What is a Behavioural Assessment?

Based on the DISC theory of Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung and psychologist William Moulton Marston, behavioural assessment tools provide businesses with information to maximise the performance of their employees.

Globally, thousands of organisations use DISC based behavioural assessments every year. DISC assessment tools are practical, easy to understand and implement. They are used to promote productivity and teamwork, support recruitment decisions and enhance communication. Organisations and their employees quickly adapt to DISC theory and apply it comfortably in their day to day interactions.

The success of the DISC model is primarily based on its user-friendliness. It is easy to learn and most importantly, easy to use. By using the DISC concepts, managers can communicate and lead better, and salespeople close more sales. Behavioural assessments help to enhance training and eliminate expensive mistakes, wasted resources and time, and costly problems. 

The Extended DISC® behavioural assessment comprises 24 questions (48 sub-questions). Although they sound rather straightforward, DISC profile assessments provide surprisingly accurate insights into human behaviour. DISC helps businesses to recognise their people's strengths, development areas, what motivates and what demotivates them. Based on the highly validated and acclaimed Extended DISC® model, the ipsative style assessment identifies both a person's 'natural' and 'adapted' behavioural style - something many profiling tools fail to do.

How can behaviour impact company culture?

Companies with a positive corporate culture have higher rates of engaged and productive employees. Business culture influences teamwork, motivation, and retention of employees. Employees who are continually recognised and have an incentive to produce results are motivated to perform at their best. On the flip side, employees who do not have the motivation to perform, harm company culture and the bottom line.

Positively changing employees' view of their place within an organisation will improve their behaviour and ultimately shape company culture for the better. Using DISC theory, managers learn how best to provide feedback to their employees, what steps they need to implement to increase motivation and delegate tasks in the best possible way.

DISC team assessments provide an overview of the DISC profiles of your group and if they are operating under stress, pressure or unsure of their role. The assessment allows managers to determine a group's DISC culture quickly, explore its strengths and challenges, and facilitates discussion on its effect on group members.

DISC behavioural assessment tools help overcome various people problems such as communication issues, friction among teams and company culture. HR Profiling works with businesses to implement DISC, which reduces staff turnover, mitigates conflict, and helps teams build an understanding of how each other prefers to operate.

Through partnering with businesses, 57% of our client's report seeing a significant positive change in company culture with a further 43% seeing some positive change.

Behavioural profiling training supports business to implement behavioural assessments into an organisation and teaches them how to action the results from the behavioural profile. 

Employee turnover vs. bad hiring decisions

Making a bad hire can cost a company up to two and a half times the salary of the employee in question. Bad hires have a detrimental effect on company costs and business culture. Psychometric tests help recruiters and companies to make reliable hiring decisions. Through the use of behavioural profiling, recruiters understand who individuals are before they even begin working at the company. Once we know things like a candidate's preferred work environment (if at home or the office) and their development areas, we can implement suitable measures, such as training and development plans. These measures will ensure the recruit has the best experience possible working for the company. If we overlook these crucial attributes, we may find a new hire doesn't enjoy the role, has to expend too much energy and therefore becomes overworked and stressed. They may also lose motivation, their productivity decreases or in the worst case they leave the role entirely. Psychometric Assessments can be critical to recruiters to ensure they avoid bad hiring decisions.

We work with organisations to implement DISC behavioural assessment tools into their hiring process. Through partnering with these organisations, 70% of our clients experience some or significant positive change in staff retention.

How to use behavioural assessments for employment

Do you tend to hire people of a similar type to yourself because you get on well in the interview? But are they what you need? Is it likely there might be challenges in the role for the new candidate because of their natural behavioural style or could the candidate be quite different from the rest of the team and possibly need more support to integrate? 

Extended DISC® assessments can answer many of these employment-related questions and be used as a source of discussion in the interview process. Recruitment, selection and on-boarding can be a long process but armed with critical additional information to build into interviews, the employment process can be a lot smoother and achieve a more effective outcome.