HPS Leadership Best Practices Journal™

Assessment and Psychometric Tools

Does your use of assessments and other psychometric tools produce sustained performance improvement from your employees? Do they yield significant return on investment? How do you know?

There are many excellent assessments and other psychometric tools available for individual, team, and organizational applications. There are several challenges in selection, however, including some of the following:

• Identifying tools that will objectively measure the specific behaviors you desire to assess, change, or improve.
• Determining the best format for administration, which varies from paper to Internet-based technology.
• Ensuring that your investment is cost-effective and that you are not paying too much for various tools.
• Ensuring that you will have adequate support from the consultant and vendor throughout the assessment process.
• Ensuring appropriate instrument validation and compliance with local, state, and Federal laws.

Beyond the challenges, however, there is another important consideration. This consideration relates to what will be done with the information once it is obtained. In other words, assessments and psychometric tools simply raise awareness. Unfortunately, that is where most change initiatives lose momentum and often fail to deliver the desired results. Awareness is simply the first step of three that are essential for sustained change to occur. Once awareness is raised, abilities and action must follow or your well-intentioned efforts will not deliver the desired results.

AWARENESS: Provides information that the learner was probably unaware of prior to the assessment.

ABILITIES: Involves the skills that must be developed in order to achieve the desired change or improvement in desired behavior.

ACTION: Highly focused plan involving specific steps that must be taken in order for the desired behaviors to be sustained over time.

Keep in mind that there are three essential ingredients which are necessary for change to occur. These include an opportunity to change, motivation to change, and the capacity to change. If any of these ingredients is missing, sustained change will not occur. By the way, this formula applies to individuals, teams, and organizations.

CHANGE = Motivation + Opportunity + Capacity ©

Suggestions when considering the use of assessments and other psychometric tools:

• Be very clear about your desired objectives prior to considering the use of any assessments or other psychometric tools.
• Evaluate a variety of assessments and talk with qualified professionals who are familiar with their use and results.
• Leverage technology, as the Internet has truly changed and dramatically improved the administration and use of assessments and other psychometric tools.
• Consider asking for volume pricing discounts, particularly for large or ongoing projects.
• Never pay a mark-up for assessments or other psychometric tools. Some consultants add a hefty mark-up to their actual costs for tools. You should only be paying for their time and expertise, not adding margin to their profits.

If you are interested in learning more about our experiences and success stories with various assessments and psychometric tools, we would be pleased to offer some recommendations for your specific application. We have strict quality standards and work with only a select few assessment and psychometric providers.