By Richard Harding, Ph.D., Kenexa

Many organizations use various partners or vendors to collect data and provide services. Too often, all of this information is maintained in distinct silos where it gathers dust. If it is used at all, the scope is very narrow with limited distribution. Few associates see it, few understand it and even fewer find it useful. None of the information ever interrelates; thus, the intelligence of gathering all this information with various organizations is never fully realized as to its utility. For instance, by collecting multi-rater data, employee engagement survey data, and selecting leaders and hourly associates using an assessment tool, the synergy between these valuable sets of information is seldom realized because many companies use different vendors to provide each of these services.

By developing solutions that are built on a common framework and theory developed for the organization, the intelligence of each one of these efforts converges where it should, which is within the organization. By doing these types of work with one vendor, the synergy realized makes the total greater than the sum of its parts. Within the predictive validity framework, organizations may link employee survey results, performance appraisals, multi-rater results, and hourly associate and management assessment results to various business metrics such as turnover of hourly staff as well as management staff, productivity measures, profitability, sales volume, customer service measures, etc. 

By linking engagement results at a business unit level to assessment results for both hourly associates and managers, one can begin to develop the knowledge around the impact that selecting more talented associates has on the environment of your organization and vice versa. Thus, by linking all of those metrics to hourly and management turnover data and other metrics of performance, one can begin to build a model of selecting the right people for the job which in turn, will help managers increase the retention of the more productive associates.

A model such as this can increase the development of a productive work environment on a long term basis impacting many of the above performance measures. The model can also have great utility in a pre-employment sense. By hiring candidates who fit the model, many positive benefits will accrue namely, faster enculturation of the associate, shorter training cycles, decreased learning curves, being productive faster, and staying longer while providing higher levels of customer service and productivity.

About the Author

Richard E. Harding, Ph.D., is an executive consultant, director of research and principal at Kenexa. Dr. Harding has more than 24 years of experience specializing in validity and reliability of assessments, selection and development of associates, associate surveys, multirater surveys, and business outcomes modeling and linkages. He has consulted with numerous Fortune 500 companies in the United States and Europe. Before joining Kenexa, Harding was director of research for The Gallup Organization for almost 17 years. He also taught science and mathematics at the secondary school level, is an adjunct professor for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and has taught numerous research and statistics classes at the graduate and undergraduate level. Dr. Harding is the author of over 300 proprietary validity studies and has offered affidavit support and testimony for clients in legal venues. 

Dr. Harding is a licensed psychologist, and a member of the American Psychological Association, American Educational Research Association, National Council on Measurement in Education, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologists and Sigma Xi Research Society. He holds a Doctorate degree in psychological and cultural studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with an emphasis in statistics, research and program evaluation.