By McQuaig Consultant, Dave Stent.

With the current economic climate affecting nearly every Business worldwide we all have to find ways of delivering even more for the clients ‘buck’, or in some painful cases for less.

To do this we focus on the areas where we can make operational savings typically through actions such as reducing overheads, reorganisation and given the biggest area of cost is the employee base this is always on the radar.

These challenging times can often result in revisiting the ‘employee numbers’ and aiming to do even more with less people.

It is operationally critical to be able to identify who are really ‘the right people’ and who, dare I say it, not in a position to respond the challenges. It’s these ‘right people’ who will make the real difference to the survivability of the company, and prepare it for the opportunities that will inevitably arise as we move out of these challenging times.

In most cases the approach is to visit the objective measures such as acquired skills, knowledge, experience, recent performance, training, education. Coincidentally, the same parameters used in the Recruitment. We hire on the these key factors, but more often fire on behavioural factors “ He/She just didn’t fit in”

This ‘failure’ is the key to why we must effectively identify ‘the right people’ and  identify the ways in which we give support to these key players in meeting the ‘survival’ challenge.

Behavioural profiling (Psychometric testing) has grown greatly in maturity over the last few years consistently demonstrating the ability to predict how well a person will fit into a role and a company. Profiling is now being used widely in the corporate world, and its value is being recognised and used in the SME marketplace.

The ‘right’ profiling tool will be able to cost effectively value add to activities such as:

• Succession Planning
• Leadership development
• Selling
• Team Fit
• Self Development Planning and activities
• Recruitment.

It’s this “pigeon holing” of behavioural profiling as something that is only for the recruiting of new people that has ‘masked’ the real potential and value of profiling to the development and operational effectiveness of the ‘right’ people – delivering the ultimate goal – increased bottom line.

It is beyond the field of Recruitment that you will really gain from the use of profiling. Helping in times of downsizing, restructuring, identifying the leaders of the future, assessing the management teams, and as a development tool integrated into the Performance Management processes of your company.