Stricter employment legislation and increasingly savvy candidates means it is harder than ever for smaller businesses to get it right when it comes to recruitment. Lita Wilmot, from SHL - provider of psychometric assessment and development solutions, begins by taking a closer look at these challenges before outlining the ways in which they can be overcome by smaller organisations with the help of objective psychometric assessment.

Three recent pieces of legislation – concerning anti-discrimination, data protection, and freedom of information – have all contributed to the workload that is involved in the employment, deployment and redundancy of employees. Being aware of the legal position is one matter, but ensuring policies are effective and responsive so that companies are neither vulnerable nor irresponsible is the main challenge. Workers now benefit from more rights than ever before in the history of employment. While larger organisations are able to invest heavily in Human Resources departments to deal with such issues, smaller companies must find other methods.

At the same time, recent research undertaken by SHL with the general public revealed that more than one in two people (57%) think it is acceptable to be sparing with the truth or to exaggerate their skills or qualifications in an interview. Four out of every ten job seekers also admitted to ‘working the interview’ by trying to be the person they think the company is looking for, and not who they really are. Past research has already shown that around 40 per cent of CV’s are based on fiction - at least in part. How can the smaller business protect itself against such deception?

Getting the right person for the job will have a significant impact on the bottom line of smaller businesses. The costs of recruitment are regularly reviewed to take into account expenditure necessitated by advertising, interviewing and administering the process; according to the latest figures released by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) the average cost of a new recruit can be anything up to £8,000, costs that smaller companies will struggle to cope with.

Assuming the right candidate is attracted and recruited, how do you persuade them to stay? There is a temptation now for candidates and recruiters alike to view recruitment as a merry-go-round, with jobs changing every few years. It supposedly keeps people fresh; it satisfies the appetite for constant variety and diversion. However, employees more often than not appreciate with age – time in the relationship – rather than becoming gradually obsolete like many business assets. Whilst we may not expect the majority of employees to stay for life in any single company, in many cases we should hope and encourage it to ensure there is a final win-win situation. Retention is therefore a key concern for smaller companies to ensure that the talent they have invested in does not defect before realising its true potential.

Many candidates expect to be offered a golden handshake (or handcuff), seen by employers as a way in which to entice new recruits and ‘buy’ their fidelity for a definite period of time. Again, this is more difficult for smaller companies and can have negative impacts on the bottom line and also on the morale and dynamics of the existing team.

So how can objective assessment help with these challenges? Firstly, when it comes to conforming to employment regulation, utilising the scientific approach of objective psychometric assessment when making any important recruitment decisions is far and away the most accountable and transparent system to help you meet tough employment legislation.

The first step is to understand the specific needs of the role and the requirements of the existing team; this information will inform a template of what the ideal candidate looks like.

Applying this template to the recruitment process is highly beneficial as the use of candidate profiling and assessment, otherwise known as psychometric testing, can enable a more effective person-job match by measuring an applicant against the template. Psychometric assessments establish an individual’s preferred ways of working, their reliability, motivation, leadership potential and management competence. The results of these assessments can provide a behavioural profile of the new starter to predict both team-fit (particularly important in a small-team), and future developmental needs.

Understanding what your ideal new recruit should look like and also having a more comprehensive understanding of the candidate in front of you will increase your chances of getting the right person for the job, screening out unsuitable candidates and saving your company time and money.

Psychometric assessment can provide an understanding of what motivates an individual, how they learn best, their strengths and weaknesses and their potential. As such you can tailor your management to their needs, for example if an individual is strongly motivated by autonomy, you can look for opportunities to give them this in their day-to-day work. In the same way you can use this knowledge to guide individual career paths, giving a fair and consistent assessment of training and development requirements at each career step.

By using the output from psychometric assessments you are more likely to encourage loyalty and motivation, increasing the chances of retaining the new recruit, without the need of expensive incentives. Well-managed individuals are more likely to be motivated and engaged - 80 per cent of people leave their managers not their jobs*!

It is sometimes mistakenly believed that the benefits of psychometric assessments are out of the reach of smaller companies due to the high costs, however, SHL’s Partner Network (SPN) was established specifically to service the needs of small and medium sized organisations in the UK. These partners are experienced consultants who work independently and use SHL tools to enable your people management. In this way, SHL can provide expertise to large or small organisations

When questioning the value of investing extra time in recruitment, development and team-fit, it is worth bearing in mind that top performing employees deliver 12 times the value of mid level performers**. The above approach is practical to implement and the results are proven. Most important of all, the approach is cost effective regardless of scale. A workforce of three can benefit in the same way as a workforce of 10,000.

*Tom Young and Alex Martinez, Recruit Magazine **Gallup Omnibus

About SHL Group Limited
SHL is a world-leading provider of objective, scientific psychometric assessment and development solutions. SHL takes the risk out of the selection, recruitment, promotion, succession planning and development of talented people at all levels

For more information please visit www.shl.com or call 0870 070 8000