There are many types of psychometric assessments, and there are often so many factors to consider when selecting suitable recruitment selection methods: candidate care, efficiency, cost, and so on – that it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of the most important factor: which assessment methods are the most predictive of job performance – and therefore the most valid?

The validity ‘ladder’ is a timely reminder of the importance of ensuring that you select valid assessment tools that will help you make the most effective recruitment decisions possible. The higher the statistic (on the ladder), the more valid that assessment method is, and as you can see, psychometric assessments really are much greater at predicting on the job performance.

If you would like to talk to us about how you can improve the validity of your current recruitment process? Get in touch with our team today.

There are many types of psychometric assessments, and there are often so many factors to consider when selecting suitable recruitment selection methods: candidate care, efficiency, cost, and so on – that it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of the most important factor: which assessment methods are the most predictive of job performance – and therefore the most valid?

The validity ‘ladder’ is a timely reminder of the importance of ensuring that you select valid assessment tools that will help you make the most effective recruitment decisions possible. The higher the statistic (on the ladder), the more valid that assessment method is, and as you can see, psychometric assessments really are much greater at predicting on the job performance.

If you would like to talk to us about how you can improve the validity of your current recruitment process? Get in touch with our team today.

We are pleased to finally share with you what we have been working on behind the scenes for so long. For Testgrid, much like the rest of the world, 2020 was a time of immense change and growth. Our assessments were completed over 1,000,000 times in 2020 alone, we have continued to acquire new customers in key industries, such as Government and Retail, in the face of adverse market conditions, and our team continues to grow in Testgrid’s Customer Success, Psychology and Development departments to accommodate the growing demand for our technology.

We took this opportunity to evolve our brand in order to better communicate the breadth of expertise that Testgrid represents and realign with our refined vision.

Many of you may have already observed that Testgrid is sporting a brand new logo and an entirely new look. This marks a significant milestone in our journey, providing an opportunity to reflect on everything that the original Testgrid brand stood for and everything that we aspire to become as we move forward into an exciting future.

Behind the new look we are still the same company and team (although larger and more technically talented), dedicated to providing you the best possible services and solutions.

We are incredibly proud of the work that we do at Testgrid and thankful for the employees, the partnerships, and the clients that have accompanied us in our growth. We owe this rebrand to all of you.

If you have any questions about our new brand and direction, or simply want to know more, don’t hesitate to reach out and talk to our team. Until then, keep an eye on Testgrid as we have innovative technology to announce later this year that will allow recruiters to monitor candidates as they complete their assessment, and we can not wait to tell you all about it.

When hiring, developing, or promoting employees for new positions in your company, resumes and interviews only tell you so much. A person’s education, experience, and references all provide indicators about what a person knows and what they have done. But, the best way to understand one’s abilities and level of proficiency is to conduct skills testing. For recruitment, skills assessments are recommended to be used alongside cognitive and/or behavioural assessments.

Very simply, a skills assessment is an evaluation of an individual’s ability to perform a specific skill or set of skills. Usually, it’s an evaluation of skills specific to a job or role. Ideally, the assessment captures the level of proficiency for each skill, so you know which participants are new to a skill and which have mastered it.

According to a recent HAYS survey of only 18% of employers conduct an assessment before deciding on what training to offer each employee. A further 36% do so only for select staff.

The skills we need to be able to demonstrate and assess, vary considerably depending on the role, seniority, and the type of company. Some of the most commonly used areas are:

• Administration skills – make sure that your prospective hires can demonstrate the basic skills that you need such as typing speed, data entry, and computer literacy

• Microsoft Skills – these are our most popular range of skills assessments, they are designed to ensure that the proficiency in tools such as Excel, Word, and Outlook that are claimed on resumes are accurate.

• Call Centre and Customer Service – real-life simulations and audio clips assess the customer-centric approach that you want to hire for and are a very quick and effective way to screen candidates

• IT and Programming Skills – there are hundreds of IT-specific assessments to ensure that candidates meet your minimum requirements in whatever IT environment or coding languages that you need.

