“What is your working style?”
This has been a popular open-ended question posed by hiring managers to potential hires for several years. After educational qualification, work style is probably the most critical factor determining a candidate’s suitability for a role. Although our work and office culture has evolved significantly over the years, an organization’s understanding of its employees’ working style has remained critical to organizational success. Like actors in a movie, some roles in your organization are best suited for some people. John from marketing has a preferred work style that can make him perform optimally in his role. So do Jane and Joey from customer service. Everyone has a unique work style that allows them to reach peak performance.
Finding out what that style is for all your employees and readjusting your workplace dynamics to suit them can trigger peak performance and extreme innovation within your organization. But how exactly do you do this? How can organizations accurately identify employees’ working style? The answer is: a Working Style Assessment.
Now, let’s talk about Working Style Assessments.
What Is A Working Style Assessment?
A working style assessment is what it sounds like: an assessment of an individual’s working style. It is a survey aimed at identifying an individual’s preferences in communication, learning, making decisions, receiving feedback, and participating in teams. Working style assessments reveal an individual’s natural talents and on-the-job behaviors.
For organizations, a working style assessment can be tailored to hunt for unique behaviors critical to an organization’s operations. Some employees work at peak performance when they plan in advance and are big on details, usually paying attention to the smallest of details. Others may work best by being spontaneous in action and seeing things from a big-picture perspective. Some employees prefer to spend as much time as possible on a task to ensure it gets done the right way. Others would prefer identifying the fastest way to get things done. Clearly, these two sets would have a role that best fit their work style. A Working Style Assessment unearths this information in a way that goes deeper than standard job screening procedures, or personality assessments can achieve.
So, how exactly can a Working Style Assessment for your employees help your organization? Let’s take a look.
How A Working Style Assessment Can Help Your Organization
Wondering how a Working Style Assessment can move mountains for your company? Here are three ways you should know:
Getting The Best Candidate For A Role
Remember, the “What is your working style” question? Well, hiring managers want the answer to that question because they believe that the knowledge of a candidate’s working style can help them zero in on the best person for the job. Of course, a proper Working Style Assessment is much more than asking a job seeker a single question, but the idea is the same.
With a Working Style Assessment , an organization has the tool to sieve through dozens of potential hires to find not just the most educationally qualified but also the most socially, emotional and psychologically suitable candidate. Need an employee that will lead the team? Do you need a big-picture thinker? Do you need an influencer? Need an out-of-the-box innovator? A Working Style Assessment will ensure you have the right person before the sign on the dotted lines. Around 95 percent of U.S businesses make a bad hire each year; your organization can be an exception.
Build A Team Of Happy Employees
If your teams are going to be productive, you have to factor in happiness, as it plays a crucial role in making that happen. Science has the facts; studies show that at a point, extrinsic motivators like money will not motivate your teams to work better. When this happens, intrinsic motivators like happiness and a sense of autonomy are your only saving grace.
There are some employees who are very intelligent and likely to go against the grain. They want to do things their way and enjoy autonomy. Put this kind of employee in a role they have to take instructions from people all day, and you’ll likely have a very unhappy set of employees that drives everyone crazy. The same goes for putting employees that flourish with clear and precise direction; put into roles that force them to make their own decisions, and moral plummets. In both cases, the end product is unhappy employees who hate their jobs.
Science says happy employees are 20 percent more productive than their unhappy counterparts. A Working Style Assessment can accurately identify an employee’s preferences in decision making, providing decision-makers with the option of putting them in roles that keep them happy and productive.
Avoid Higher A Turnover Cost
If you’re reading from the right places, you’ll probably know about the turnover apocalypse. Each year, U.S businesses incur over 160 billion dollars in turnover costs. It’s massive! And it keeps growing. Businesses fire employees, hire new people, onboard them, train them, and invest in their learning. Sadly, some of them get fired again, and the cycle continues. In some organizations, the result is over-hiring, which lays the foundation for low morale and conflict. A Working Style Assessment can help organizations boost employee retention and avoid spending their own bits of the 160 billion dollars national turnover cost.
Ultimately, of course, lower turnovers better hires, and happier employees mean more productivity within your organization. When organizations understand their employees’ working style, they can create an environment that fosters better communication, greater synergy and improved performance.
Learn how the Aptology workstyle evaluation works – in just 15 minutes.