Extended DISC January 2011 NewsletterWritten on the 28 January 2011 by Extended DISC Australasia  "Extended DISC January 2011 Newsletter") GreetingsWelcome to 2011! And what a devastating start for our Australian friends, relations and clients in Queensland and parts of New South Wales........and now Victoria. Our hearts are with you as cleaning up after a flood must surely rank as one of the most despairing and challenging tasks. In most years, January seems to the month that businesses review their staffing requirements and we can’t see any reason for January 2011 being any different. The Extended DISC Personal Analysis Report is an ideal instrument for recruiters. Extended DISC International has developed a tailored report for recruitment consultants and we recommend this be used in conjunction with our Job Comparison Report. The use of the Job Comparison Report together with the Specific Style Reports and the Research Module provides an excellent knowledge base for recruitment situations. This is our main focus for our January newsletter. Our case study this month is a recruitment based issue. It relates to the performance (or lack of performance!) in a large 24 hour convenience store group where staff were expected to work in three shifts. It is a good example of addressing a problem using Extended DISC methodology. An important new version of the Personal Analysis Report for those recruiting (and for recruitment consultants!) is the Recruiters’ Report. This report focuses on recruitment issues and contains a “workbook” to assist recruitment consultants identify the most important topics for discussion. We take a quick look at this report in this month’s FactSheet.
How Extended DISC Personal Analysis Reports helped solve a serious employee turnover problem
Employee turnover is a problem that many managers and companies struggle with. It can be a very frustrating issue because not only is it expensive, but is a constant headache for managers. An Extended DISC consultant has provided us with this interesting experience. His client, a convenience store firm, was experiencing a 400% turnover in their “graveyard” or third shift. This might not be surprising you could think, but 400% was totally unacceptable because many employees quit their jobs without notice – they simply didn’t show up one day or walked off the job when for some reason they had had enough. In these situations it was straight into crisis mode; an unattended store is not a good thing! For management a call at 2.00am letting them know that an employee had not shown up is even worse! As a result, the company decided to conduct an analysis of employees that quit the night shift, and the analysis was startling. 87% of the employees that quit were of the same behavioural style and this included those that left without notice and decided just not to turn up! The remaining 13% who were of different styles gave the required notice which gave management enough time to employ replacements. The analysis revealed that the managers were employing personable individuals who were likely to get along well with customers. This seemed to make good sense, however the reality of the night shift is that there is only a sporadic flow of customers and no co-workers to talk with. It is a lonely job that simply does not fit the behavioural style of the individuals who are good with people and enjoy interacting with others. Logically, the managers started hiring people that were more suited to the requirements of the night shift – individuals who do not need as much contact with others and who even enjoy the quiet routine of the job. This is of course is something the managers had never considered in the past simply because they were looking for people oriented candidates. The result? After implementing the new hiring process, using Extended DISC Personal Analysis Reports to choose their new recruits, their employee turnover has dropped from 400% to 50%! Moreover, the analysis is now conducted on the type of store and location in addition to the shift requirements. They have found that some of the original unhappy night shift employees excell in day shifts in other situations increasing sales in those locations.
The use of Extended DISC Personal Analysis Reports for RecruitmentMost of our clients began using Extended DISC Personal Analysis Reports in recruiting before they realised the other uses for the product. It is now used in many different situations such as retention, motivation, communication, understanding the reasons for non-performance, identifying stress (and its causes), insecurity, uncertainty of role and a host of other HR challenges. However, recruitment is arguably still a major use for the Personal Analysis Report and its effectiveness has been enhanced over recent years by the development of the Job Comparison Report and the Specific Style Reports, with the latest development of the Research Module. Understanding the natural unconscious behavioural style of a job applicant is crucial to the success of a candidate once he/she joins the team. If his/her natural style does not suit the role advertised, there is no way that there is any guarantee of a successful career with the organisation. The shape of Profile II of the Personal Analysis Report will tell the recruitment consultant the candidate’s unconscious style while the size and position will explain how he/she is feeling.
