In the modern workplace there has been a push to understand human behaviour… not just for interpersonal reasons but also as a strategic imperative. The technique has gained popularity in recent years as employers and decision-makers have come to understand the value of profiling.
But what is behavioural profiling?
Behavioural Profiling Explained
Behavioural profiling provides a deep understanding of your employees’ preferences, characteristics, and work styles. Knowing these enables you to select the right candidates, and build stronger teams with people who will best collaborate, interact and thrive in the workspace.
Behavioural profiling information can be used by management in multiple beneficial ways, including:
- Job role alignment
- Utilising team dynamics to support performance
- Reducing the potential for interpersonal conflict
- Fostering employee engagement
- Spotting development needs
- Identifying leadership potential
There are many products available today that can be used for behavioural profiling – ranging from relatively simple personality assessments to advanced tools that can measure hundreds of behaviours and traits across teams. The key is having the expertise to choose the right tool, and then knowing how to use it!
In summary, here is how behavioural profiling works.
Step 1: Set Clear Objectives
Before delving into behavioural profiling, the first thing is to identify your primary goals for the exercise. What are you trying to achieve as an organisation? Get clarity around this before rolling out the program.
Pro Tip: Ensure your objectives align with your company’s greater goals and objectives – otherwise it risks simply being a nosy exercise!
Step 2: Collect Data
After laying out your goals and objectives for the whole exercise, the next thing is to collect appropriate data. This might include data on your employees’ communication styles, interactions, individual behaviours and preferences. There are many ways to collect this data, including:
- Online tests and assessments
- Paper-based questionnaires and surveys
- Interviews
- Observation
- Workshops
Your chosen method/s should be effective and reliable; otherwise, you will end up with irrelevant and inaccurate data.
Step 3: Analyse And Interpret Collected Data
Once you have collected your data, the next thing is to study it well to identify trends, patterns, and factors of significance. These may be at the individual, team, or organisation-wide level depending on your goals. The aim is to understand how your employees behave and operate within the workspace.
Step 4: Create Behavioural Profiles
After analysing the data, the next step is to create useful profiles that inform with respect to your goals and objectives.
Profiles can report behavioural factors at the individual, team and organisation-level on areas such as:
- Personality traits
- Preferences and motivators
- Strengths and weaknesses
- Communication styles
You should be able to determine how each profile reflects your organisation (either positively or negatively) and the impacts it reveals.
Step 5: Make Managerial Decisions
The next step is to apply the profile information to your day-to-day processes and initiatives. Such could include:
- Talent identification and selection
- Restructuring decisions
- Identifying leadership potential
- Team-building activities
- Employee training and development
By leveraging profile data, you can make informed decisions that drive your company’s overall effectiveness.
Step 6: Keep Monitoring
Profiling is not just a one-time thing. As times and employees change and organisations grow, behaviours keep changing, which calls for constant monitoring and adjustments. A well thought out profiling initiative can be reused in future to track changes and keep ahead of behavioural problems developing.
Should you use behavioural profiling during Recruitment and Selection?
Your talent pool will largely determine your company’s success – your organisation is as strong as its employees. Typically, hiring calls for resumes, references, and interviews. However, these alone aren’t enough to predict a candidate’s potential in a particular position. It’s time to add behavioural profiling to that list. Here’s why:
- Determine A Candidate’s Fit
Behavioural profiling can tell you whether a candidate’s values, expectations, traits, and attitude align with your culture before you spend time and resources to train them. Assessing a candidate’s work ethic, teamwork skills, communication skills, motivators, adaptability, and critically their competencies relevant to the specific job during the hiring process will significantly reduce the chance of a mismatch.
- Assess Potential Job Performance
With profiling, you can see where (role or department) a candidate will more likely excel. For example, conscientious candidates are likely to do well in detail-oriented positions; in the same way, individuals with great interpersonal skills are best suited for roles that directly engage customers.
- Reduces Bias
Bias has been a thorny problem for many companies, especially during hiring. Profiling offers a more objective and standardised way of comparing applicants without influence of factors such as ethnicity, gender, age, and other common bias parameters.
- Improved Employee Retention
Hiring the right person that fits your culture perfectly will ensure success and long-term retention. The right person is the missing piece in your puzzle and will fit perfectly into your team. That means they’ll be comfortable and enjoy carrying out their duties. Get it right during hiring and lessen future performance issues.
- Hassle-Free Recruitment Process
Profiling will smoothen the recruitment and selection process by helping you quickly identify the most suitable candidates – saving you time and resources. With the appropriate tools, you can concentrate your efforts on the most promising applicants.
Behavioural Profiling Tools
There are many different tools you can use for behavioural profiling. Here’s two of our preferred approaches.
1. Life Styles Inventory (LSI)
This behavioural tool assesses someone’s behavioural patterns and their thinking. It will give you information on how the person in question interacts with others and approaches different scenarios in life, both professionally and personally. This will give you a broader view of a person’s tendencies, preferences, attitudes, values, motivations, and shortcomings.
2. Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ)
This tool measures a person’s preferred ways of thinking and behaving and provides deep insights into the competencies they are likely to bring to the workplace. Using this tool, you can understand how a person’s behaviour aligns with their particular roles and the set organisational values and objectives. The tool assesses multiple aspects, including:
- Thinking style
- Interpersonal style
- Feelings and emotions
- Managerial style
- Relationships with people
This tool is particularly handy when making hiring or promotion decisions.
Wrapping It Up
Behavioural profiling is a valuable tool that enables organisations to select the right talent, uncover what drives high-performing teams, foster a healthy culture, and enhance overall productivity.
At ESN, our experienced Psychologists work closely with you to understand your unique needs, identify the most appropriate psychometric assessment tools, and support the effective integration of insights into your workplace strategy.
