My dear guest on HR tv is Kimberly Nei. Kimberly you're the director of talent analytics Hogan Assessment International could you please explain first what is your job?
We are an assessment provider to individuals and organizations helping them understand how their personalities and values impact the reputation of their organization. However, organizations also want to use their assessments to make decisions right. Often that means making decisions about hiring or the types of things that need to be developed in an individual so what my team does is if a client says:„Hey we need help selecting into a specific role…“, my team does the research to validate that solution so you know a restaurant manager we can build a profile to select restaurant managers.
Your today's presentation was aimed more at diversity, equity and inclusion. Can you explain what these three terms have in common with assessments?
How can you applicate assessment results or analytics to these processes in the company?
First, I should define the meaning of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So, diversity is about creating and valuing representation and all of the different ways that people differ. Those kinds of very surface-level characteristics or inherent characteristics like - I'm a female, I'm 36 and I'm a U.S Native American. Those are examples of inherent diversity characteristics but also things like personality and perspectives and values.
Things that you acquire through your lived experience equity is about perceptions of fairness or you know equal access opportunity and advancement. Creating an even playing field and inclusion is about creating an environment or a culture, where everyone feels valued and respected, and heard regardless of how they differ.
That is the role that Hogan or the personality profile can play. Our assessments can be used to identify talent that can do the job, and do that without discriminating, which you know really makes increasing diversity quite simple. Because you don't have to think about categorizing people or having a quota to increase.
It is about just finding qualified talent, that can do the job and giving everyone a fair opportunity to get that job. Then our research has also shown that we can help identify or develop inclusive leaders, who can help build an environment where that diverse talent feels heard and included. That is quite critical because research has shown that you can't just bring diversity in and expect it to stay. If they're not included then they may just exit the organization...
Diversity is understood by having the right balance of men and women. However, it can it be understood also as the way that you need your team to be really well-balanced. A great team doesn't mean 10 great individuals, it means having the right people for the right positions.
You need more energetic people you need more empathetic people, right? How do you perceive the practical application of diversity? Does it only mean to have women and to have men, or also to have the right people in the right positions?
Absolutely, that's a fantastic point as you know our assessments aren't going to discriminate against those things that people kind of immediately think about when they think about diversity. So men versus women but also diversity of perspectives or thought. Yes, I want diversity in the ways that people think or approach a problem or a situation, which means I also want diversity and personality which maybe sounds counterintuitive because we're saying using a selection profile, but you know in fact you can create a lot of diversity even in that using our tools.
Because you really want to have different selection profiles across an organization even within a team. You may be extreme just screening the extreme ends of the scale but you're absolutely right when you think about team dynamics and how you know the team is made up. You kind of want those different roles and so it is about creating that diversity also in perspectives and beliefs and personality so our tools can be used to do that as well.
When we go to the basics from looking at your assessment results. Can you point out the biggest advantages of having women vs men in leadership positions? Are there any?
Can you just say - okay women are better in these processes and men are better in those, but not based just on your feelings but rather on the practical results of your assessments?
I mean some research may suggest there would be differences. I don't really think it's necessarily about a person being a female or a male. It's probably more about the experience they lived. So, I may be a bit more perceptive when I approach a problem because of how I've had to approach problems in the past because I have faced certain discrimination myself.
I think there is a benefit to having that diversity and having that diverse thought and how you see that play out is unique perspectives that can solve a problem in a more unique way. You can think about avoiding big mistakes. We can all think of the commercial that you watched that maybe offended you and you think - if there had just been a woman in the room they maybe wouldn't have chosen that. You know that way to market that product and so you know it's about that you know just having representation um of the broader working population or your customer base.
What is the typical customer´s requirement? Or let's say they ask you to help them put together well-working effective teams and of course, they like to have both men and women in the team.
How do you approach this or how to approach a customer when he or she says okay we would like to have a very effective organization so please help us create the teams? How do you start and how do you approach this task?
I mean that the great thing about personality is it's really quite simple, you don't have to try to set a quota to have so many men or women and certain ethnicities or nationalities represented, because our tools don't discriminate.
We see no meaningful subgroup differences between older individuals and younger individuals or men and women and so. You can just almost set that aside and say okay, I'm going to use these tools to identify individuals, who can do the job. To do that in a way that doesn't discriminate and so you even don't have to think about that you're then focused on identifying a team that can all do the job and works together.
Perhaps you are trying to fill a certain gap on the team, you need somebody that's a decisive decision maker and you can bring that in and you're not really focused on if it is this a man or a woman. Is this person able to make a quick decision? Are they strategic whatever the need might be and so? Honestly, when a client approaches us with that question and we don't even have to focus on that, it's just kind of a given and that's really the foundation of our company. That's what we started to do was to help companies find talent or develop talent that could do a job in a way that was fair for everyone.
