A Modern Approach to Employee Assessment

Korn Ferry Institute has introduced Korn Ferry Assess ^TM - Leadership solution (KFLS), establishing a new benchmark in employee assessment. This innovative tool merges traditional self-report personality assessments with more modern content, measurement techniques, and administrative methods to provide a holistic perspective of individual performance across diverse roles.

Traditional assessments independently evaluate personality traits, drivers, or competencies for predicting job performance. In contrast, KFLS integrates these elements, offering a comprehensive outlook across roles. It addresses the issue of "faking good" through a unique response approach, thereby boosting fairness and reliability. KFLS also excels in performance prediction and understanding individual success factors.

Here are three ways that real-world data from several organizations confirms the superiority of KFLS over traditional instruments, simplifying performance prediction and identifying areas for development:

Reduced Faking

A key concern with traditional personality assessments that use Likert-type response scales (“strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) is that applicants can inflate their scores by choosing a response they think is preferred (i.e., “faking”). In contrast, the Leadership Solution uses a forced-choice response approach that reduces the ability to fake and enhances reliability and comparisons across people. KFLS data from a large sample of job applicants versus job incumbents shows that the average difference in scores across traits is approximately 2.6 times lower than results from studies on traditional personality assessments.

Personality, Drivers, and Competencies

Assessing personality traits, drivers, and competencies allows KFLS to maximize performance prediction and provides a more comprehensive understanding of the diverse individual characteristics that drive performance. For example, a study of a large sample of senior leaders from multiple organizations shows that including competencies predicts performance better than self-reported personality traits alone.

Success Profiles

One of KFLS’s key features is the ability to compare individual scores with Success Profiles, helping inform hiring and other HR activities across diverse job families. Data from nearly 750 real-world KFLS applicants reveal that those who closely matched their Success Profile based on drivers or traits were 2.5 to 4.5 times more likely to be high performers than those with low matches. The likelihood was nearly 4 times higher for those who matched competencies, and for those who matched the full combined profile, it was over 5 times higher.

Korn Ferry Assess^TM - Leadership solution represents an evolution in employee assessment, blending traditional and modern approaches. Its capacity to provide comprehensive insights, mitigate faking, and enhance predictive accuracy underscores its essential role in recruitment and HR practices.

Download the full report to learn more about the Korn Ferry Assess^TM - Leadership solution.

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