For most office workers in Australia, it has been years since we started working from home and we have seen the challenged that come with managing virtual teams. We know that WFH is associated with psychological risks and novel challenges. As recommended by Safe Work Australia, team leads should be taking steps to protect teams from these risks, and support their team’s wellbeing.

Whether you’ve experienced all or just a few, these are the top causes of psychological distress while WFH:

• Being isolated from managers, colleagues, and support networks

• Less support, for example, workers may feel they don’t have the normal support they receive from their supervisor or manager

• Changes to work demand, for example, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and a move to working at home may create higher workloads for some workers and reduced workloads for others

• Low job control

• Not having clear boundaries between home-life and work-life

• Fatigue

• Poor environmental conditions, for example, an ergonomically unsound work station or high noise levels, and

• Poor organisational change management, for example, workers may feel they haven’t been consulted about the changes to their work.

The stress of these psychological hazards can be reduced in a number of ways; individuals can take steps to manage their own wellbeing (see our team’s suggestions here), but self-care is only one component of wellbeing. You can engage in all of the self-care activities you like, but if you feel isolated or alone, the burden of fear and change can weigh heavily on your shoulders. Research shows that social support from managers & peers increases work wellbeing during difficult situations, in addition to self-care activities. Therefore, we have the best chance of safeguarding our teams from these psychological hazards if managers can take action to better support and lead their teams, and improvements to communication can be made.

Communication has shown to be one of the biggest challenges for teams working from home. We all have differing needs for human connection, and remote working emphasises these differences. The lack of ‘water-cooler conversation’ means extroverts may be missing out on the social fuel they need, while introverts become a little too comfortable isolating themselves, forgetting to reach out when help is needed. Working remotely means we need to go out of our way to engage with others, which may feel unnatural but is easier if you know the best way to go about it for your team’s specific needs.

We know wellbeing & communication are important when working remotely, so let’s talk about some practical steps. We’ve put together a step-by-step guide for managing virtual teams. See below how you can use our new Virtual Teams Report to gain an understanding of your team in more detail, manage additional challenges from working virtually, and get the team working more effectively and purposefully.

We all have different needs when working from home, based on both our personality preferences and our surroundings. When managing a virtual team, it’s crucial to consider the things that each team member needs to feel supported and work at their best.

For example:

What do they need to stay focused? 

What sort of recognition do they prefer?

What’s the best way for them to learn? 

How much warmth or detail do they need in communication? 

How can you support their ideal working environment? 

How do they manage conflict, 

and what sorts of tasks help them to thrive?

Group settings in a video chat can amplify the differences between team members’ talkativeness and comfort level with making contributions. As a manager, you can source recommendations for how to best utilise the strengths of each team member in a virtual meeting. For example; who kicks off the conversation, who needs to be explicitly asked for their opinion & who to watch that they don’t dominate the conversation?

If there’s one behaviour that’s integral at the moment, it’s adjusting to change and coping with uncertainty. Awareness of your team’s behavioural preferences indicates the tasks and conditions they naturally prefer – but what if they need to be more agile than that? The key to improving performance (and wellbeing) of your existing team is to help people adapt to different needs by switching mindsets and drawing on specific skills – adjusting to their conditions. Not everyone will naturally embrace change, so drawing from specific, tailored tips to encourage development in your team is highly effective in helping teams adjust to virtual working environments.

Training & development is an excellent way to show teams you value their contributions and support their wellbeing. They also facilitate adjustment to new working environments. Encouraging staff to complete development activities during this time helps to keep teams engaged and motivated while making use of the extra time at home for self-development. Additionally, training helps staff develop their awareness of self and each other, so they can collaborate more effectively and work to each other’s strengths.

Resources for these steps are all covered in our new Virtual Teams Report, which has been specially designed during the Covid pandemic. This report gives tips on how to meet the needs of each team member, and collates similar team members into categories, allowing you to make relevant sense of the tips for your organisation. It also includes personal training plans and development resources specific to each individual. If you’d like to get the best out of your teams and support them to success while working remotely, get in touch at hello@testgrid.com.

