you talk to their references, listen for mentions of passion.”

Use a well thought out and properly constructed pre-employment assessment and, as noted above, get to know your new hire thoroughly.

Ask yourself:

  • Is the candidate passionate about what they do?
  • Is the candidate looking for a job and a paycheck or something more?
  • Does the passion they express and exhibit spill over into other areas of their life?
  • Is the candidate looking for a career or does the candidate look upon their career as a calling?

Whether you have used assessments as part of your hiring process in the past or are considering them for the first time, The PsyMax Solution is a suite of assessments that are second to none.

PsyMax Solutions stand behind our assessments 100%

Contact us directly by clicking here!

PsyMax Solutions, LLC
2000 Auburn Drive
Suite 200
Cleveland, OH 44122
Phone: 216-896-9991
866-774-2273 (toll free)
216-360-9907 (fax)

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Filed Under: Food for Thought: Passion and the Assessment Process, Motivation, Pre-employment Testing, PsyMax Employee Assessments, PsyMax Solutions, The PsyMax Solution Tagged With: ,

A Critical Review of Assessment Misconceptions

May 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

ASSESSMENT MISCONCEPTIONS: 

A Journey Out of Traditional Thinking Towards

Better and Faster Talent Management Decisions

Simply put, assessments help companies make better hires.

Hiring the right people for the right positions from the start reduces turnover and associated costs, increases productivity, and produces a skilled pool of employees to ensure strong leadership development and succession planning. While most HR professionals readily give mental assent to the benefits of assessments, we have noticed that HR tends to push assessments to the bottom of the priority list for a variety of reasons.

The just-published 5th Annual Rocket-Hire Online Screening and Assessment Usage Survey reports that screening and assessment tools are becoming more popular, but lack of understanding of the benefits of screening and assessment is still a primary reason for a failure to adopt them.

The Top 3 Misconceptions About Assessments

  • Assessment implementations take too long 
  • I can’t afford the time to implement an assessment solution while I’m implementing any other HR strategies 
  • Assessments are just too expensive 

Over the years, we at PsyMax Solutions have repeatedly come across the same misconceptions, assumptions, and objections about assessments. In order to help steer you toward the truth, we have constructed a tour of sorts.

In fact, the tour is about to begin. Please fasten your seat belts and prepare for some twists and turns.

False Expectation World

Our tour begins in False Expectation World, whose inhabitants make decisions based on what they’ve heard or experienced in the past.

Stop #1 is called “Assessments are hard to understand!”

Some vendors present their results in such a way that clients must rely heavily on their on-site expert, since no one else can make sense of the reports. Some products require your entire HR department to undergo days of training and certification.

But assessments don’t have to be hard to understand or difficult to deliver.

If what you are measuring is work style behavior (commonly known as “soft skills”), results can be clear and direct, and presented in the language that business uses to describe either successful or not-so successful employees. These are not just personality traits or competencies.

Work style behaviors determine if a person is a good fit for a job.

Our next stop, “Assessments must be job-specific!”

This stop is based on the idea that you have to run a significant number of statistical models (a process called validation) before the assessments can be used for your specific needs. An organization may believe that a  test must be created for a certain position (sales, nursing, engineering) and validated by a sample of people in that job. The problem is that some of the best-known instruments ever built by international assessment vendors have been built on very small and potentially non-significant, smaller sample populations.

Generally speaking, the average validity study includes a sample size of fewer than one hundred, and many times fewer than fifty. Many researchers would say that a sample size of fewer than one hundred can’t be trusted to provide an organization with the overall validity and reliability required to select the right candidates.

Broad validity (based on a large sample group) and reliability (consistently getting results that line up with the sample group) can be found with an out-of-the-box solution and applied with confidence to the types of hiring, interviewing, development, and coaching challenges any organization faces.

