Personality testing at work: Building teams or conflict?

By Bob Levin and Joe Rosse

Five years after writing an “On Management” column titled “Personality Testing: Solution or Scam?,” we continue to get queries from readers from around the world who find the column on The Boulder County Business Report Web site. One reader recently wrote to ask what we think of personality tests given to employees after they have been hired.

Our reader had been asked to complete a personality inventory at work as part of a team-building effort, and wrote to express three concerns. Most basic was that he preferred not to share private information with co-workers. His second concern was that he felt uncomfortable being “personality-typed” and feared it might do him more harm than good. Finally, he was concerned about the qualifications of the worker in charge of administering the inventory. Each are valid concerns for both employees and employers.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Commercial Solar is a big investment, but not an overwhelming one

Solar offers a significant economic benefit for commercial property owners while also positively impacting the environment and offering a path to compliance for new municipal requirements like Energize Denver. A local, experienced solar installer will help you navigate the complexities of commercial solar to achieve financial success for your project.

When used for hiring, personality test scores are generally known only to a select set of decision-makers, often excluding the applicant’s manager. But when used for team-building, employees scores are typically shared among team members to provide a better sense of a person’s communication preferences, ways of dealing with conflict and thinking styles. Is it reasonable to expect employees to share this kind of private information?

Many managers respond that since this kind of testing can result in more productive employees, they are well within their rights to make it a condition of employment. Trying to find a technically and legally correct answer to this dilemma is as difficult as deciding how to recount ballots fairly in a contested election.

On the one hand, personality testing may present less of an invasion of privacy than often is envisioned. Personality tests rarely reveal inner “secrets” that an employee has hidden from the world. Testing may provide employees and co-workers insights about why they act as they do, but rarely are employees surprised by the results of a psychological test.

If you’re an introvert, for example, most people you work with are likely to be aware of this, even though they might not use that term. Often the primary advantage of psychological testing is to help co-workers understand why others act differently and to find productive ways to work with these differences in style.

On the other hand, privacy is a very personal matter. Unless employees believe that sharing such information about themselves is risk-free, truly job-related and of individual benefit to them, you can expect that they will either not cooperate or raise complaints, no matter how much you believe the testing is fair and appropriate.

Is there any basis for believing that personality testing at work can enhance job performance? Theoretically, developing work teams of individuals with compatible and complementary personalities (and skills) can enhance performance. In practice, determining what is “compatible” and showing that such a match is really essential for performance is far more difficult than some vendors’ glib marketing hype suggests.

If you can determine that certain personality traits are critical, measuring them accurately is a substantial challenge. Finding reliable and valid inventories that test-takers can’t easily fake is difficult, and many of the personality tests being hawked by vendors have precious little research to support them.

Inaccurate test scores are always a problem, perhaps more so in post-employment settings. Applicants who are inaccurately “typed” can likely find a job elsewhere, since their erroneous test scores do not accompany them on their next job interview. By contrast, the only recourse for current employees who are not measured correctly may be to find a new employer.

When personality testing is used for team-building or other post-employment purposes, the test interpreter’s competence is as critical as the validity of the instrument. In many states (including Colorado) consultants are seldom regulated, so caveat emptor applies in deciding whom to trust administering and interpreting the results of psychological testing in the workplace.

When using consultants, it’s critical to be clear, credible, and specific with employees about consultants’ qualifications and about what safeguards do or don’t exist for confidentiality of test results. This goes double if the testing is conducted by company employees.

It’s too easy to downplay employees’ concerns about psychological testing and insist that everyone must be tested for the good of the team and the company. This approach harms both team building and morale and destroys the value of the actual testing. Employees who are fearful of what a personality test will reveal ? or who see an advantage in presenting themselves in a particular light ? are more likely to answer a personality inventory deceptively than employees who are sure that the results will be accurate, relevant, and used constructively.

Choosing valid tests for appropriate purposes and fully explaining their use is critical. Without this foundation, personality testing will create dissension and suspicion rather than teamwork.On Management, written in cooperation with The Center for Human Function & Work (CHF&W) in Boulder, examines critical issues about managing the human side of a business. Joe Rosse is associate professor of management at CU-Boulder and an associate of the CHF&W. Bob Levin is director of the CHF&W. Comments, questions and topics are encouraged and can be mailed to The Business Report or e-mailed to Joseph.Rosse@Colorado.Edu.