The personality test debate is a decades-old dilemma that HR professionals have been pondering for a significant amount of time now.  Instead of relying on it as a selection tool, maybe we should consider using it as a tool for retention.

In fact, using personality tests, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) or Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI), may help you better understand your team, the way they think and who they’ll work well with. It’s important to remember that personality tests should not be a make or break hiring decision, but rather an enlightening way to better understand your new hire or current employees.

Here’s how personality testing may help you increase employee retention within your organization.

1. Becoming aware of the way people think

Better understanding the way you think helps you identify the way others think. By becoming aware of the differences (especially the major differences) in your thought processes between you and your team. You can identify the best way to brief them for a new task or even a way that could help them overcome their shortfalls.

If you are a sensory thinker, for example, and your team member thinks based on intuition, the way you phrase a brief may affect the way they understand the task. By understanding this, you’ll be able to not only improve communication between you and your team member, but you’ll also increase productivity based on this understanding.

2. Understanding how people work best

You may prefer thinking in a judging manner, meaning you like to be organized and make a clear plan. Your team member, on the other hand, may prefer a perceiving approach and think big picture instead of about the smaller details. As a team, this probably means you’ll disagree a lot about strategy and have to compromise a lot; but work well together to reach the end goal.

By understanding people’s preferred way to work is going to help you achieve a better insight into the way you’ll need to go about a task. Thus, increasing productivity thanks to the ability to understand the ways of approach.

3. Understanding personality clashes and how to resolve them

There’s nothing worse than clashing with a colleague and if things get out of hand, it can drive people out of an organization. By having your employees and all new hires take a personality test, your team will be able to understand the way they think and how others are different.

This understanding can help calm most personality clashes as team members will begin to understand their differences and the ways they can compromise and begin developing the ways they communicate with each other.

If you would like to learn more about how Scout can help you to implement personality tests in your recruitment process, simply speak to one of our Shortlisting and Selection Specialists by calling us on 1 866 474 3140 or emailing us at hello@scouttalent.ca.

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