Does Integrity Assessment Worthy for an Organization? Let’s Find Out!

Thomas Babington Macaulay Stated: “A man’s real character is the measurement of the things he would do, if he knows that he will never be found out”

The lure to act corruptly at the workplace can be appealing. We have certainly seen many employees using company’s internet and time to check their social media pages like Facebook, twitter or others. Proofs are evident that some employees also use company’s phones, fax and mostly photocopiers for their own use. At times, workers don’t feel bad taking home a box of pens or blank CDs which no one misses at the office for sure. Obviously these aren’t the crimes of the century but still, flat-out theft, time stealing and cyber loafing certainly adds up cost to the organization. There are companies where usually managers have to play a role of a baby sitter but it doesn’t mean that they will run efficiently. It’s indeed apparent that the honest employees basically pay the price for the lack of other’s integrity via stricter rules and reduced freedom.

Here, integrity or honesty assessments assist the employers to take out the black sheep out of the crowd.

So, what is Integrity Assessment?

An integrity assessment is also known as honesty test which is a particular class of personality test. This assessment is designed to examine the candidate’s propensity to be reliable, honest, dependable and trustworthy. Lack of integrity means certain counterproductive behaviors like violence, theft, disruption, absenteeism and other disciplinary problems.

Integrity assessment measures the same aspects of a typical personality test specifically diligence and conceivably a few factors of emotional firmness and sociability.  These tests are also considered as effective measures for complete job performance. This is because conscientiousness and integrity are inter-related and conscientiousness is a strong interpreter of complete job performance. Just like other methods of personality tests, integrity assessments also incorporate an imperative amount of validity to the recruitment process when it is measured in combination with cognitive skills test.

Use of Integrity Assessments:

The concept of integrity assessments was given more than 30 years ago in an academic review by Sackett & Decker in 1979. The use of integrity assessments has dramatically increased over the past few years and they are in high demand by the employers due to their reliable results. These assessments were formerly developed in USA to dig out the dishonest job candidates just after the ban on poly graph testing by the Government. Since then, the integrity assessments evolved more than the just a mere standby for polygraph testing and have gained much popularity as it measures the counterproductive work behaviors (CWB).

Types of Integrity Assessments:

There are two main types of integrity tests “the overt” and “the covert”. The covert is also known as personality-oriented tests. While the overt type of integrity assessment directly investigates about an individual’s behavior towards the counterproductive work attitudes like stealing & theft.

These methods tend to cross-examine the factors related to counterproductive work behaviors like ruminations about stealing, positiveness of theft and the individual’s past history of engaging in such behaviors. Plus, these tests also check for a candidate’s honesty in general. On the contrary, covert type of integrity assessments follows an indirect technique to measure such behaviors.

Why Organizations Pick Integrity Assessments?

In order to make their recruitment and selection process a quick-witted one, organizations tend to incorporate integrity assessments as a part of their hiring regime. Integrity is considered as a chief psychological construct which have high influence on work behaviors. Thus, it is receiving much consideration and attention in different psychological domains. Newly hired employees and potential employees always carry certain risks therefore it is substantial to include specific assessments that can measure employees’ work behaviors and integrity. By this means, companies get to know how social conform their employees are and what are their reactions to open opportunities where they can steal.

Integrity assessments are often corroborated in their utilization by various returns of investments advantages. Organizations also use certain computational measures like loss inventories and customer satisfaction reports in order to calculate the advantages of integrity assessments. Therefore, companies are aggressively using integrity assessments to compute the integrity level of individuals. Specially the organizations which belong to sensitive industries like banking, financial institutions, security and mine industries etc. are more prone to risks thus they are making integrity assessments a necessary part of their recruitment processes.

These tools are crucial methods of ensuring the honesty level of the new hires and assist the employers to better understand the employee’s reliability level. Productive employees are more likely to be honest at the workplaces but still you can’t guarantee someone trustworthiness without running an assessment on them.

In a Nutshell:

To conclude, the integrity assessments are crucial to be used in the organizations as to ensure the reliability and trustworthiness of the employees. Also, it mitigates the potential risks that pose threats to the company like stealing, theft and counterproductive behaviors. Apart from other critical assessment tools, integrity assessments have gained consideration by large to small sized organizations. That’s because integrity assessments have offered much advantages and benefits to the organizations and shown higher return on investments.

The best part of integrity assessments is they play an effective and efficient role in reducing the potential risk of an organization by accurately assessing the dependability of job candidates as well as existing employees. The only important thing to consider while opting for integrity assessment is to choose the right integrity assessment as per the requirement of an organization.

These assessments worth adding in to the recruitment process due to their preciseness and accuracy. Hence, it’s favorable for organizations to incorporate integrity assessments and tests as tools to dig out the right candidate out of the mass.