The most effective assessment tool is one that you actually use.  That is, a tool that is: 

  • Easy to apply
  • Measures behaviors relevant to the positions you are trying to fill
  • Accurately predicts performance

“Not everyone who wants to be a manager has what it takes to be one. That’s where talent assessment comes into play…most organizations that pursue formal succession planning use some type of objective assessment program to gather data regarding individuals’ managerial-related capabilities.” Daniel Schroeder, “Implement a System to Select the Next Generation of Leadership,” Small Business Times

“Assessments don’t work” is our third stop!

If you share this opinion, you have probably used assessments that were of poor quality or were not appropriate for the intended purpose. It’s interesting, for instance, to discover whether a candidate is introverted or extroverted, but it’s far more valuable to find out if the candidate possesses the behaviors that are critical for job success.

Understand the position you are trying to fill and its context, and then measure applicants on the work style behaviors that can make the difference between a hire who succeeds and a hire who fails.

Applicants are far less likely to fake or “game” this type of assessment because there are no perceived right or wrong answers, simply questions about work style. And since this is not a “quadrant-based” approach, applicants will not be pigeon-holed, miss-classified, or narrowly labeled.

Stop #4 brings us to “Assessments are only for new hires!”

They certainly are a great help in making hiring decisions, but assessments can also be effective tools for:

  • Promoting internal incumbents
  • Interviewing
  • Targeted leadership development and coaching
  • Succession planning

When you recognize the broad value of assessments, you’ll want to use them to improve your bench strength across your organization.

Expense Valley

Leaving False Expectation Land, we dip down into Expense Valley, where the dollar is king.

Here at Stop #5, you may be concerned that in this uncertain financial climate, it’s not wise to spend money on things that don’t seem to affect the bottom line.

But there is life after recession, and in order to stay competitive, investing in people is key. Count the opportunity cost of doing nothing.

For those human resource managers, business owners, and corporation executives who believe assessments are purely an expense, consider the fact that just two good hires in a year will yield a return on investment (ROI) equal to five times the original assessment investment.

Perhaps the question you should be asking yourself is whether you can afford not to incorporate assessments into your hiring practices!

The next stop on our tour (#6) is “Assessments are too expensive!”

You may agree if you have been burned by hidden costs and service fees, but a good assessments vendor will disclose all fees upfront and sell you only what you need.

Ultimately, the cost is a function of how you buy:

  • Volume
  • Process
  • Scope

Assessments certainly can be expensive, but they don’t have to be!

So the fear at Stop #7, “I can’t afford an assessment solution while implementing other part(s) of my HR strategy (usually an Applicant Tracking System),” doesn’t hold water.

Neither does the notion at Stop #8, “I can’t implement assessments with my current ATS vendor without spending a lot of money.”

Integration doesn’t have to be expensive; in some cases, it can even be done at zero cost.

If your ATS vendor tells you it’s not possible to integrate assessments with your system, our experience suggests that your vendor is partnering with a predetermined assessment firm rather than giving you the choice of whom you want to use.

Finally, consider this: an ATS is only a repository of applicant data. While immensely valuable in that capacity, an ATS doesn’t help you highlight the people in your applicant pool who best fit your positions; assessments do.

Cost of Change Land

Now we arrive at Cost of Change Land, where you face a seemingly never-ending onslaught of time-sensitive tasks that compete for your attention.

Everyone’s trying to do more with less, and that includes time. You may be reluctant to take on any new project that may cost you time or other intangibles.

Stop #9, for instance, tells you “Assessments take months to implement!”

That can be true, but it is not the only truth. Some assessments can be up and running within one or two weeks and don’t require staff certification to use.

We next travel to the slippery slope of Stop #10, “Devotion to brand!”

You’ll often hear the slogan “It’s the biggest, so it must be the best!” 

Here you may get dazzled by big names and slick PowerPoint presentations and forget to ask crucial questions that would have told you the brand name solution wasn’t a good fit:

  • How long does implementation take?
  • What are the service fees?
  • How much training is required to understand the assessment results?

