Inside Human Resources Blog

Personality Test Expert Answers The Most Common Questions About Employee Assessment

Wouldn't it be nice to give a single test to job candidates that could instantly gauge their reliability, honesty, aptitude, and social skills?  What would it look like? What questions would it ask?  These are just a few of the questions we are commonly asked.  What follows are a few of the most common questions - and our recommendations and advice - about personality tests.

To view the Q & A, go to

http://www.super-solutions.com/OnlinePersonalityTests_InterviewQuestions.asp

What's next for Carly Fiorina?

What's next for Carly Fiorina, dubbed the most powerful woman in business, and CEO of Hewlett Packard?  Will she retain her position of power over this computer giant or will her leadership style do her in?  Read all about it and what Ira S Wolfe, founder of Success Performance Solutions, feels Fiorina needs to do differently if she and HP are to survive in this January 24, 2005 column published in the New York Daily News.

Nine percent of the public has been convicted of a crime!

According to the US Department of Justice, more than 59 million criminal-history records are on file at state repositories nationwide.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the number of prison releases is growing, with more than 500,000 ex-offenders rejoining the community each year.

Three job categories are typically require greater scrutiny and “duty of care” before hiring:

1) Employees who work with “vulnerable” populations: childcare, eldercare, teachers, security, and some healthcare workers 2) Handlers of money, financial, or other sensitive data 3) Employees with significant public exposure, especially those who go into clients’ homes (e.g., service people)

Don't hire with checking backgrounds.  Success Performance Solutions now offers Pre-employment Online Background Checks.  Contac

f2t? Instant Messaging Invades Business

You're preparing your budget and need information from your co-worker.  You've left several voice messages and even took a trip to his department to find him.  No luck.  What are you going to do?  You're meeting with your boss in 10 minutes and need this number.

That's not a problem for the nearly 11 million American workers using instant messaging, or IM, at work.  They just pull out their BlackBerry or mobile phone and type 3 letters - f2t, which means free to talk, in text talk.  If your buddy is online, the thumbs start working like crazy.  For the millions of young workers and more tech savvy boomers, IM has been the favored mode of communication at work.

But not all IM conversations are about work.  29 percent of workers believe it could be a distraction and 32 percent say the technology encourages gossip. 

Paying Attention to People Assets

Many managers know understand that people are their most important assets.  The hard part is figuring out how to measure it.  PricewaterhouseCoopers/Saratoga, a leader in HR metrics and benchmarking, offers 5 useful Human Capital Measures for human resource effectiveness and overall corporate profitability.

1. Human Capital ROI is the pre-tax profit an organizations generates for each dollar invested in regular employee pay and benefits after non-human expenses are removed.

Revenue – (Operating Expenses – (Compensation + Benefits) / Compensation + Benefits

The 2003 all-industry median was 1.48.

2. Revenue per employee looks at how much revenue each regular employee generates and is a basic measure of productivity.

Revenue / Full-time Equivalent (FTE)

The 2003 all-industry median was $312,738.

3. Profit per employee takes the pretax profit and organization generates and attributes this to each FTE.  This measure provides an integrated picture of productivity and expense control efforts.

Revenue – Operating Expenses / FTE

The 2003 all-industry median was $39,164.

4. Labor Cost as a Percent of Income looks at the percentage of revenue dedicated to compensation and benefits costs for regular employees.

Compensation + Benefits Costs / FTE

The 2003 all-industry median was 26.10%.

5. Voluntary Separation Rate looks at the percentage of regular head count that voluntarily left the organization.   High turnover might impact the organization’s stability, profitability and productivity.

Total Voluntary Separations / Total Head Count

The 2003 all-industry median was 9.10%.

Source: HR Magazine, January 2005

Failure to Check Janitor's Background Would Have Revealed Criminal Conviction

A 19 year-old college student was attacked and injured in a classroom building.  The accused attacker was an employee of the custodial service retained by the university (Virginia Tech).   Had James Lee Harris' employer performed a criminal background check, they would have discovered that Harris had been subject to a protective order resulting from a criminal complaint filed in a neighboring county by a woman whom Harris had physically assualted.

According to an article in the January 2005 issue of HR Magazine, "employers are charged with a duty to exercise reasonable care in their hiring decisions related to retaining employees.  As a result of their failure to check backgrounds, the 4th Circuit Court allowed the claim to go forward to a jury.

Sidebar:  Better safe or sorry?  In today's litigious world, employers are faced with the solving the conumdrum between what's legal and what's right.  While background checks may be the right thing to do, rejecting employees on the basis of a criminal conviction could increase the risk of adverse discrimination against minorities, who often have higher rates of convictions than their Caucasian counterparts.  As with all hiring and succession decisions, employers must base all decisions on sound business reasons including fair and unbiased hiring standards.