Our resilience and mental health has really been tested since the beginning of the 2020’s We are very fortunate to work for an organisation where we are told ‘it’s alright not to be alright’ and encouraged to bring our honest and whole selves to work.

While we are mindful that stress affects everyone differently, and that no single stress-management strategy will work for 100% of people, we asked our team at Testgrid to contribute a mental health self-care tip that is working well for them – in the hopes that one or more of these will be useful for you.

We have collated their responses & here’s what Team Testgrid had to say:

• Classic escapism through film: Watching a movie I really love and can become completely absorbed in, to give my brain a ‘break from the real world’ for a few hours.

• My big self-care tip is to differentiate physical distancing from mental distancing: I am big on keeping in touch / reaching out to others to start an open conversation.

• Cooking! Provides relaxation and a mental break from everything else that’s going on.

• Having a shower in the morning (I would every day if I was going to work so why not now?), attacking my work early in the morning (my brain works better at 7am and I have fewer interruptions), playing with the kids later in the afternoon.

• Meditation / self-reflection: Getting up an hour earlier than anyone else in the house and trying to calm the internal dialogue in my mind. I sit for an hour and just ignore the thoughts and then get to the really important feelings and truths and just process them. It takes about 60 days of consistency to get through the “inbox” in your head built up over the years but after a while calmness and being centred happens a lot easier. Just keep trying every day – consistency and patience is the key, like all things.

• Using a meditation app daily – I like Insight Timer and Smiling Mind.

• Games – whether it’s board games, Words With Friends, or shooting zombies!

• It helps me to keep to a routine similar to what I used to do when I went to work. Get up at a similar time and use the time saved by not traveling to get some chores done, or go for a walk. I then don’t get distracted throughout the day by seeing dirty dishes in the sink or thinking I need to get up and exercise. I have also tackled some projects around the house that give me a real sense of achievement when I complete them.

• Trying to be kind to everyone: It is OK for them to be under pressure as well, don’t unnecessarily make it worse (even if you are right!)

• Getting some fresh air and sun through exercise helps, and I recommend finding the exercise that works best for YOU. Being in lockdown can prompt feelings of guilt around being less active than usual, but this is when we need to be kind to ourselves, and not expect HIIT workout miracles to occur without a gym. The most important thing is to enjoy it – maybe it’s a fast-paced or gentle walk, online yoga video, living room dance session (wine optional), or some days you might feel motivated to go for a run or find different household objects for weight lifting. It’s about setting time aside to just move your body and enjoy it.

• Not feeling bad about bingeing tv (I enjoy it; doesn’t matter if other people see it as a waste of time when I could be cultivating my new cabbage patch).

• Cold showers: Start warm and over time build up to longer cooler showers. Research shows that it releases endorphins, improves circulation, boosts metabolism and can even help fight colds.

• I suggest planning something to look forward to. In lockdown, sometimes we need to go out of our way to create enjoyable experiences – make weekend plans inside your home and stick to them like you would with normal plans. Cook a roast for Christmas in July, plan a family movies & nachos night, board games & afternoon tea, take an online art gallery tour, plan a painting day, turn each room in the house into a different bar and there you have it – a bar crawl!

• Creating some sort of tangible barrier between work and home – particularly at the end of the day, whether it’s covering up and packing away my work area, changing clothes (/trackies/PJs) or shoes, lighting a candle, or putting on different music.

• Start a project: A great way to build self-confidence is by achieving something, even if it’s small. Knit a cardigan, learn guitar using YouTube videos, re-vamp the backyard, start an online business, start a cooking blog, write a song, do an online course, or even just read a book!

• I find any form of daily ritual, routine or structure can feel comforting when working from home: I set my alarm for the same time each day, take the dog for a walk, and make myself a morning coffee and check emails.

And to close on a word of advice:

Lower your expectations of yourself. Do not expect yourself to be happy/sociable/focused/efficient every single day. Being hard on yourself will only make you feel worse – you are already doing a great job.

“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.