Are those personality tests reliable?

Hi there, and welcome back to b. Building from Business.com. This is the highlight reel of the b. Newsletter — your digest of bite-sized news, thought & brand leadership, and entertainment. For the full-length version of the b., sign up here to get the full edition in your inbox two times a week.?

The Four-Day Workweek by the Numbers

You might not have a long weekend until Labor Day, but the movement calling for a four-day workweek is picking up steam with a major (and, by all accounts, successful) international trial. Based on these figures, it could be a pertinent HR issue by next Labor Day.

Employee Personality Tests: From Briggs Deal to Myers in Controversy

Approximately 80% of Fortune 500 companies use personality tests for their workforce, but personality assessments have sometimes landed companies in hot water. In the past decade, Best Buy, Target, and CVS stopped using them for job applicants after pressure from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over potential race- and gender-based discrimination. (Plus, questions about confidence and cheerfulness might screen out qualified candidates with depression.)

Some experts question the basic reliability of personality tests, which are given to 80 million people worldwide each year. Psychologist Benjamin Hardy warns in his 2020 book Personality Isn’t Permanent that the assessments — which he calls an “epidemic” — aren’t based in science and get something crucially wrong: very few of us have fixed personalities; most individuals change over time, along with their interests and skills.

Instead of using personality tests to assess whether a candidate is a fit for the company culture, business management expert Jim Collins recommends to Leaders.com that employers ask open-ended questions allowing for self-expression. For example, “How easy do you adapt to new challenges?” and “What are you passionate about?” are more likely to elicit useful information.

To Improve Performance, Avoid the Feedback “Sandwich”

Dr. Ben Baran is an Associate Professor at Cleveland State University and co-founder of Elevating What Works.???

If you’ve ever delivered performance feedback at work, it’s likely that you served a “compliment sandwich.” You might say, “John, you work really hard around here and I appreciate how you contributed to this project. I need you, though, to be more attentive to our deadlines. Again, I really think you’re doing a great job, so keep it up!”

Research suggests that being uniform in one’s feedback — delivering all positive or all corrective feedback — results in higher performance than mixing positive and corrective feedback in the same conversation. Using the “sandwich” (or some other combination of positive and corrective feedback) might be result in less of an emotional response, but if it’s behavioral change you’re after, be consistent.

One of the better models for performance feedback is the Situation, Behavior, Impact (SBI) method. Start the conversation by describing a specific situation, followed by an observable behavior, and concluded with the impact of that behavior.

This is a condensed version of the b. newsletter. Sign up here to get the 5-minute business advice delivered to your inbox weekly.?