You may also settle for poor customer service, since such a large and famous company has so many customers vying for its time.

Brand loyalty often doesn’t translate into a solution that best meets your specific needs!

Stop #11 is a quicksand pit called “Yielding to tradition!”

Both within a company and within an industry, tradition plays a part in the decision-making process. “We’ve always done it this way” can stop a conversation, or an innovation, cold. If the traditional method of using assessments means months-long implementation and exorbitant fees, the knee-jerk reaction is to say “No thank you!”

Conversely, if the way it’s always been done always seems to work, why change now? The idea that there could be something better can’t be heard above the clamor to go with the flow and stick with the past.

“A multi-billion-dollar retailer compared the results generated in minutes from a PsyMax Solutions assessment with those written by an on-site psychologist after a day and a half of assessments and interviews. PsyMax’s reports were of equal or better quality at a mere fraction of the cost.”

Next, we roll on to “Assessments create legal risk,” our 12th stop.

Here you worry that the questions are discriminatory or will seem personal in nature. The answer is to use assessments with broad validity and reliability, whose statistics don’t discriminate against protected groups.

In their paper on employee selection, Daniel R. Fisher, Ph.D., and Robert J. Nobile, J.D. find that assessments, rather than being risky, actually help mitigate legal risk:

“A properly designed and implemented selection assessment using validated, job-related tests may help reduce legal exposure to discrimination claims.”

Make sure that you have analyzed the job so you understand what the job requires, and that the assessments you have chosen measure the behaviors relevant to that job.

Find assessments built by trained psychologists to help you make talent management decisions!

Stop #13 is called “Online assessments aren’t necessarily as reliable as those provided by an on-site Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology consultant.”

This thinking can again be traced back to the fear of deviating from “the way we’ve always done it!” You don’t want to risk precious time and money on assessments that don’t have a track record within the organization.

But a recent comparison reveals that individual assessment consultants aren’t the only game in town!

“Assessments cause applicants to drop out!” is our 14th stop.

If applicants aren’t willing to invest a few additional minutes toward getting the job, you have to ask yourself if these were the right candidates in the first place. Though some applicants may drop out, this is a rare occurrence. And, in the long run, this action will actually save you time by allowing you to focus on the most motivated and qualified candidates.

If you explain the assessments clearly, keep the length reasonable and ensure that content is work-related, you’ll end up with a much more highly qualified, pre-screened pool of talent to draw from!

Stop #15 is a deep jungle called “Assessments will force us to make huge changes in our hiring process!”

The trees in the jungle seem so dense and staying on course so daunting that you may refuse to use assessments, but they bring greater effectiveness and standardization to a process-based hiring approach. Evidence shows that introducing assessments as early in the hiring process as possible results in lower recruiting costs and reduced turnover, a huge change indeed, but not a bad one at all. And when you understand that special training and major process changes aren’t needed, and that assessments actually make your job easier, you will welcome them.

Assessments as a Strategic Partner

We now end our tour at Reality Point.

Assessments are not simply an “extra” to add on when times are good but a vital component of strategic HR, firmly contributing to the bottom line by helping you make better hiring decisions.

Assessments aren’t as expensive as many people assume; they can be scalable and certainly cost less than doing nothing. In fact, they can actually save you money rather than cost you money, given their return-on-investment capabilities.

You don’t have to call in an I/O psychologist for days of training to be able to understand your assessment program, and you don’t have to wait months for implementation.

Legal risk can be mitigated by a validly developed assessment that factors in behavioral qualities that fit the job. None of the misconceptions in this article stand up to the scrutiny of fact and experience.

It’s time to question the marketing machine, bypass “business as usual,” and opt for assessments that will streamline your hiring process, reduce time-to-fill, improve the quality of your hires and provide real value.

The PsyMax Solution

PsyMax Solutions is a nationally recognized human resource assessment innovator. Our tools span industries and job levels, while our attention to customer satisfaction has lead to a 99% customer retention rate.

