Personality Testing in the Workplace
The business manager today has a myriad of concerns when considering the best way in which to help his or her business to succeed. On the one hand, the business environment needs thorough examination. On a far more complicated level, however, the business manager needs to ensure that the right personnel are recruited for the work at hand. Since human beings are complicated in nature, managers and personality professionals have constructed personality tests in order to determine the likely success or lack thereof for personnel being recruited. Subsequently, various studies have been conducted to determine the success of these tests in actually predicting the effectiveness of recruiting procedures and/or personnel in a specific business. At the basis of these tests and investigations is the assumption that personality predicts job performance. factors
Garcia et al. (2013) identify personality in terms of its division into "factors" that influence a person's disposition, interpersonal relationships, and by association the person's behavior and ultimate performance in work. Personality measurement has thus become an important concern when recruiting people for work. Not only does the manager need to ensure the longevity of the work relationship with the employee in terms of interpersonal relationships, but also the ability of the employee to accept a long-term position for the specific tasks and workplace requirements to be performed. This is why measures have been developed over the years to ensure that recruiters and managers make the best decisions possible when it comes to employing new personnel. One of the most well-known and prevalent of these is the Big-Five model of personality. This assessment measure operates according to five factors that are defined according to various inter-related traits within the overall personality. The five factors include openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Each includes its own facets that interrelate with the others to make up the overall personality. For openness, for example, the facets include fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, and values, while conscientiousness include facets like competence and a focus on duty and achievement. Extraversion refers to the typically extroverted person, where facets such as warmth, assertiveness and activity are dominant, while agreeableness is closely related with facets like trust and altruism. Neuroticism is the only openly negative trait, with anxiety, anger, hostility, and depression being trademark facets. For the purpose of their study, the authors matched the five dimensions with the NEO-PI-R instrument, together with the JobMatch Talent test. This is a helpful instrument when an individual's specific personality is matched to the job types where he or she would perform best. Whiles a high correlation was found between the instruments, they were not found to be equivalent when assessing individual differences when it comes to recruitment situations (Garcia et al., 2013).
Judge and Zapata (in press) go a step further in investigating personality testing in terms of three components, including personality (measured according to the "Big Five" traits), situation (involving the job context), and behavior (involving job performance). The authors note their focus on the Five-Factor Model (FFM), also known as the "Big Five" because of its widely accepted nature in personality psychology. This is measured according to what the authors refer to as situation strength, which together would influence behavior, resulting in overall job performance.
Judge and Zapata (in press).
Thus, the situation strength factor relates to the situational constraints within an environment, and specifically within the work environment. When there is clear guidance in terms of expected behavior, the situation is strong. In other words, a workplace that has specific inherent rules and regulations relating to behavior at work may be said to include a strong situation. In the absence of clear guidance and unstructured social roles, situations are weak. This also includes cases where organizational structures are decentralized and there is limited external control over a person's behavior. It follows then that the extent to which personality influences job performance would depend upon variables within the context of the job situation. In other words, job performance relies on the interaction among various factors within the job situation. This is why the authors have developed a predictive model based upon situation interactionism, where the degree of mutual influence in terms of personality and situation strength is measured. This can then be used to predict the eventual job performance and long-term success measures of the individual in terms of his or her success and providing optimal service within the context of his or her work.
After comparing the results of their investigations,...
Jobs with different requirements also resulted in different personality traits being at the most favorable position for future job performance. Agreeableness and openness, for example, weak situations were optimal, while conscientiousness and openness proved more highly important in work where the degree of independence in completing work was high. On the other hand, emotional stability, agreeableness, and extraversion were important for work where strong social skills are required. These results can then be usefully applied when creating personality tests for various kinds of work within a company, where a person with high extraversion will probably fare well in work where public relations are a high requirement. Managers can also use such results to determine the best match between personality and work type, where achievement-oriented persons should probably not be placed in positions that require a high level of routine, such as secretarial or clerical work.
Meyer et al. (2014) reiterate the factor of human behavior as influenced by a combination of individual differences and social characteristics. Their study focuses mainly on situational strength in their investigation of factors influencing job performance and personality testing for the purpose of predicting such performance. In strong situations, the authors argue that individuals will be less likely to give way to their dominant personality traits and rather act according to the situation. The premise of the investigation is therefore that, the stronger the situation, the more highly predictable this will be in terms of job performance for individuals.
For this reason, Meyer et al. (2014) have developed an instrument according to which the degree of situational strength can be measured. This instrument is then useful in terms of determining the degree to which personality will be an influencing factor on future job performance; where situation strength is high, personality factors will play a less important role, while personality must be carefully measured and monitored for situations with low strength.
It must be emphasized, however, that tests like these will most likely be only one component of ultimately determining the best candidates for a job. Some personalities, as seen above, will correlate better with high-strength situations, whereas others will feel more challenged and fulfilled in low-strength situations. Indeed, the authors make note of an interplay between various factors, including individual differences within employees, the ways in which they use trait profile to filter situational strength for the purpose of creating a psychologically meaningful work environment, and the way in which these factors influence behavior. Ultimately, an employer must conduct tests that will identify and assess the interplay of factors in a way that will accurately predict future behavior.
According to Cascio and Fogli (2013), the economic value of minimizing employee turnover cannot be overstated. Hence, studies such as those mentioned above, must be examined for their value in terms of assessing the best employees for a certain job type as well as the best ways in which to retain valuable personnel. Hence, a good personality test that truly matches persons to the types of work they will be required to do in the longer term is an invaluable asset for a business.
Cascio and Fogli (2013) point out that there are many predictive personality and job performance tests available today, which could convolute, complicate, and even raise the costs of employee recruitment. This is why it is also important to distinguish between the tests that are relevant to a specific employment situation and those that are not. For some work situations, for example, all five the personality dimensions will be required to be tested in terms of a person's longevity in a specific workplace, especially if the work involves many complicated tasks that require critical thinking, frequent interpersonal interaction, and so on. For simpler jobs, however, it may only be necessary to test some of the components.
For this reason, employers will also do well to distinguish between the most useful of the traditional as opposed to the most newly created test instruments.
In conclusion, personality testing for the workplace has become part and parcel of creating a favorable situation for both employer and employee. They create a platform from which to predict an employee's performance in the future, while also ensuring the satisfaction of particularly employee personality types in particular job types. In short, personality testing reduces employee turnover and minimizes the necessity of frequently recruiting new personnel. This process in itself reduces the overall costs to…
