How Personality Assessments Can Reduce Turnover

In Ann Handley’s book, Everybody Writes, she encourages writers to continue responding to the question “So, what?” until their reader fully understands the importance of the message. When I decided to write about the link between personality assessments and reducing a high turnover rate, it seemed like a great opportunity to follow Handley’s advice – literally. Let’s begin:

Personality assessments allow you to uncover the behaviours that candidates will demonstrate on the job. These types of behaviour include things like:

A candidate’s likelihood to take the lead versus more of a supportive role
Logical versus factual decision making
Responding with a sense of urgency to requests versus taking more time to think things through
A preference for following existing structures versus thinking outside the box

Of course, these are just a few examples of the information personality assessments provide – there are many more nuances to uncover. Regardless of what you find in the outcome of the assessment, the fact remains that personality assessments are instrumental in getting these insights.

So, what?

By understanding how they’ll behave on the job, you can determine in the hiring phase if those behaviours will allow them to be successful or not.

To gain this level of understanding, it’s important to first establish the behaviours that would allow someone to be successful in the role. This way, it’s easy to compare candidates’ behaviours to that benchmark. From there, you can see which aspects of their personality will help them or hinder them if they were to be selected.

So, what?

If you can accurately predict on-the-job success before a candidate is hired, you can improve the likelihood of selecting the right person for the job.

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If your recruitment marketing efforts are successful, you’ll likely have more than one candidate to evaluate, and there are many factors that go into deciding who gets the offer letter. The personality of a candidate should be weighted as heavily as their cognitive ability and the information uncovered via the structured behaviour-based interview. Other factors to consider are relevant skills and experience, as well as any insights gleaned from reference checks. All of this information works together to create a much more complete picture of each candidate, which can help improve your accuracy in selecting the right person for the job.

So, what?

If you select the right person for the job, you reduce your risk of turnover.

Companies often experience high employee turnover due to performance-related issues. But here’s the thing: if you hire someone who has what it takes to meet the demands, you’ll eliminate that risk altogether. A candidate might have the skills necessary to do the job, but does their temperament – their personality – line up? This is where assessments are instrumental in determining if a candidate has what it takes, beyond just the skill set.

Another example: suppose an existing employee moves into a new role, discovers that they don’t like the work, and finds a different opportunity. Personality assessments illustrate what employees may like to do in a particular role, and how they might go about doing it. So if you select a candidate, new or existing, with the personality that matches the role, you’re reducing the likelihood of an unpleasant surprise down the road.

Pro Tip: Employee engagement can also increase retention. Here’s how.

So, what?

If you reduce your risk of turnover, you reduce the risk of incurring costs associated with turnover.

Almost every HR vendor will tell you about the high costs of turnover – it’s why they’re in business! Turnover is expensive, everybody knows it and wants to avoid it. When your turnover rate goes down, so do the costs associated with sourcing and hiring replacements, as well as the cost of decreased productivity.

So, what?

If you save your company money, you’ll be a hero!

Honestly – if you’re still asking “so, what?” at this point, consider what happens to heroes:

Heroes (often) get acknowledgment
Heroes (often) get career advancement opportunities over time
Heroes (might) get sweet, sweet pay raises

Motivated by contributing to the greater good? Motivated purely by personal gain? Doesn’t matter. When you’re a hero, you get both. Your company wins and so do you.