“I’m so much more productive working from home!”

Empty Office or Empty Culture? The Struggle of The Introvert.

Productivity and social connection at work are two important factors for workplace success. With varying personality types and natural tendencies, how can we optimise our ability to manage these factors?

With the uptake in flexible working arrangements such as working from home, and the uprise in technology making meetings by distance possible, face-to-face social connections can be more difficult to come by. This flexibility increases productivity, but there is still a need for face-to-face, social connection to promote positive wellbeing and culture at work. Where do we draw the line and balance productivity with social connection to promote an optimum working environment?

 “I’m here to work. Not to make friends”. For some, office chit-chat may be frustrating, distracting, and seemingly unproductive. However, there are several reasons to socialise, as socialising can be productive in itself.

• Humans need connection and belonging to thrive. Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs models how Love and Belonging are important intrinsic motivators, meaning that employees are motivated for more internally meaningful reasons than external and monetary rewards.

• Friends make people happy. Creating work friendships has shown to increase feelings of happiness and reduce stress.

• Evidence shows that the productivity of a worker can depend on the productivity of co-workers in the same workplace, even if they are carrying out independent tasks. Introverts should note that social interaction can lead to productivity spillover through peer pressure and knowledge sharing. This spillover can only occur if employees are working in close proximity, not from home.

• Health. Strong social support reduces the risk of many health issues such as depression, high blood pressure and obesity. Face-to-face social connections also promote a healthy, balanced gut, which has strong links with emotional wellbeing. A correlation was found between individuals with close social relationships and richer gut microbiota composition. You can read more about the importance of a healthy gut in our blog post here.

Don’t annoy the introverts! And introverts, take out your headphones every now and then!

Although it’s optimum to be flexible with interruptions at your desk, such adaptability doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Having a designated social area, or shared meals can provide a break where social connection can foster without interrupting the colleagues deep in work. Remember to consider your surroundings with ad-hoc meetings! However, if you’re often tied to your desk, it’s important to consider how you may be perceived by your colleagues, and whether you’re letting a productivity mindset prevent you from creating social connections. This doesn’t mean you have to become best friends with your colleagues, but it is beneficial to foster a workplace culture of belonging, trust, and mutual respect.

The Big 5 personality traits of Openness and Extraversion lend themselves to flexible attitudes towards social connection in the office, while the trait of Conscientiousness links with productivity, discipline, and perseverance. Do you sometimes find office chit-chat pointless and wish everyone would get on with their work? Or do you enjoy socialising so much that you get distracted? Identifying these tendencies with our range of behavioural assessments can help us to self-manage in the workplace, and learn to behave in an optimum manner, balancing social connection with productivity. Similarly, in a recruitment context, identifying these traits can help predict how a candidate may behave at work, and what areas they may need to develop to perform effectively in the role.

“I’m so much more productive working from home!”

Empty Office or Empty Culture? The Struggle of The Introvert.

Productivity and social connection at work are two important factors for workplace success. With varying personality types and natural tendencies, how can we optimise our ability to manage these factors?

With the uptake in flexible working arrangements such as working from home, and the uprise in technology making meetings by distance possible, face-to-face social connections can be more difficult to come by. This flexibility increases productivity, but there is still a need for face-to-face, social connection to promote positive wellbeing and culture at work. Where do we draw the line and balance productivity with social connection to promote an optimum working environment?

 “I’m here to work. Not to make friends”. For some, office chit-chat may be frustrating, distracting, and seemingly unproductive. However, there are several reasons to socialise, as socialising can be productive in itself.

• Humans need connection and belonging to thrive. Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs models how Love and Belonging are important intrinsic motivators, meaning that employees are motivated for more internally meaningful reasons than external and monetary rewards.

• Friends make people happy. Creating work friendships has shown to increase feelings of happiness and reduce stress.

• Evidence shows that the productivity of a worker can depend on the productivity of co-workers in the same workplace, even if they are carrying out independent tasks. Introverts should note that social interaction can lead to productivity spillover through peer pressure and knowledge sharing. This spillover can only occur if employees are working in close proximity, not from home.

• Health. Strong social support reduces the risk of many health issues such as depression, high blood pressure and obesity. Face-to-face social connections also promote a healthy, balanced gut, which has strong links with emotional wellbeing. A correlation was found between individuals with close social relationships and richer gut microbiota composition. You can read more about the importance of a healthy gut in our blog post here.

