When a candidate accepts the offer and the selection process is complete, don’t forget about your pre-hire assessment tools. The reports from pre-hire assessment tools are useful throughout an employee’s tenure for employee development. Set your hiring manager, and their new employee, up for success by sharing assessment results during on-boarding and make sure hiring managers know how to access reports in the future.
Employee development.
When managers have a list of competing priorities, it is easy to push employee development aside. Yet we know that ignoring employee development is a mistake that negatively impacts turnover. Millennial employees cite learning and growth as top drivers of their engagement at work. According to research from Gallup, 87% of millennials say opportunities for professional development are “very important to them in a job.”
The good news is that pre-employment assessment reports make development conversations easier and more productive, increasing the likelihood that development will end up higher on managers’ to-do list.
Assessments highlight areas for enrichment.
Employee development relies heavily on an individual’s self-awareness. When people understand their personality, as well as their skills and abilities, they gain insight into why some tasks may be easier than others.
Feedback is often less threatening when the insight comes from an unbiased, objective source, such as an assessment. Berke offers a Participant Report that is meant to be shared with the test-taker and is written in a positive manner, making conversations easier to navigate.
With an assessment results as the backdrop, it’s easier for a manager to help an employee discover and understand how to use their strengths and address their challenges. An assessment can help a person understand:
- Why they react in specific ways
- How they interact and build relationships with colleagues
- What type of communication styles they prefer
- Which tasks are easier or more difficult for them to complete
Using the assessment as a guide, a manager can provide suggestions about additional learning, stretch assignments or coaching, which will help the employee in their current or future role.
Discover opportunities for advancement.
When employees have been in their current role for a while, an assessment can assist in employee development by identifying other positions for which they may be well suited. With a snapshot of their core attributes, a manager can use an assessment to gauge the employee’s skills and traits as they compare to job requirements for other positions in the organization.
Berke makes it simple to compare a candidate against other jobs. Once a candidate completes the assessment, their results can be matched against all jobs in your account. In the example below, you can see that the person is good for fit for HR Manager, a medium fit for Human Resources Director, and a low fit for ICT Consultant.
Plan for a successful discussion.
It’s not enough to print an assessment report and hand it over to an employee. Managers should prepare for a development discussion as they would for any other important meeting. Berke’s Developing Employees Guide offers a blueprint for how to lead a fruitful conversation, including tips about:
- Planning for the meeting
- Reviewing an assessment report with an employee
- Choosing opportunities to highlight
- Setting goals
- Using a development plan worksheet
With employees citing development and growth as essential aspects of their job, organizations must support managers in making these conversations happen. A critical part of the equation is not only providing assessments managers can use, but also a framework that will help managers facilitate the discussions that put their team members on a path of continuous employee development.
The benefits of employee development discussions extend beyond a single conversation. This type of one-on-one attention increases employee engagement, which helps support retention goals, and serves to highlight for potential hires that your organization is committed to developing its talent. Don’t let managers push employee development to the bottom of the list; instead, empower them with the information they can use to help employees grow.
If you’re interested in looking into pre-employment assessments, check out our buyer’s guide for free here: