20 Jun 2013

Assessment
Our previous post Organisations are reaping the benefits of psychometric assessments summarised the outcomes of recent research by a leading organisational research firm which revealed the relationship between HR success and the use of psychometric assessment tools. This post provides more information about the ways successful organisations use psychometric tools and incorporate them ...

27 May 2013

Underperformance
Underperforming employees can be very costly to organisations. A 2009 article in the  Australian Financial Review found that unproductive employees can cost Australian businesses up to approximately $33 billion a year! A primary reason for underperformance is a poor fit between the employee's skills and interests and the needs of the organisation. Another related reason is managers no...

08 Apr 2013

Old Men Hire
Making the right decisions for your business An important consideration when recruiting older workers is to consider what their strengths and weaknesses are likely to be in terms of their cognitive abilities (thinking abilities or intelligence). By using the right mix of psychometric tests you can easily and quickly identify what type of work older workers are best suited for, and in wh...

15 Mar 2013

Job Skill Test
Skills tests assess the skill levels of applicants or employees on a variety of topics and areas that are important in the workplace. These may include typing and data entry, Microsoft Office and other commonly used software tools. Web development and basic literacy and numeracy skills, to name just a few. There are a number of key advantages to using well designed skills tests as par...

18 Feb 2013

Minimizing Impact
Distractions such as telephone calls, emails, online notifications and colleagues stopping by for a chat, or even the time it takes to try to remove such distractions, are part and parcel of the modern workplace. We tend to take it for granted that long periods of uninterrupted work are few and far between. Recent research has shown that this can have quite a damaging effect on produc...

04 Feb 2013

Protect Business
The Growing Importance of Ethical Behaviour in Modern Workplaces As the business world becomes more diverse and expands across national boundaries, concerns about security and integrity in the workplace have never been higher. Stakeholder expectations for ethical business operations continue to rise, placing more responsibility on organisations to employ people who have high ethical sta...

31 Jan 2013

Multiscore
Multi-score performance ratings are employee performance feedback systems where feedback is obtained from multiple sources (supervisors, peers, clients. They are very popular, with almost all Fortune 500 companies in the US using this approach (Cheung, 1999). Why are they so popular? Research shows that there are a number of reasons that multi-score (also often known as 360 degree) per...

17 Dec 2012

Multitasking
Brunken and colleagues (2002) investigated multi-media learning and the processes that make it work. In two experiments . They showed that the multimedia format facilitates learning through the processes of the dual coding effect and the modality effect. The dual coding effect refers to the effect by which learning is improved when related pictures are presented at the same as text-ba...

03 Dec 2012

Workforce
Over 2 million Australians, or 1 in 4 workers, are classified as casual workers.  A spokesperson from the ACTU described the trend in the increase in casual workers, or 'casualisation' of the workforce, as "one of the dominant trends in the Australian workplace during the past decade". Much has been discussed about workforce casualisation, with varied views on its benefits, challenges...

03 Dec 2012

Report Reveals
Skills are specific competencies (such as knowledge of MS Excel) that enable performance of job tasks or functions (such as accounting tasks). While often thought of as 'less than' a qualification such as a degree, skills are essential in the workforce. Although intelligence and formal qualifications like degrees or diplomas provide a strong foundation, employees also need the practic...