Don’t annoy the introverts! And introverts, take out your headphones every now and then!

Although it’s optimum to be flexible with interruptions at your desk, such adaptability doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Having a designated social area, or shared meals can provide a break where social connection can foster without interrupting the colleagues deep in work. Remember to consider your surroundings with ad-hoc meetings! However, if you’re often tied to your desk, it’s important to consider how you may be perceived by your colleagues, and whether you’re letting a productivity mindset prevent you from creating social connections. This doesn’t mean you have to become best friends with your colleagues, but it is beneficial to foster a workplace culture of belonging, trust, and mutual respect.

The Big 5 personality traits of Openness and Extraversion lend themselves to flexible attitudes towards social connection in the office, while the trait of Conscientiousness links with productivity, discipline, and perseverance. Do you sometimes find office chit-chat pointless and wish everyone would get on with their work? Or do you enjoy socialising so much that you get distracted? Identifying these tendencies with our range of behavioural assessments can help us to self-manage in the workplace, and learn to behave in an optimum manner, balancing social connection with productivity. Similarly, in a recruitment context, identifying these traits can help predict how a candidate may behave at work, and what areas they may need to develop to perform effectively in the role.

Workplace safety is a critical concern for all organisations. The cost of work-related injury and disease in Australia amounts to over 60 billion dollars annually. Of this cost, over half is attributed to technicians and trades workers, machinery operators and drivers, and labourers

Research tells us that up to 80% of workplace accidents result from human error. Managing workplace safety is particularly critical in industries such as building and construction, manufacturing, mining, healthcare and social assistance, aviation and transport, logistics, utilities, and agriculture.

Safety assessments benefit everyone involved. Employees are placed at less risk, and employers benefit from a reduction of absenteeism and injury claims, as well as a greater likelihood of reaching (or maintaining) their ‘zero safety incidents’ targets.

 Research indicates that use of safety testing significantly reduces work-related accidents and workers’ compensation costs (by 40% on average). A client once told us an astounding story of an ex-employee working on a smelting plant: an object had become stuck to the inside of an enormous vat of molten metal. The employee removed his safety harness, ignored all of the safety warnings and barriers, and climbed into the vat – he scaled the inside and tried to brush the object off with a broom. This incident quite obviously could have been fatal, and greatly concerned management. Sure enough, when they went back to check the employee’s safety testing results from the recruitment phase, he had scored in the ‘well below average’ range: he had not met the organisation’s benchmark result and actually should not have been hired. For the organisation, this ‘near miss’ reinforced the importance of safety testing during recruitment.

They can also minimise legal risk. Just this year, a Queensland organisation was charged with breaching their duty of care to a candidate, by offering him a casual security position without assessing whether he was psychologically suited to its challenges. The court found that a psychological assessment would have indicated that the individual was not able to cope with threatening situations.

Finally: doing your due diligence with safety testing demonstrates that your organisation is actively committed to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of its employees.

If you want more information or want to see how Testgrid can help, get in touch with us today!

So, you want to assess communication skills? Start by deciding what communication means for you. Communication is a broad concept and has many levels, for example, just to name a few:

• Written communication (emails, reports, proposals)

• Communicating with impact (public speaking, articulating information, explaining a point: confidence and persuasiveness)

• Informal communication (relating to others, building rapport, cracking a joke)

• Forming connections (networking strategically and forming deep connections with others, showing understanding and empathy)

As we’re dealing with such a broad topic, if you truly want to get a thorough understanding of your candidates’ communication skills, you may want to consider the following.

Behavioural Assessment

Ever hated your job? That’s probably because it didn’t suit your behaviour. Take me for example: I. Hate. Public. Speaking. It riddles me with anxiety, my heart pounds, my hands shake and then I’m exhausted for hours afterwards from all the energy expended from my stress. Imagine if I had to do public speaking every day! I would hate my job. It wouldn’t inspire me and I’d feel unmotivated to go to work. Then I’d quit and my boss would need to find someone else. So, if you’re interviewing me for a role where I’d be presenting to large groups daily, wouldn’t you like to know this beforehand?

