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Employee
Assessment and Performance Training Tools Reality Check Our
company offers a wide variety of computer-based diagnostic tools, tests,
and training programs that can help your employees get a better handle
on their strengths and weaknesses, improve their relationship skills and
increase their competencies in the areas of sales and customer service. Please
email us if you have specific training needs that require testing and
training using computer based tools and or other measurement devices.
We will do our best to help steer you in the direction of the
tools that will best meet your needs. Email
us at: However,
we want to make it clear that any diagnostic tools we would recommend
should only be used as general yardsticks
to help you get a better handle on employment enhancement and training
and should never be used for hiring, firing or punitive purposes. Please read the following cautionary statement. Beware
of Lawsuits Stemming from "Aptitude Tests" The
following comments are offered as "words to the wise" only.
They are the opinions of David Snyder and are not intended to
represent any kind of legal advice whatsoever.
But we feel that you should consider them carefully. In
the current climate of the business world there is a strong interest in
the psychology of business relationships and the psychology of
"performance." Because
of this interest and the market demand that it has created, there are
numerous sales people out there selling a wide variety of so-called
“psychology-based” programs to measure job skills aptitudes and
"behavioral styles.” In
the areas of aptitude and performance assessment, buzzwords abound--one
of the most common terms being used is “soft skills” measurement and
training. Programs
that seek to teach the people you have already hired to be better at
what they do (in time management, communications, leadership, business
writing, or any other “soft skills”) can be very useful. But
you should be very careful about the legal dangers of using job aptitude
assessment tools in the hiring or promotion process unless you want to
get sued.
Some
“psychology-based” performance and aptitude assessment tools out
there are based on very sloppy science and don’t really have much
connection to psychology at all. If
they promise to give you a reliable indicator of “types”--saying,
for example, that their tests can accurately pigeon-hole the people
taking the tests into neat little groups--you should be very suspect. First
of all, no psychological tests, even the sophisticated tests that only
licensed psychologists are authorized to administer, are accurate all of
the time, and psychologists know it. Second,
some of the mass-market personality or behavioral profiling systems in
use are dubious at best in terms of their normative standards and
scientific validity. Because
of lawsuits, some large hiring agencies have made the decision not to
use any kind of personality profiling in connection with employment,
since it is possible for people to come back and sue you if they feel
you used a scientifically invalid measurement to deny them a job, or a
promotion, or any other opportunity. When
using performance and aptitude tools and measures in the workplace, the
rule of thumb is this: Only
use these tools as general yardsticks for helping people to get a better
handle on their relationships or communication styles and only use them
to help people make personal decisions about improving their
performance. Use them as
discussion tools for workshops and training sessions but do not use them
for hiring, selection, or punishment. As
is in stated in David Snyder's book, How
to Mind Read Your Customers, the only genuinely reliable predictor
of human success is the desire to succeed.
To suggest anything else is not only legally risky but is
probably morally unethical as well.
Snyder,
Inc.
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