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Assessment & Evaluation

Published March 2008

Unlock Employee Motivation Through Personality Testing

Ken Lahti, Ph.D.

Remember that really smart co-worker, the
one who had so many answers he could run the company, but who put in minimal effort and seemed unconcerned with promotions? Or your boss who had brilliant ideas for product improvements, but couldn't motivate direct reports to get anything done? Personality testing might have unearthed the key to unlock their motivation and prompt the performance you knew they were capable of.

We have all seen people who we know could be wildly successful, if they just tried harder or were better fit for their roles. Or people whose inability to maintain positive working relationships undermined their other contributions. What explains these strange gaps in performance? Can we know in advance who will best "fit" the job at hand and what motivates them to succeed?

Actually, yes. Decades of research shows a lot of what motivates people is inside them. While money, opportunities for growth and good leadership all matter for employee motivation, a big piece of motivation is based on a person's character or personality. For better or for worse, we are who we are, and our personality tends to be stable over time and across situations. This consistency in people creates an opportunity for organizations. By assessing personality characteristics in job candidates, employers can predict their motivation and make better informed hiring decisions.

Sounds good in theory, but does it really work? PreVisor's 2007 Business Outcomes Report indicates pre-employment personality tests, when implemented and used effectively, predict key performance outcomes and improve organizational effectiveness. For example, when Starwood Hotels redesigned its hiring solution to include personality testing for the right attitude, it saw a two and a half times increase in performance for one customer facing role. A nationwide auto-parts distributor showed retention improved more than 80 percent for high-scoring candidates. Among warehouse associates taking a customized job-fit test, 43 percent of those who scored high remained on the job after 90 days, whereas only 23 percent of those who scored low on the assessment were retained. Higher retention leads to reduced costs, higher productivity and better organizational performance.

What is Motivation, Anyway?

We hear about motivation all of the time — in school, at work, in sports, in the context of motivational speaking. However, it is curiously difficult to pin down exactly what motivation is and how it works. While it has many definitions among scientists, motivation boils down to wanting something to be different.

Motivation is an energizing, mobilizing force related to striving toward goals and satisfying needs — everything from food to sex to self-esteem. From an employee perspective, this means work is the environment where they strive toward and achieve many of life's goals. Motivation can lead people to work hard and manage their interactions with others. On the other hand, a lack of motivation can lead to carelessness and callousness at work. A recent CareerBuilder survey found 32 percent of workers called in sick with fake excuses in the past 12 months, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of strong work ethic or job satisfaction.