This is where behavioural assessments come into play. These reports show the candidate’s workplace preferences. For example, on the Saville Wave Professional Styles Assessment, there is a Competency called “Communicating Information”. This Competency refers to someone’s preference for Convincing People, Articulating Information in contexts such as public speaking and Challenging Others’ Ideas. Guess what my score was for this!

It’s important to note that this is a prediction of potential and what I prefer to do at work. I am certainly able to give a decent presentation – because I have to sometimes! I do a reasonable job, but would I like to do this every day? Hell no!

Comprehensive research suggests that a leading predictor of on the job performance (with a predictive validity of 0.65) is a combination of structured interviews and highly validated personality assessments. This is because personality assessments allow us to identify predicted strengths and development areas for candidates at work, and interviews help us to confirm or further investigate the results of these reports. Using multiple methods of assessment ultimately provides greater, compounded validity. This way, you get the validity and fairness of structure, alongside the human touch of a candidate face-to-face.

So what’s the perfect way to assess communication skills? Use all 3! The more information you gather, the less likely you are to make a poor hiring decision.

Embracing and driving change are two behaviours that are highly sought after in today’s world of recruitment. Workplaces with a tech and improvement focus are frequently expanding on and shifting processes, meaning our environments always changing. Across all roles and industries, being open to change improves resilience and positive wellbeing – and therefore, increases productivity and retention. Whether your goal is increased wellbeing or increased productivity, learning to embrace change is a key development opportunity. Happy workers are productive workers – a win-win outcome for both employers and employees.

Openness to change means a few different things. Firstly, accepting when things don’t go the way you expected, and not to resist or create excuses, but to embrace the opportunity that change creates. This kind of mindset fosters resilience and creativity, because we overcome challenges more easily when we see unexpected changes as opportunities, rather than barriers. Secondly, coping with change involves being comfortable with ambiguity and risk. Driving change sometimes means delving into the unknown, without knowing the exact outcome, but the best outcomes sometimes come from taking measured risks. Taking risks can be effective for growth, especially when we have confidence in our tools to manage the result.

Accepting change in the workplace starts with learning to accept change in all areas of life. We all deal with change. Whether it be the frustration of cancelled plans, or as significant as the death of a loved one. There are three stages of accepting change, which guide our transition from a mindset of unmet expectations, to a mindset suited to our unexpected conditions.

Transitions For Accepting Change

Stage 1: Grieve and accept the past

Stage 2: The Middle: shed old habits and form new ones

Stage 3: Embrace your new self: an adapted person who does things differently now.

The death of a loved one is one of the top 5 most stressful things we experience as human beings, requiring major adjustment and transition. During stage one, it’s important to allow yourself to grieve the loss and eventually accept what’s happened. In stage two, we shed the habits we’re used to: maybe the loved one was a source of support for you, maybe they helped you with things you now struggle to manage alone. This is where we shed old habits and form new ones – sourcing new support and resources. This stage might take years in this context, but eventually leads to stage three, where we thrive using our new strategies, and embrace new ways of life. We may never master the art of immediately coping with these kinds of change – because some changes are so unexpected and debilitating that we naturally will struggle to cope. But the changes we face at work are more manageable, and the better we deal with change throughout life, the more resilient we are to difficulties of all shapes and sizes.

Implementing small changes in life can help build up resilience to cope with day-to-day frustrations and the larger challenges that come along. You can create small and manageable change by breaking out of routines and encouraging yourself to take spontaneous options where possible. Simple examples are experimenting with new foods, or taking an unknown route on a walk or jog. More effortful examples are travelling without planning an itinerary, or trying novel experiences like skydiving.

However, who wants to spend their life doing things they don’t actually like? I probably won’t enjoy my life if I’m constantly ordering a long black when I really want a latte, or I’m forcing myself to skydive when I really just want to watch a movie. This creates cognitive dissonance, the feeling of resistance when our actions don’t align with our values (I value lattes, clearly). It’s better to do things that align with our values. But we need to learn to embrace diversity and change – so how do we do this without compromising the things we enjoy?

You may think you enjoy change if you’re an adventurous person who loves variety, but everyone naturally resists some kinds of change. When change is interpreted as threatening, the amygdala releases hormones to help us fight or flight, so the body can respond to threats. Common reasons for resisting change at work include; perceived lack of competence to deal with change, lack of trust in the organisation, and fear of the unknown. Therefore, people who don’t interpret change as a threat are less likely to have a defensive bodily response, and are able to see the benefits of change.