There's also a sort of discrimination against older people and when looking at how American businesses work compared to the Czech Republic. There's a much higher percentage of older elderly people being employed in the United States than in the Czech Republic because still there is this view that anybody over the age of 60, 55, or even 50 is an old person who's not to be employed.
I really simplified that. What I've seen in the United States is that you have a really high percentage of elderly people being employed even people way in their retirement.
Based on Hogan's assessments, what is the biggest advantage and what is the easiest way to have elderly people help them find good employment within their capabilities, and how they are beneficial to the employers?
What you're describing is just a bias that may be, and I don't want to label the bias but it's perhaps thinking that you can't do the job anymore once you reach a certain age.
But that discredits the wisdom and experience that comes with age. I mean that's a lot of experience over a lifespan, that you're going to be missing out on if you're biased against older individuals. You're right we do tend to see people working longer in the US and that just all goes back to your hiring practices or other practices about employment decisions.
A lot of those tools out there would discriminate, so if you look at something like cognitive ability people will use - cognitive ability as a selection tool and it does discriminate quite often against older individuals especially once you see the market like 50 or 60 but that's they still have so much to bring to the table and our assessments don't discriminate.
What our assessments are going to say is okay well they have this lived experience and they have a diverse perspective and they can leverage all of that to make great decisions. So, again it's just so simple with personality profiles because they don't discriminate you end up with more diversity of all kinds.
Can I imagine that this is a kind of blind choice because you would offer? If I were an HR officer and my task, is to select the right people for the team.
Can you just show us the right people based on their assessment and not even tell if it's a woman or a man a young person old person? Is it the way that you prefer to do your business or is it the way that it actually it's done in the market?
I would say not. The most common way that people make decisions is with an interview. It is clear that interviews are biased and the problem with it is that you don't even know that that bias exists. I mean you think you know I'm asking these questions and it's going to get at how well this person can do the job and a lot of people will say something like well you know I would get a drink with this guy so I think he would be a good fit for the team. But what's happening behind the scenes you don't know. Are you evaluating their haircut or their nice clothes...
A lot of things can be biasing your decision that you're not aware of and so. If you do something a bit more blind like use an assessment to make a recommendation that makes the playing field much more even I don't see that happen as much in practice. Most often assessments are kind of pooled at the end and you're down to a final couple of candidates.
But if they're used earlier then you really can open up your talent pool and say hey look at all these candidates that could do the job and increase the amount of diversity you potentially have within your practice.
Sometimes it may even happen because this is what Dr. Hogan was trying to explain that you have these charming people who get promoted fast. However, in the end, they may not be as effective as those people who are not as charming not as visible not as great but who are really effective in working in a team.
My question is if you see that it's really happening - the recruitment officer tells actually the manager that this candidate would be a better fit for the position based on the assessment but the manager says okay but the person is not.
I don't see the chemistry do you know what I mean yeah because the real data may, in the end, try to sell you another candidate that the manager actually wants so so my question is how to deal with this.
Well, I would trust our assessments. I mean they're very well validated we have collected matched assessment performance data from over 400 organizations representing all kinds of industries and all jobs and so we know they predict performance. We also know that when hiring managers, there are biases.
We all have biases, they're just built into us and they're there for a reason. They allow you to make quick decisions based on you know the information but at the end of the day, an assessment is going to be a more objective you know tool to make the right decision.
You've been with Hogan Assessments for quite some time, over nine years... Can you see a change or is there any change or progress in avoiding discrimination or in how companies look at these issues that you´ve mentioned? Is there progress to be more optimistic or is it still the same?
I'll say a few things. I'm in the United States in the United States we have employment laws that we have to attend to and that's not the case everywhere. I do think diversity equity inclusion is kind of bringing this topic to the forefront. But it's not as popular everywhere and I think there are different perspectives on what that means. Some people may think it is about a quota or about just having so many women.
And then there you kind of get concerns on the other side. Well, is there we're going to be reverse discrimination we're going are the white males not going to have a job? Are we forcing these quotas and so.. I guess. I would say that's not something to be afraid of. You don't need to be afraid of that and you can approach these things in a very practical way. Like I´ve said, using our assessments you can increase the diversity of your talent in a fair way and give everyone an equal opportunity but in a fair way, right?
I'm not just giving a job to a female because I need to have more females, I'm making sure she can actually do the job. We're seeing this being a more popular topic so that makes me think things are headed in a good direction. I did talk about how in 2018 New York Times published an article that in the C-suite of Fortune 500 companies, there are just as many men named John as there are females...
Yes, it's just true as many men named John as there are females... There are actually more men named James there. It just happened to be an equivalent number of men named John and that was in 2018 the economist publishes a glass ceiling index every year and those numbers really haven't shifted much. I think perspectives are perhaps shifting, it's starting to be a conversation - there's movement but it's slow progress.