Microsoft reduces SQL Azure pricing
Posted: February 16, 2012 Filed under: Technology & Hardware, Technology Advice, Technology Planning Leave a comment »Nice post in eWeek about reduction in prices for SQL Azure database. Microsoft is responding to a similar price decrease by Amazon for their cloud storage services. Good to see competition driving prices down!
What Research on the Use of Personality Tests in the Workplace Can and Cannot Tell Us
Posted: January 31, 2012 Filed under: Employee Development, Performance Management, Talent Management Leave a comment »What Research on the Use of Personality Tests in the Workplace Can and Cannot Tell Us – By Karen Kehr, President, Hawthorne Services, LLC
In a recent Society of Human Resource Management website article, SHRM online staff reported on a poll conducted on personality tests. The poll indicated that the vast majority of respondents did not use personality tests for hiring or promoting employees. Yet, nearly three-quarters of the respondents indicated that personality tests can be useful in predicting job-related behavior and organizational fit. And more significantly, only a small number of respondents said their organizations were using personality tests.
Research tells us WHAT, but not always WHY. Why would HR professionals state that personality tests are useful, yet not use them? Why do they use them more for mid level positions than executive positions, when executives are most likely to impact the future of the organization?
Several potential barriers come to mind. Perhaps legal worries are a consideration. Maybe they do not know how to use the information acquired to make good decisions. Maybe there is lack of confidence that tests of this kind can prove anything about a candidate, which, on the surface, can be a valid concern.
In repeated studies, the most accurate predictor of job success is cognitive match and work sample/ability tests because these are not subjective measures. Either the candidate responds correctly or they do not. According to research conducted by Hunter and Hunter, the correlation of test results to future job success of ability tests is the strongest, followed by personality tests. This same study discovered that interview results have a lower correlation to job success than either cognitive or personality measures!
Research has proven that using behavioral assessments alone for hiring positions will result in hiring mistakes. Some are better than others, of course, and when those better personality tests are combined with cognitive ability tests, validity is likely to be greater than when either is used separately. However, even the best assessment tools cannot overcome a weak screening process. If the job has not been evaluated, nor the criteria for what constitutes the best candidate determined, the outcomes will not be optimal regardless of the assessments selected.
The key to effective pre-employment assessment is determining whether the test provides a reasonable
basis for predicting the applicant’s job performance. There are several laws affecting the legality of pre-employment tests, and most are triggered by the number of employees an employer has. Employers with 15 or more employees must comply with Title VII. Title VII “prohibits unlawful employment discrimination by public and private employers, employment agencies, labor organizations, and training programs on the basis of several specified classifications.”
Title VII expressly permits the use of ability tests, including personality tests, finding personality and intelligence tests to be reasonably related to job performance and thus lawful under Title VII. An employer may administer and act on the results of any professionally developed ability test, provided the test, its administration, or the employer’s actions based on the results are not designed, intended or used to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability or national origin. The effect of using a hiring (or evaluation) tool that disproportionately eliminates minority and women applicants is called adverse (or disparate) impact. Where an adverse impact is found, the employer must show that the test at issue is job-related for the position in question and is consistent with business necessity.
The use of validated and reliable assessment tools is critical. As indicated above, where a selection procedure has an adverse impact on the hiring, promotion, or other employment opportunities of minorities and women it may be considered discriminatory unless the test has been validated for establishing the job-relatedness of the tests.
Reliability and validity indicate to a potential user the quality and usefulness of the test. Reliability measures the probability that an individual retaking the test would obtain a similar test score – or, how dependably or consistently a test measures a characteristic. Validity refers to the specific characteristic the test measures and how well the test measures that characteristic. Both standards must be met. Valid conclusions cannot be drawn for a test score unless the test is proven to be reliable and even if a test is reliable, it may not be valid.
So what should a responsible HR manager do? Be sure to use only professionally validated assessment tools. Hawthorne Services uses only validated and reliable instruments that are legally defensible if used as they are intended. Our assessment providers invest heavily in ongoing research and development to ensure that the assessment instruments exceed all employment assessment guidelines. Our assessments exceed the thirteen requirements set by the Department of Labor for assessments and meet all of the EEOC, ADA, DOL and Civil Rights Act requirements. The assessments are also monitored to ensure no gender, age, or ethnic bias.
