These days, it’s much better to be safe than sorry. This is also true when it comes to recruitment: you might end up hiring someone dishonest, unreliable, and may be more of a liability to your organization than you first think.
Initially, it was impossible for recruiters and companies to measure the trustworthiness of a person. Today, there are a number of pre-employment integrity tests that can help determine a person’s honesty and ability to be a dependable employee. Having been developed by national defense experts, psychologists, and technical specialists, our integrity testing is as reliable as the people you want in your team.
If your organization has yet to include integrity tests in your pre-employment application process, here are its uses and why you should add it when hiring for all levels of your company.
What Are Integrity Tests?
As its name goes, integrity tests measure an applicant’s honesty, reliability, emotional stability, and trustworthiness. Regardless of factors like skill level or experience, integrity tests are meant to weed out applicants whose morals, work ethic, or personality may be a risk or liability if they enter the company.
Without an integrity test, your workplace may be prone to violence, theft incidents, absenteeism, and other behavioral and disciplinary problems. This can lead your workplace to becoming a toxic or non-conducive environment that can be off-putting to high-quality candidates and can make your current employees feel demotivated or unsafe in their own workspace.
Aside from the fact that integrity tests weed out bad employees, these are also a good predictor of job performance and productivity. According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, integrity is strongly linked to conscientiousness, a trait found in an employee with good job performance regardless of factors like age, sex, race, and other demographics.
Integrity tests may go hand-in-hand with background checks depending on the organization, but this does not apply to everyone. Usually, background checks are more expensive and are usually limited to people with criminal records. Standardized integrity checks detect non-criminal but undesirable or unproductive traits in an applicant.
For more information and inquiries about integrity tests for pre-employment screening, don’t hesitate to contact Aptitude today.
Not Just for Banks and Security Agencies
Integrity tests are commonly used for sensitive job roles in certain industries. To name a few, these include:
- Banks – All banks require their employees to be honest and trustworthy enough to work while touching large amounts of money and passing their clients’ money through their hands. Integrity tests also prevent money laundering, corruption, theft, and more.
- BPOs – Especially for BPO employees that are required to gather sensitive information from customers (e.g. address, card number, private data).
- Logistics – Courier, shipping, and other logistics companies should be able to trust their employees to handle other people’s goods and have it transported rather than stealing it. Too many missing packages may damage the company’s reputation and result in decreases clients.
- Security Agencies – Security officers, bouncers, and investigators still have to follow the law while maintaining order. Integrity tests can determine if applicants are prone to violence, substance abuse, or poor work ethic.
While these are the most common industries that use integrity tests, these tests aren’t limited to these sectors alone. Integrity tests can also be beneficial to other industries as it can prevent businesses from hiring those prone to:
- Employee Theft – From employees that may steal office supplies and office equipment to employees that may steal from clients.
- Employee Substance Abuse – Especially in sectors where substance abuse is a serious misconduct and can affect the reputation of the company.
- High Employee Turnover Rate – Bad employees who foster a toxic workplace can lead many other employees to leave.
- Absenteeism – If your employee is always late or absent, they may not be as productive as you expect them to be.
- Conflict and Disruptive Behavior – This, in turn, can lead to violence in the workplace or be a distraction for other employees.
- Customer Complaints – If a customer complains about an employee’s attitude, work ethic, or security breaches, this can be a liability.
- Non-Compliant Behaviors – Employees may be disruptive or a risk if they do not know how to follow rules.
- Accidents and Injuries – Employees that lack focus, care, and a sense of self-preservation may end up injuring themselves during working hours, resulting in a major expense for your organization.
You don’t have to be in the industries above to want to avoid these risks in your company. It’s a given that if you’re dealing with things like money, data, security, and trade secrets, these are prone to criminal liabilities if you end up hiring a bad employee.
But integrity tests don’t just focus on the criminal and legal, but also in terms of productivity. A bad apple in the workplace can spoil the whole office and ruin the working environment your employees like, which can cause dips in job performance (and, in turn, revenue and sales because of their poor performance).
Protect Your Customers and Clients
Remember when Google ceased its partnership with the local BPO Sykes Philippines after three employees reportedly stole Google gift cards amounting to P60 million? This is one of the more extreme examples of why integrity tests are necessary to protect your customers and clients.
No matter how good a person’s skill or experience level is, if they act in a way that offends or goes against your clients, they’re more likely to do more bad than good. Integrity testing is one of the better ways to reduce customer complaints by ensuring those that are client-facing or in charge of handling client accounts handle their output properly.
Integrity tests are also a good way to protect your client’s security. For example, BPO employees who handle sensitive information should be trusted not to steal that information and use it for their own gain. Electricians, plumbers, and other workers that enter your clients’ homes should be trustworthy enough to enter without trying to steal or become violent.
Protect Your Company
Even if it’s just one bad employee that does wrong, it’s the entire company that pays for it. Because of only three employees, Sykes lost a valuable client and its reputation was affected within the BPO industry. If you’ve seen how social media goes, a bad customer complaint can go viral and result in a lot of backlash against your organization.
By avoiding candidates who are prone to lying, criminal activity, and unproductive traits, you’re safeguarding your organization against potential employees that may damage your reputation.
Remember: prevention is better than the cure. It’s much better for your organization to spot undesirable traits in a job applicant than to do damage control when an erring employee brings bad press to your company.
You Need Employment Integrity Testing
We have helped some of the biggest companies and corporations in the Philippines picking out the cream of the crop in every batch of applicants. Not only do applicants who score high on integrity tests promise a high chance of productivity, but the process also flags potential negative traits in other employees that may affect your workplace negatively or plot to use their position to their advantage.
Schedule a free demonstration from us today to learn more.
I’m In! What Do I Do Next?
Reach out to Aptitude for a free trial of our online recruitment tests today and take advantage of our introductory promo. You’ll get a full overview of our recruitment tests as well as a sample report.