Profile I is not so important in a recruitment situation unless the candidate is moving from a similar role with another organisation. Often Profile I will be a “tight” or compressed shape which translates as an “uncertainty of role” and of course this is The Personal Analysis Report is based on Profile II, the candidate’s unconscious natural behavioural style and for this reason the section that explains what motivates him/her, what he/she tries to avoid, his/her natural strengths and his/her development areas become more meaningful and certainly more accurate. As the system recognises and reports on 160 different behavioural styles the report goes much deeper into the candidate’s true behavioural style. Extended DISC International have developed a Recruiter’s Report based on the standard Personal Analysis Report with a focus on the issues that relate to recruitment.  It is possible to tailor the Recruiter’s Report to fit the specific requirements of individual recruitment consultants. For example, we know that some recruitment consultants focus on specific industry groups which more than likely will require a concentration on specific tasks or attributes.  Specific Style Reports are produced in easy to read graphical format and if used in conjunction with the Job Comparison Report can be produced at no cost. These are available under ten broad headings: Administrative Style, Customer Service Style, Entrepreneurial Style, Information Technology Style, Leadership Style, Management Style, Project Style, Sales Style, Team Style and Training Style. If used without the Job Comparison Report, there is a cost of an additional seven points. The Job Comparison Report allows the user to identify and to prioritise the behaviours for specific jobs to produce the best results.  For example, if it is a sales role, the Job Comparison Form is used to most clearly define the type of sales role;- it may be cold calling or a medium sales cycle, - or medium sales cycle with a high price. It might be a sales manager role or other variations of a specific sales role. Whatever the specific sales role, the Job Comparison Report will enable the recruiter/employer to compare the candidate’s “natural inclination” with the “job requirement” helping achieve the most suitable “job fit”. There is one other additional tool available for recruitment purposes: the Research Module. It is simply an “add on” feature to the Personal Analysis Report and it enables the recruiter to create additional questions for candidates to answer while they are completing the Personal Analysis Online Questionnaire.  It allows the recruiter to gain additional pre-interview information on each candidate and the possibilities are endless.The research module can comprise of one or two additional questions to hundreds of questions and they can be open-ended questions, choice questions, questions on their background, qualifications etc etc, and even instructions to the candidate on how to answer questions. The Research Module questions and anwers are printed out as an additional page in the Personal Analysis Report. If you are thinking of recruiting or if you are a recruitment consultant, we suggest you take another look at the solutions Extended DISC can offer. Other tools such as the Work Pair Analysis used in conjunction with any of the above products can help you in the selection of the most suitable candidate for a specific role.
The Personal Analysis Report – Interview Questions PageAt times you may wish to have some additional guidance in exploring the deeper meaning of Extended DISC Profiles. The Suggested Interview Questions Page provides you with that specific and insightful help by suggesting the specific questions to ask the candidate. We recommend that this page (along with the Present Situation Page) be sometimes retained by consultants because it does often contain sensitive information, but you may consider it helpful to provide this page to your candidate in certain circumstances so that he/she can use it as a means to really consider what kind of development plan to create. You can use the Questions Page as an:
The Questions Page will save you time and allow you (especially recruitment consultants!) to get more out of the Personal Analysis Report. If anyone requires any further information on any of the tools/features discussed in this newsletter, please call Extended DISC Australasia on our toll free numbers 1800 254 094 (Australia) or 0800 333 668 (New Zealand) or you can email or call Talent Tools on 61 7 3103 0177.
February WebinarHosted by: Kelly Fairhurst The subject of the next webinar is Why Can’t I Work With This Guy? This will be based on a webinar presented last year by our US associates. It proved very popular and we hope you can join us for our presentation. The webinar is open to anyone interested and is scheduled for 1.00pm NZ time on Tuesday 22 February 2011. Spaces are limited so please email us to register.
Enjoy 2011! Author:Extended DISC Australasia |
quite possible in a recruiting exercise. If the role is a similar one to the position he/she has vacated, then this could mean that his/her job description with his/her former employer was inadequate. Profile I (not the example opposite as it is a special case) shows a shape that is most like many other DISC based products, - basically the conscious adjusted behavioural style or the style that demonstrates the individual’s “perceived need to adjust”.