To see a copy of the most recent validation studies on Hawthorne’s assessments or to receive a free copy of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Testing and Assessment Guide, contact us.
Click here to see the complete SHRM article, which includes a link to the poll.
Posted: January 31, 2012 Filed under: Employee Development, Performance Management, Talent Management Leave a comment »
Attached is a link to an excellent article discussing the benefits of using pre-hiring assessments. It is written by Dario Priolo of Profiles International, one of the leaders in research-based assessment tools.
Click this link for the article:
MFP’s, still great at nothing?
Posted: December 27, 2011 Filed under: Technology & Hardware Leave a comment »I’d like to read a realistic review about home and small office MultiFunction Printers. They are the best thing since sliced bread, but only if we are discussing 2 day old, cheap white bread. I want an MFP that does it all, and does it all well, and doesn’t drink ink by the gallon.
I use an HP OfficeJet 6500A Plus. This does many things well. Scan is reasonably fast, and gives me plentiful options to come up with good scans, regardless of the document’s quality. Unfortunately, even after more than a year of use, it still takes several tries with the settings to come up with a good scan of troublesome documents. But alas, at least I can make it happen!
Printing is reasonably fast, if you can wait on it to come out of a very deep sleep. In fact, I’m sure that the printer goes right back to a deep slumber within seconds or minutes. Must be a winter-time hibernation thing.
Today, I tried to cancel a simple copy operation. After several seconds, I realized I would need to change the default darkness & intensity settings. I pressed Cancel, and voilà, but device continued its noisy machinations for some time. “Copy cancelled”. Then it spit out a blank sheet of paper. Why spit out a blank sheet? After another long wait, I decided to fix it the Windows way. Yep, reboot.
Well, at least a reboot always works.
Rethink your hiring process – look beyond the resume.
Posted: October 9, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Dario Priolo of Profiles International has another excellent blog post about the hiring process. He discusses the difficulties of assessing talent, when the talent pool is broader, stronger, and yet diverse in quality. What is a hiring manager to do? Dario discusses the value of pre-hire assessments:
The benefits of effective coaching
Posted: September 2, 2011 Filed under: Employee Development, Performance Management, Talent Management Leave a comment »We all understand the success that a great coach brings to sports. What we often forget is how important a great coach can be to business and the organizational arena. I’ve attached a link to an excellent article by Profiles International. It describes the benefits of effective coaching, and why an organization would want to foster a culture around coaching for success.
Skills Testing Ensures Better Hiring
Posted: August 8, 2011 Filed under: Employee Development, Performance Management, Talent Management, Technology Advice Leave a comment »Workers whose fingers fly over an Excel spreadsheet or who immediately find the perfect Microsoft Office application to use for a clerical project are not in their jobs by chance. Their skills helped them arrive at their destination—making their leaders appear very smart or very lucky.
Luck is fine as far as it goes, but at a time when technical skill is critical to so many roles, relying on good luck is foolish and irresponsible. Skills tests enable employers to hire smart and adequately prepare for employee training and coaching.
Managers apply these tests just as they do other Profiles assessments. They are effective in selecting employees, increasing productivity, enhancing employee engagement levels, and reducing turnover. Astute leaders also use them to give new employees a jumpstart on their jobs, to reduce training costs and to assess the skill level of a team.
Many of the tests are available at several levels, including Standard, Basic, Advanced, Essentials, and Time Solver. The Standard is the recommended test for most positions that use the applications organizations test for. It covers the 30 to 35 most often used and most critical tasks that a worker needs to be rated proficient, and provides questions at the beginner, intermediate and advanced levels.
Here are some of the skills areas employers can get information about when assessing job candidates:
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Language proficiency
• Clerical
• Call Center
• Accounting and finance
• Medical and nursing
• Legal
• Industrial
• Computer literacy
• Retail sales
• Food service
• Information technology
Hiring managers who believe they can rely on a listing of resume accomplishments need to consider this: HR experts believe about half of all people lie or exaggerate their skills on their resumes.
If you don’t have a lot of time or money to expend on training employees on software programs, doesn’t it make sense to know what they know in advance? If you are an employer who wants to spend training dollars in a targeted area, doesn’t it make sense to know which employees actually need skills training?
