To properly value your workforce, you need strong insight into your employees. Understanding what a person knows; how quickly s/he can learn new information; how likely the person will correctly process and act on that information; which personalities best fit certain roles and functions; and how to navigate around their traits and flaws are keys to enhanced workplace efficiency.
Why Does Workplace Efficiency Matter for an Agency?
Increasing workplace efficiency saves time and increases the quality of work being done. What does that do? It helps your agency make more money. If you know what a person can do and how s/he will act, you can put a person in the right position from the start, saving time and money in training. And when you know these things for every individual in your office, you will know who to team with other employees, and who you can expect to drive accounts forward.
Can it be that simple—having people take a couple of tests so you will be able to more reliably predict what they can do, where to place them, and how it will make you money? Yes, it can.
Beyond Skills and Abilities
When you have a stack of resumés in front of you, what do you do? Are some candidates too junior? Do some seem to be too similar to choose between them? Or, are their experiences too varied to be easily compared? Testing provides you with an appreciation of not just what a person knows, can learn, process, and act upon, but also the motivation they need to be happy… and the signs to look for when they are unhappy.
Can you trust everything you see on a resumé? You probably shouldn’t. In a competitive job market, people inflate salary claims, alter employment dates, and exaggerate past titles and job responsibilities. Some do worse than “fudge” their qualifications. Even when people are truthful, their resumés may not give a sufficiently detailed picture of who they are and whether they will be a good fit for your agency. Testing can help you fill in the missing parts of the picture.
Testing streamlines your hiring process, and results in visible improvements through reduced training costs, lower turnover, and increased productivity. Company use of employment testing has grown recently because businesses have become aware that the quality of their hires affects their ability to maintain profitability. According to surveys by the American Management Association (AMA), the use of pre-employment testing has been growing steadily over the past fifteen years. The AMA's most recent data showed that:
- 70% of employers did some sort of job skill testing
- 46% of employers use personality and/or psychological tests on applicants or current employees
- 41% of employers test applicants for basic literacy and math skills
Once you start down the path of employee testing, you will see how much easier it is to manage your people and build stronger teams. You will know the right people to put on urgent projects, and which people work efficiently on projects with longer lead-times. If you need someone to be the face of an account, you will know who would be uncomfortable in that position… or who would be the perfect fit for the role.
If you can you understand all of that, wouldn’t you expect that you could take your agency to the next level?
You’d be right.
Learn more about Second Wind’s employee testing at Right Fit Recruiting.
