How to save money in hiring and retention costs

A new personality trait model developed at University of Toronto Scarborough (UTS) called Trait-Reputation-Identity (TRI) claims that it can help employers save money “by improving the hiring process and with evaluating employee performance”.

The TRI was developed by Brian Connelly, associate professor at UTS Department of Management with a specialisation in organisational behaviour and human resources, and he said that unlike other models, it compares an individual’s own assessment of their personality with how they are perceived by others.

“If someone believes they are very outgoing or more friendly than they actually are based on peer assessment, that's important information to have about that person," he said to Science Daily.

Calling it a departure from how personality was studied in the past, Connelly said that the TRI gives employers a better ability to predict outcomes that indicate a potential candidate’s effectiveness in the workplace such as performance, motivation, leadership, procrastination, and commitment.

The model focuses on five big personality traits – extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness – and uses a ‘unique blend’ of self and peer ratings to gather feedback and determine if there’s agreement or divergence about an individual’s personality traits.

Connelly said that he hopes the tests “can lead to more accurate, data driven results that do a better job of weeding out bias and fakery that cost organisations millions of dollars in retention and hiring costs every year”, adding that this is especially important as more millennials enter the workplace.

“Much has been made about narcissism being an issue among millennials and the difficulty of older workers connecting with younger generations," he said.

“From a practical perspective I hope this model will help people learn something new about themselves from the assessment and to think about aspects of their personality they may not have otherwise considered."

He developed the model with psychologist Samuel McAbbe of Illinois Institute of Technology and is planning to follow up the research by studying Korean Air Force cadets and Co-op Management students at UTS.

Their findings were published in the latest issue of Psychological Review.