Why Pre-Employment Online Testing is Essential for Ensuring Workplace Safety

Pre-employment tests are a practical, standardized way to gather rich candidate insights and make a more informed hiring decision. However, it is essential to remember that test results should be weighed against resumes, references, interviews, and job experience.

Skills tests can assess a candidate’s knowledge of specific role-relevant information, such as accounting principles or programming languages. Personality-oriented (covert) integrity tests are another option, but critics say they invade candidates’ privacy and can encourage self-incrimination. Polygraph tests are also controversial and not legal in many states.

Ensures the Safety of Your Employees

Investing in pre-employment testing can help companies realize improved bottom-line performance, including reduced recruitment costs and employee turnover. It also ensures a higher quality of hire and a reduction in bad hiring decisions, which can cost organizations $15,000 per bad hire due to replacement hiring costs and downtime. At the same time, a position is vacant, and training time is required for new hires.

Pre-employment tests can also speed up the recruiting process and enable data-driven decision-making. It can replace traditional methods of evaluating candidates, like CVs and short interviews, which are notorious for needing to be more reliable. For example, 72% of people admit to lying on their resumes, primarily around the level of their tertiary education and years of experience.

Employees who feel safe and valued by their employers are more engaged and likely to remain with the company. This can lead to reduced absenteeism and improved productivity. In addition, safer working environments can benefit a company in other ways, including reducing occupational health costs, less downtime, and fewer retraining costs.

Developing an internal safety culture and encouraging employees to be proactive is essential for keeping workers healthy and safe. Providing ongoing training and support is another crucial factor to consider. It’s also important to encourage open dialogue, provide avenues for employees to speak up when they see safety risks or issues, and report any concerns that still need to be addressed.

Prevents Lost Time

Companies that use pre-employment testing save money by streamlining their screening process, removing the reliance on resumes, and eliminating the need to schedule face-to-face interviews. Pre-employment testing also helps eliminate unconscious hiring bias, allowing recruiters and managers to select candidates based on their skills and qualifications without discrimination.

Making a bad hire can cost your company $15,000 or more per employee, not to mention the lost productivity that comes with staffing issues. By using pre-employment online testing, you can reduce the risk of a mis-hire and avoid unnecessary expenses.

Testing can help to shorten the recruitment process by filtering out unsuitable applicants, and it can also be used to screen current employees for safety-related tasks or roles that require specialized knowledge. Tests can also be designed to focus on the personal side of a candidate, including their morals and values, which can be helpful when selecting team members that will work well together.

It’s important to remember that tests are only one part of the selection process and should be applied at the beginning of the hiring cycle. Employers should always consider other factors when making final decisions, such as the quality of a candidate’s CV or short interview.

Prevents Discrimination

Employers can use online tests to assess applicants’ knowledge, skills, and other traits required for a job. These tests can also help them to spot potential problems with a candidate’s character or integrity that may affect their ability to do the job. However, using these tests can be problematic if the test results are used to discriminate against protected groups.

Federal employment discrimination laws prohibit companies from using tests or other selection procedures that disparately impact an applicant based on their race, color, sex, national origin, religion, gender, disability, or age (40 or older). It is essential to use these assessments only when they are directly related to the job and do not disparately affect certain groups.

For example, a physical exam could be a reasonable component of a hiring process for positions that require the employee to do manual labor or travel to locations where infectious diseases are endemic. Employers should be careful not to overdo the medical exams, as this could violate laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Combining these tests with other methods of evaluating candidates is essential, such as a job interview or trial day. This will ensure that you are making a well-informed decision based on the available information rather than just relying on one type of assessment.

Prevents Injuries

Pre-employment testing is an efficient and standardized way to acquire and document important information about your candidates during the hiring process. It allows you to narrow down the pool of applicants and identify the best fit. However, you must be careful to use carefully selected and monitored tests to ensure that they don’t discriminate against certain groups of people or violate state and federal regulations.

For example, a professional physical test that matches employees’ abilities to specific job tasks can help prevent injuries. This test uses isokinetic strength testing to determine how much strength a person has in their shoulders, knees, and back, which are the body parts that suffer the most work-related soft tissue injuries. This test can also identify any pre-existing condition that could lead to an on-the-job injury, such as a heart problem or diabetes.

Job-specific health examinations based on biomechanical job analysis may reduce occupational diseases, injury, and sick leave. However, the quality of the evidence is low for the general notion that unfocussed medical examinations can decrease the rate of musculoskeletal injuries in workers. It is, therefore, difficult to recommend such tests for all jobs.