Hawthorne Services now offers Profiles International Skills Tests! Contact Karen Kehr at 574-596-3058 or Chuck Bower at 574-361-6166 for more information.
Integrated Talent Management
Posted: July 29, 2011 Filed under: Employee Development, Talent Management Leave a comment »Nice article by Dario Priolo and Jeff Meyers on Integrated Talent Management:
http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250.
The Dreaded Performance Review
Posted: March 22, 2011 Filed under: Employee Development, Performance Management Leave a comment »Your Loving Spouse
The notion of one spouse evaluating the other in this manner is laughable. Yet is this so different from the presumptions made in the annual performance review process? Organizations want to improve employee productivity in order to grow overall business performance and corporate value. But the tool most often used to evaluate and improve performance—the performance review—is based on several flawed premises.
One big strike against performance reviews is that they are a backward look to see where the employee has been—and perhaps failed. Since performance reviews occur once a year, if at all, they require us to look back over a long period of time. They make the manager look out of sync (“I’m not satisfied with your performance on that project six months ago…”), and even if the criticism is viewed positively, it’s too late to change it.
Another problem with traditional reviews is that they are based on the assumption that the person evaluating someone has a full and accurate grasp of the other’s performance, hence the ability to accurately evaluate.
Perhaps the most awkward part of performance reviews is the fact that they violate a basic unspoken tenet of interpersonal dynamics. What other setting would adults be expected to formally state a judgment of another adult’s behavior and performance besides a court of law? We do not, in normal social settings, behave as judge, jury and impactor of someone’s ability to make a living. This alienating power dynamic does not make for better performance or move a company closer to achieving its goals in most instances.
There is a better way, and it does not involve waiting for a formal performance review date to arrive. Communicate with your employees early and often. Early, to catch potential problems before they happen. Often, because the continuous interest shown and feedback given to employees through communicating and coaching guarantees better performance.
Coaching provides counsel in real time and clearly identifies goals in the context of the employee’s job. Good coaches understand the current reality of the employee’s world, and are aware of issues that might prevent a worker from reaching his or her goals. Good coaching provides the right environment for development strategies that allow an employee to achieve his or her goals.
A healthy working relationship, just like a healthy marriage is built on frequent dialogue and two-way communication. Conversely, a once-a-year meeting may feel more like a gripe fest to the recipient. One side lists frustrations and shortcomings while the other side is taken aback and either retreats or goes on the defensive. The bottom line is that no one wins.
The presence of a number of popular business books on revising the performance evaluation (Get Rid of the Performance Review, Abolishing Performance Appraisals, Performance Conversations, Catalytic Coaching) signals a climate shift to a new day of performance management. The traditional performance evaluation may be on its way to the grave, and new, more effective ways of motivating great performance will replace it.
For a win-win solution to managing the new performance models, read on.
Hawthorne Performance System
Have you ever wished you had a secure, confidential system to manage employee performance documentation that did not cost a month’s worth of revenue to install and use? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a system that is both easy to set up and use?
Hawthorne Technology Services has developed a cloud application designed to track employee goals/feedback/coaching/reviews. It shifts the performance review mindset from traditional ineffective methods to an employee driven system of accountability and results.
The system allows both employees and supervisors to log their comments and observations without having to store, track and document either individual electronic files or paper files. It is a secure site, so no confidential information becomes randomly viewable by other personnel, however, there is administrative access by the HR leader(s) to the documents.
The system approaches the supervisor/employee relationship from the philosophy that each employee is capable of taking charge of their own performance and, if given the opportunity to talk about their needs and challenges in a supportive environment, will solve most of their performance problems themselves. The supervisor’s role is to be a guide, coach and mentor for success rather than a critic.
Call Chuck or Karen at Hawthorne Services, 574-361-6166 for a demonstration of both the approach and the system.
Spam???
Posted: January 16, 2011 Filed under: Spam, Technology Advice | Tags: linkedin Leave a comment »Sometimes Spam filters can be TOO smart. Check out a digest message from Message Labs spam filter:
This Spam Filter is great!
So, if the spam filter caught the daily digest of messages in my spam filter, how do I know I have spam?