The PsyMax Solution includes a suite of online assessments, reports, and programs creates solutions based upon proprietary Work Style Assessment inventories to help companies identify and interview prospective employees as well as develop and coach employees to maximize performance.

For more information about The PsyMax Solution for your candidates and employees call 216-896-9991 (local) or 866-774-2273 (toll free) or visit www.psymaxsolutions.com.

PsyMax Solutions, LLC
2000 Auburn Drive
Suite 200
Cleveland, OH 44122
Phone: 216-896-9991
866-774-2273 (toll free)
216-360-9907 (fax)

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Filed Under: A Critical Review of Assessment Misconceptions, Employment Performance Assessment, PsyMax Employee Assessments, PsyMax Solutions, The PsyMax Solution, The PsyMax Solution: Assessing People and Maximizing Performance

The PsyMax Solution: Top 10 Ways to Motivate Employees

May 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Build Commitment, Not Just Compliance

Motivating employees is perhaps one of the greatest challenges that employers face. Different employees are motivated in different ways but there are a few strategies that work for all.

Here’s a list of the top 10 strategies you can use to ensure that your entire workforce is properly motivated. Ultimately, a happy workforce is the foundation for a successful enterprise.

1) Spend Time with your Employees

Take the time to listen to your employees. Keeping your ear to the ground is very important for running a successful business. This will also keep the channels of communication open and develop trust and cooperation in the organization.

2) Promote an Environment of Openness

Employees enjoy their jobs when they find their workplace enjoyable. An open environment that is conducive to new ideas and initiatives helps to keep people in a positive frame of mind.

3) Put the Right People in the Right Jobs

This is a very important point! People perform best when they are the right match for their jobs. Use objective and cost-effective tools like employee assessments to ensure that you hire the right people for your organization’s culture and job requirements.

4) Suitably Reward Top Performers

Top performers should always be rewarded appropriately and often or you risk losing them to the competition.

5) Share Information with your Employees

Employees feel better when they know how their work affects the entire organization and how they fit into the overall plan. If they are in sync with the organization’s vision and plans, they tend to feel more committed and perform at higher levels.

6) Be Specific while Providing Feedback

People perform better when they know what they need to do in order to better their performance. Vague and/or general feedback is not very helpful, take the time to let your people know exactly what they are doing right and what they can do better.

7) Thank People Personally

Get to know your employees personally and thank them openly and in person when appropriate. This strategy will ensure that you build commitment and compliance.

8) Help Create a Culture of Involvement

Help your employees develop a sense of ownership in the company and their work. Involving people in the day to day decision making process will give them a say in the affairs of the organization, and provide them with a sense of involvement and inclusion.

9) Encourage Team Building and Collaboration

Encourage team and collaborative building initiatives. A team that is cohesive and cooperative will work effectively with as a unit.

10) Help Employees to Grow and Learn

Properly assessed and matched employees love to learn and grow. Make sure you provide your employees with the means to learn and grow with the organization. Encourage your employees to learn new skills that will lead to their personal enrichment and overall professional development. In doing so, you will have happier employees, performing at higher levels, and that will lead to a more competitive business able to grow and meet future challenges.

Successful companies have learned that combining pre-employment assessment and job matching with a long term employee motivation and development strategy will lead to enhanced employee performance for years to come.

To learn more about how to use pre-employment  testing and employee performance assessments to grow and develop your workforce, visit www.PsyMaxSolutions.com.

Dr. Wayne Nemeroff
PsyMax Solutions, LLC
2000 Auburn Drive
Suite 200
Cleveland, OH 44122
Phone: 216-896-9991
866-774-2273 (toll free)
216-360-9907 (fax)

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Filed Under: Employment Performance Assessment, Motivation, Pre-employment Testing, PsyMax Employee Assessments, PsyMax Solutions, The PsyMax Solution, The PsyMax Solution: Assessing People and Maximizing Performance, Top 10 Ways to Motivate Employees
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