Companies are increasingly seeking out ways to enhance the accuracy and effectiveness of their hiring and promotional processes. They are exploring the use of a variety of tests and measures to gather the information they need to make better decisions. They look to tests to help them increase objectivity within their processes and to get to the root of an individual’s real talents and potentials.
Employers worry that if they put a test into their selection or promotional process that managers will rely too heavily on the results. This can be a pitfall of such tools, since most well-constructed tests tend to be quite accurate in the results they produce. If the selection process lacks sufficient steps, or if the steps are not effective, managers probably will resort to trusting the test to make the decision.
With the recent release of the OFCCP and EEO updated selection guidelines, new rigor is required for any selection or promotional system, including test validation. “Validation” used to mean “we put together focus groups of our best employees, who provided their ideas on what success looks like in our own environment. We used that input to develop our selection system and/or our competency model.”
Or a testing provider would suggest that you test 5 or 10 or your top performers in a specific role and establish a selection standard based on the results. Whereas these approaches might have been overlooked in the past, they will not meet the new guidelines established through the Department of Labor, the OFCCP or the EEO Commission. Today, validation means that your company gathered and used statistically reliable data about your jobs to create selection, promotion and career tools and decisions. It means, for example:
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that you have up-to-date, accurate job description for the position that includes Essential Functions, the context of the position, background and experience levels and reporting relationship
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that you did not incorporate any process or step that has adverse impact in screening out or negatively impacting protected classes either in selecting, promoting people, or establishing a dismissal process
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that you assessed the job using objective and accepted methodology, such as ADA compliant Job Analysis
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that you were able to determine through your data collection process the acceptable business necessity of why the criteria you are using for selection or promotion is essential to perform the job in your business environment
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that you are able to show a clear linkage between the selection criteria you have identified to the actual steps you use within your selection or promotional processes, and finally,
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that your selection and promotional criteria has passed a number of tests of statistical significance to show that the criteria you are using in fact does not show statistical and practical significance between protected classes and the comparison group when disparate impact is being assessed.
These are, however, only a part of the issues that you must consider as you devise selection, promotion and career processes or make decisions about the people you employ. If your company has greater than 100 employees, and/or if you are a government supplier with contracts of more than $50K, then your company must comply with the new OFCCP guidelines.
Tomorrow, we’ll write some more about how to develop compliant selection standards.
Filed under: New Perspectives | Tagged: EEO compliance, OFCCP, psychological testing in the hiring process, selection standards
