Creative businesswoman brainstorming, reviewing flow chart hanging on brick wall in office
Take this quiz, which is largely based on a study by Mettl, a talent assessment and skill-measurement company. Be brutally honest with yourself. You can, because you can keep the findings to yourself.
For each statement, you can choose any of these options: strongly agree/ neither agree nor disagree/ strongly disagree.
1. I am self-obsessed
2. I won’t hesitate to fish in troubled waters and gain an advantage at others’ cost
3. In an argument, I raise my voice and react to situations violently
4. I look for information that I can use against people later
5. I act and then think of the consequences of my action
6. I am given to taking high-risk decisions
If your agree strongly with all of these statements, you have six dark traits that will make your presence unpleasant to your colleagues. These traits can affect the brand value of an organisation.
In organisations that have good hiring systems in place, there will be tools that bring such personality traits in a potential hire, out in the open. Background verification is the most basic of these tools. The other tools essentially have to do with personality-assessment. Mettl along with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) carried out a study that has identified common behavioural traits in employees that can incite trouble in a team or organisation.
The six dark traits identified by the study: Self-obsession, opportunism, temperamentality, insensitivity towards others’ needs, thrill-seeking behaviour and impulsiveness.
“We ask employers to use this tool (Mettl Dark Personality Inventory) while hiring people. This tool can also be used to assess those already employed in an organisation, and nip negative behaviours in the bud,” says Siddhartha Gupta, chief revenue officer, Mettl. Psychometric tests are an effective and popular tool to assess personality traits and work skills, but they are focussed largely on identifying competencies and positive traits, say experts.
“These tools can promote introspection and ensure intervention. It should help CEOs, and CHROs identify potentially risky behavioural traits and help employees take remedial steps,” says Siddhartha.
Performance management
Many organisations are now making personality assessment a part of performance management, so that the right people are selected for high- potential roles and succession planning.
“A big organisation recently switched over to an unbaised scientific assessment process to short-list mid-level employees for a high-stake training programme. All these years, the selection was based on performance reports from previous years. Last year, it wanted to adopt a more scientific approach, involving situational judgement test, critical thinking and personality assessment,” says Deepti Naamjoshi, a psychometric consultant.
She says many companies like L&T, Aditya Birla Group, Bajaj Electricals and Essar Group ask for “cultural fitment and potential fitment” of employees. Many also have their own assessment centres. Johnson & Johnson conducts programmes to prevent unconscious bias.
Abhishek Paul, a culture specialist with OrangeScape, says the effectiveness of any such tools depends on the supporting climate, which covers the motivation behind using these tools and what the organisation will do with the information. It must not be used as a filtering criteria, he adds.
