Give people a profile they can grow with
Use personality, motivation and interest questionnaires in coaching, career conversations and development programmes, so employees get clear words for how they work and what drives them.
What it adds to development
A shared language
Big Five traits and motives give employees and managers neutral words for strengths, preferences and blind spots, instead of vague impressions.
Better career conversations
Motivation and interest results show what someone is looking for in their work, which helps when you talk about a next step or a change of direction.
Plans that start from the person
Development builds on what someone already does well and on one or two areas worth working on, not on a generic training catalogue.
How to use it in a development programme
Agree the purpose
Decide upfront what the results are for and who sees them. In development, the employee sees their own results first.
Choose the questionnaires
Start with personality and motivation. Add interests for career questions, or the leadership questionnaire for leadership programmes.
Invite employees
Everyone gets a link in their own language and completes the questionnaires when it suits them, usually in 25 to 45 minutes.
Discuss and plan
Go through the report with a coach, HR adviser or manager and turn two or three insights into concrete development goals.
Assessments that suit development
For development, how someone works and what drives them usually tells you more than an ability score. The library also has a RIASEC interests questionnaire for career questions.
Personality
Work style on the Big Five traits: the starting point for talking about strengths and what someone finds hard.
Motivation and values
What gives someone energy at work, and what drains it. Central to any career conversation.
Cognitive ability
Useful when someone is considering a move into more complex or analytical work, less so as a general development tool.
Development means development
If you tell employees a questionnaire is for their development, keep it that way: don't reuse the results for appraisals, selection or restructuring without telling them first. Results describe preferences, not fixed limits, and a person always reads them in context.
Frequently asked questions
Who should see an employee's results?
Agree this before anyone starts. Good practice is that the employee reads their own report first and decides, with their coach or HR adviser, what to share with their manager. Whatever you choose, tell employees in advance and process the data under the GDPR.
Can we use the same assessments for development and selection?
The instruments can be the same, but the purpose should not shift afterwards. For an internal application, tell employees the results will count, use tests with evidence for selection and let a person decide. Results gathered for coaching should not be reused that way without their knowledge.
Do employees need a coach to understand their report?
Not always, but it helps. Reports explain each score in plain language, with its norm group and score range. A conversation with a coach, psychologist or trained HR adviser makes it far more likely that someone actually does something with the results.
How often should someone retake a questionnaire?
Personality traits are fairly stable in adults, so retaking every year adds little. Motivation and interests shift more with life and career stage; repeating them every two to three years, or at a career turning point, makes sense.
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