Chiswick Marketing According to the results of a study by workplace psychologists OPP, 71% of all line managers would change the people decisions they’ve made if given a second chance. It’s an indictment on the “gut instinct” culture that costs UK businesses millions of pounds in performance issues each year. Worryingly, nearly four in ten (39%) line managers said they still rely on gut instinct as one of the most important factors when making any decisions about their people. Twenty-five per-cent even admitted that whether they like someone personally was also a major influence.
There is one small ray of hope; people who had taken a psychometric (personality) test in the course of their career were twice as likely to find this kind of data important to them in making a range of decisions about people. This group is also much more likely to look for evidence in past behaviour than those who have not received feedback on a personality test in their career (68 vs 51%).
Whether or not you’ve used psychometrics before our experience helping managers use competencies for recruitment tells us that having some clear, relevant criteria against which to make decisions improves the quality of decisions immeasurably.