Say goodbye to your baby boomers at your own risk

There’s a mid-term threat looming on the horizon.  It’s also – as they say -an opportunity.

The baby boom has almost worked its way through.  50% of the UK workforce are going to retire in the next 15 years.  The number of workers aged 55+ will grow by 47% in the next eight years.

So now is exactly the time we ought to be thinking about new ways of flexible working – an idea that got column inches for a year or so then disappeared.  Given possible threats to pensions, do most of those middle, middle age people really want to give up work for good ? Will they be able to?

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Testing for the upturn

Suppliers’ and the business media are pumping out messages that we should learn from the late 90s downturn by:

• avoiding cutting people overhead without careful planning;
• continuing people development ;
• retaining ‘talent’, or whatever you call your key staff.

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Can You Profile Mozart?

The search for a psychometric test of creativity has been a holy grail of test publishers and developers.

Such things do exist: the most famous is the Torrance Tests Of creative Ability.  But none of them are widely used.  The reason is, I think, that creativity is difficult to define and therefore measure: is it the ability to come up with lots of ideas?; the unusualness of the ideas you come up with?  Should you expect creativity to be on tap or dependent on mood (in which case it will be extra difficult to test for!).

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Testing is training

Psychometric tests help retain staff in bad times.

Sounds unlikely?

Personnel Decisions Limited surveyed 530 managers and found they’re putting extra effort into retaining staff during the downturn.  We’ve obviously learnt the key lesson of previous economic ‘blips’: don’t slash and burn your staffing.  Retaining core knowledge and skills upholds performance in depressed markets, speeds up growth at the upturn and prevents a collapse in engagement.

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Employee Testing – the business case

You wouldn’t invest £45,000 (or £10,000) in a new piece of kit, new office space or a major piece of marketing on the basis of looking at it for an hour, finding out what birth sign it was made under(!) or relying on the makers’ brochure.

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Are staff a cost or an investment?

Some years ago my boss sat me down and gave me a good talking to.  I had been asked to turn round a company.  The sales weren’t growing and the previous manager had recruited huge numbers of new people resulting in a whacking loss.

My boss basically gave me two bullet points: Read more

Online Psychometric Testing: is the printed test dead?

Is paper and pencil testing dead?  A year ago I’d have written off printed tests.

I’m not so sure now?

I first came across a computerised tests in the 1970s; it used special input devices to measure the effect of chronic alcoholism!  Progress was slow at first but on-line personality tests are now.

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Do your staff demand training?

In 2010 22 million workers could have the legal right to demand training time. This could lead to an extra 300,000 people being given skills training. About 40% of employers provide no training whatsoever, which might cut costs but, in some cases, hobbles their performance.

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Successful leaders require a few skills…

Cognisco surveyed 400 companies in the UK and US and on this basis estimated that employee misunderstandings cost companies at least £18.7 billion.

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Risky Business

According to research by Common Purpose 50% of adults consider themselves to be risk takers and 43% of this group believing the downturn will demand more risk–taking behaviour in organisations.

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