The use of personality assessments enables you to take control of performance management, optimize your organizational recruitment process, and implement dynamic systems for performance optimization.

In the following blogpost we will demonstrate how Europe’s leading call center was able to dramatically reduce hiring time for the right candidates, increase productivity, and reduce employee turnover by implementing the mentioned framework.

 

Competitive recruitment at Webhelp Nordics

Webhelp Nordics is a leading international call center that provides inbound customer service and technical support to customers of some of the world’s biggest brands. With an annual turnover of €75 million and offices in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, they serve over 20 million customers a year.

Webhelp Nordics approached Hucama to provide support for recruiting Contact Center staff, expanding their team of over 1,800 employees.

Webhelp Nordic identified that their primary challenges were:

  • Time consuming recruitment process
  • Unclear job descriptions
  • High level of staff turnover

To address these issues, Webhelp Nordics wanted to create a testing tool to improve their employee selection process. The tool needed to be created as part of a lean recruitment and development process – making it straight forward to quickly match candidates.

 

A strong corellation between KPI’s and job match scores

To help adress these issues Hucama set up a project that included a competency analysis using the Big Five Model on over 500 agents working in the Contact Center at Webhelp Nordics.

Big Five is a widely-respected, evidence-based system that uses five core dimensions of a person’s psyche or personality to evaluate how they would fit in a role. When a candidate is evaluated for these traits, the Big Five Model provides unbiased insight on their suitability for a position. Unlike behavioral assessments like the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator or the Belbin Team Inventory – which (only) indicate how a person might act, or how they fit in a team based on their environment – personality-based assessments – like Big Five – identify candidate’s attitudes, how they approach interpersonal relationships, and their motivations. The critical difference is that people exhibit different behavior in certain situations, whereas personalities don’t change. By evaluating a candidate’s personality with the Big Five Model it will be possible to predict with accuracy how well a candidate will perform in a role.

At the end of the project Hucama found a strong correlation between KPI scores and job match scores. In fact, for the Average Handling Time KPI, higher job match scores were linked with calls that were up to a minute shorter, saving over 2,00 service hours a year.

Today Webhelp Nordics has a tailored testing tool that they use to pre-screen candidates (determine whether their personality aligns with the core competencies of the position), helping to weed out unsuitable candidates with minimal involvement from their recruitment team – saving time and money. Perhaps even more valuable they have a clear, evidence-based job profile for recruitment, and a clear measurement for high performance.

 

The Big Five Isn’t Just for New Hires

Assessments using the Big Five Model also work for current employees. When you are considering promoting employees or restricting teams, consider first the personalities of the team members involved. If their personalities do not align with the demands of the role, is it possible to remove the “misaligned” requirements, or would it be better in a different position? By knowing in advance whether or not a personality and the fundamental competencies correspond, it will be possible to determine the success rate before you make the final decision.

Have we got your attention? Don’t wait any longer to predict the future consistent performance of your employees. The application of personality-based assessments can be used anywhere and for any industry.

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