Additional Psychological Measures

Resilience

Resilience  is the ability to adapt positively in the face of challenging situations and adverse events. Resilient employees are more likely to display desirable workplace attitudes and behaviours and are more likely to:

• Cope well with tough times
• Bounce back quickly from bad experiences
• Often have better social skills
• Think creatively
• Be less change resistant

Individuals with low levels of resilience are not only more likely to be reactive in challenging situations but also take substantially longer to recover from them (Southwick & Charney, 2012).

The SACS Resilience Test was developed as part of a SACS research project on change resistance and resilience conducted in late 2017. This measure is a short and highly valid measure of resilience.

Hire a highly engaged and energised workforce using SACS evidence-based and finely tuned Resilience Test.

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Engagement

Engagement is a measure of how likely it is that the participant assessed will be highly engaged in their work. We define engagement in the contemporary sense of the term (e.g. Bakker, 2011). In this definition the engaged employee brings:

• A sense of energy and vigour to their work.
• High levels of dedication and commitment.
• High levels of absorption in their work so that time passes quickly.

Employees who are highly engaged can be shown on average to be:

• More productive.
• Create greater customer and client satisfaction.
• Contribute to a number of other organisational positives, such as higher levels of discretionary effort and lower levels of negative behaviours.

The measure is validated against the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale in a major research project conducted in 2015.

The higher the engagement, the better. Measure your employee engagement today.

Counterproductive Work Behaviours (CWBs)

The SACS Counterproductive Work Behaviours (CWBs) come in the form of a score and admissions. The scores come in three categories:

• Overall counterproductive work behaviour risk.
  • The degree to which someone is likely to engage in both interpersonal and organisational counterproductive work behaviours.

• Interpersonal counterproductive work behaviour risk
  • The risk that this candidate will undertake negative acts towards colleagues, supervisors and other people within their work environment. For example, bullying, intentional impoliteness, ignoring or snubbing people, or not committing to assist them.

• Organisational counterproductive work behaviour risk.
  • The risk that this candidate will undertake negative acts towards the organisation, including inappropriate comments about the organisation, theft, or ignoring rules considered important by the company.

This additional psychological assessment measure has been validated in multiple studies leading to publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Occupational Health & Safety Behaviours

Safety behaviour is described as seeking ways to improve work safety (Stranks, 2010).  This involves identifying risks, monitoring co-employees’ safety behaviours and promoting a safe work environment. SACS Occupational Health & Safety Behaviours scale measures the likelihood that the participant will behave appropriately in respect of OH&S behaviour.

The OH&S measure consists of three components:

• The degree to which the candidate is motivated to make the workplace safer
• The degree to which the candidate is likely to obey your safety rules
• The degree to which the candidate is likely to proactively participate in your safety efforts

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to perceive, control, and express emotions (Brackett, Rivers, Bertoli & Salovey, 2016). There is evidence that a person with high Emotional Intelligence scores is more likely to succeed in people-oriented roles such as leadership or customer service (e.g. Webb, 2009).

SACS measure of emotional intelligence is validated against the measure developed by Austin, Saklofske, Huang, and McKenney (2003). This is a measure of the participant’s ability to

• Recognise and interpret emotions – This has an impact on the capacity to build empathy and to function effectively in environments where the ability to interpret emotions is important.
• Ability to self regulate emotions – This has a significant impact on issues such as leadership, customer service, and the capacity to contribute to corporate culture.
• The degree to which the participant factors emotions into their decision making – This has an impact on rational decision making.

Change Resistance

Change resistance measures the degree to which the candidate is resistant to change.

High scores indicate that the candidate is likely to find change difficult, low scores indicate that the candidate should be relatively comfortable with change.

The SACS change resistance measure was developed as part of a SACS research project on change resistance and resilience conducted in late 2017 and was validated against an international measure of change resistance (Oreg, 2003).

Attitudes Towards Diversity

“Attitudes Towards Diversity” measures an individual’s attitude towards diversity in the workplace, including

• Gender – whether an individual is sexist
• Ethnicity – the degree to which an individual demonstrates racial tolerance
• Age – whether an individual is ageist
• Disability – the degree to which an individual is comfortable working with people with disabilities.

Low scorers tend to have positive attitudes towards women, different ethnic backgrounds, the elderly, and people with disabilities.

High scorers tend to have more negative attitudes.

Measuring attitudes to diversity is a crucial addition to your assessment process. Accidentally recruiting people who have negative attitudes to women or people from a different ethnic background is a risk factor you cannot afford and the benefits of recruiting people with tolerant attitudes are enduring.