Job Benchmarking

A benchmark is effectively a continuous improvement process that uses a systematic standard to raise and maintain high performance standards, against which new employees can be assessed and selected.

Benchmarking enables you to select the best suited people by identifying the behavioural qualities and capabilities of top performers in a particular job. A benchmark can be used to assess a sample group of people doing a similar job. The process involves the PPA personality test and TST aptitude test of each person within the sample and the results are compared to actual performance.

Part of the benchmark process requires the company needs to assess its organizational performance. Areas with measured performance levels could include:

• Ability to achieve budget and plans
• Ability to achieve sales budgets
• Ability to provide customer service, care and advice
• Communication skills
• Leadership skills

The performance of each person in the sample is ranked based on the company’s parameters for organizational performance. Typically 25 percent of the sample are from top performers, 50 percent are from fully acceptable performers and 25 percent are from poor performers.

Once the profiles of top, acceptable and poor performers are identified and a benchmark is established, Thomas International's "goodness of fit" measure can be used to determine the probability of success of new employees into the role.

Typically when selecting new employees, managers select people with a similar profile to themselves. This can lead to interview bias. The benchmark process helps define the most successful profile that managers can select which elimiates interview bias.

The Job Benchmark Report

The coaching and managing summary is provided to managers and leaders of any person included in the benchmark. This report will help managers and leaders to understand why each person in their team behaves the way they do and provides them with the opportunity to coach them to respond accordingly. This insight provided can lead to a deeper understanding of others that can then be used to hone a manager’s communication skills and maximize the performance of the team. The summary highlights what motivates top performers, what top performers expect and want, and the type of manager for whom they work best.

Are you interested in conducting a benchmark study at your company? We want to hear from you.

• Call our toll free number 1-888-597-6455 (locally in the Toronto area call 905-270-2331)
• Write to us or email us
• Complete our online needs analysis form