Use Cognitive Testing to Help Determine Job Fit and Minimize Safety Violations

In my last Insight, I explained some common mistakes employers make regarding cognitive testing. I then gave some steps you can take if you want to be more effective with using cognitive testing. 

A client project comes to mind when I think about the impact of cognitive testing and job fit.   

The company was one of the nation’s largest suppliers of building materials, and they came to us with a request to help them assess their current people in a particular job. 

The company had previously created a new position and they had a well-written job description for it. Then they went out and hired a bunch of people, but they made the cardinal mistake many companies make: They hired what they believed were high-thinking, go-getters—very bright, self-directed, self-motivated individuals for a job that didn’t actually require ongoing problem solving once the job was learned. 

So we did a study for them and we created a benchmark by assessing all of their employees within the job and their respective level of cognitive speed, as well as their personality traits. 

We had the company rate the employees based on actual performance and then compared that data to the scores from the assessments. The data showed that we were right on the money in that, among other personality differences, the people who were struggling had the highest cognitive testing scores, and the people who were doing great had average scores. 

The people who were consistently failing were the ones who had tested as having high cognitive speed. These employees were learning the job very quickly, but they also got bored. 

This is an example of why it’s important for companies to do their homework and create a benchmark so they can use the data to help select individuals who match the job requirements and therefore have a greater chance of success in the job. 

Final Thoughts

One of the potential dilemmas within manufacturing environments is hiring individuals who may become bored within their position and therefore have a greater potential to skip over safety procedures and other ‘boring’ tasks.  

In these cases, the employee isn’t fully engaged in their job because it’s “old news” to them. They’ve done it a million times and don’t think they need to give it their full attention anymore. This can sometimes cause employees to injure themselves or skip a step in the procedure and hurt someone else. 

Along with measuring personality traits and how they impact job fit, properly matching cognitive speed to the job requirements can have an impact on minimizing safety violations within your company. 

You want your employees to be fully engaged in their job and this is influenced by how well they are matched to the job requirements. 

This also gets into the personality component of cognitive testing—you need to not only know what level each employee is at when it comes to learning new things and their cognitive speed, but as in this client example, you also want to couple that with knowledge of whether or not the individual is a structured-type employee and if he/she can handle a job that stays the same and routine over time. 

Find out what works best within a job, and then match incoming employees to that criteria in order to ensure good job fit resulting in a positive impact on productivity while minimizing safety issues.

You want your employees to be fully engaged in their job and this is influenced by how well they are matched to the job requirements.