We need to adjust our perspective of what change means. Humans are naturally resistant to change because it threatens what is safe and predictable for us. For example, I drive the same way to work every day. I could take a different route, but it’s a risk – I don’t know exactly which roads to take and it could be slower, or it could be quicker. I’m probably not going to take the risk because the route I currently take is good enough.

So, what if the route isn’t good enough anymore? The traffic is unpredictable and I’m sometimes late for work. This is when change becomes more appealing – because I have a reason to change, and the dissatisfaction I have with the current route outweighs the inconvenience of changing my route. This idea can be applied to all sorts of change: for example, in the workplace, employees are likely to get on board with organisational change when they feel the reason for change outweighs the inconvenience/cost of change itself. In 2020, a collaborative approach to change leadership is trending. When a directive approach is taken to change, it’s more likely to be interpreted as a threat. However, if employees understand and agree with change initiatives, and are consulted in the process, they are open to change – and the process will be smoother.

In regards to developing an attitude to change in oneself, irrespective of having a reason, we must adopt a learning mindset. Curious, improvement-focused people are lifetime learners. There are endless benefits to curiosity, such as reduction of anxiety through mindfulness, but that’s another story. The point here is – if we look towards the future, and are interested in learning, we’re more open to change, but if we spend too much time focusing on the past or current procedures, we are rigid and closed-off towards new experiences. If you want to improve at embracing change, get excited by the fact you don’t know everything – it’s time to adopt a lifetime-learning mindset.

Even though your products or services are at the core of your business, your employees are its lifeblood. Hiring the right team is crucial to running a successful business — great employees help you achieve goals, improve productivity, sales, and contribute to a better company culture.

On the other hand, a bad hire can be a costly mistake resulting in drained resources, a negative impact on productivity and performance, loss of revenue, and hindering of employee morale.

One of the top reasons businesses make bad hiring decisions is because they are more concerned with hiring quickly than well. While filling a staffing gap is important, especially in high-performing businesses, it’s more important to find the right fit.

Skill assessments are tests designed to help employers evaluate the skills of their job candidates and employees. Using skills assessments helps companies ensure that their candidates have the required skills to successfully perform their jobs.

They’re a great way to determine whether a candidate is a good match for the job position you are looking to fill, and are especially useful for handling high-volume hiring. When you are processing a large number of applicants, using a skills assessment as a pre-screening method can help you differentiate the top candidates early in the hiring process.

Best practice recruitment uses Skills assessments alongside Cognitive and Behavioural assessments to form the full picture of candidates. The ‘Can Do’ is Fluid Intelligence (ability to solve new problems, or ‘innate’ intelligence) and is measured by Cognitive Ability Assessments. The ‘Has Done’ is Crystallised Intelligence – knowledge, facts and skills, acquired from life experience, education and on-the-job learning and is best measured by Skills Assessments. Whereas the ‘Wants To’ refers to our personality; values, motivation and preferences for styles of working, measured by Behavioural Assessments.

By providing a piece of accurate, evidence-based information on candidates’ skills and knowledge, skills assessments are one of the best ways to eliminate bias in recruitment.

Unlike resumes and interviews which necessarily provide more detailed information on candidates which can be judged (even unconsciously!) by recruiters, skill assessments provide a more objective evaluation of candidates’ skills.

Using skills assessments can be both time and money-saving. By eliminating unqualified candidates early in the selection process, and thus saving hiring managers’ time, the hiring process becomes shorter and more effective and this results in less money being spent.

Money is also saved by avoiding the high cost of a bad hire and hiring only the best, most productive candidates. According to Career Builder, the average cost of a single bad hire is nearly $15,000.

In summary, utilising skills assessment tests helps companies hire the right people. As a result, companies can avoid the high cost of bad hires and ensure higher productivity of their employees, which positively affects the company’s bottom line.

In short, using skills assessment tests helps companies make well-informed decisions when it comes to hiring, training, and promoting their candidates and employees.

For more information on how to choose the right type of skill assessment test for you, get in touch with us at hello@testgrid.com