We are investing too much money in training the wrong type of engineer; those who aren't motivated and have no real interst in learning. I want to work with site managers to target our funds to those who are more suited, more motivated, and who can be a benefit to the organisation.
Does anyone know of a Psychometric type test that would show up the individuals charateristics to learn and absorb practical subjects?
We work in Automated Engineering systems
Nigel Richards
5 Responses
Mining for leads
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an alternative response
Nigel
Sorry to not provide a simple answer but…
have you considered the question, “Why do some of our engineers have no motivation and no real interest in learning?”
I suspect that you may find that the issue that lies with the engineers who have been identified as such begins with something else somewhere else. For example performance management, reward and recognition, historical grievances etc.
Most engineers have followed this career because they have enquiring minds, hence they are generally (in my experience)people who love learning in their field (they are often reluctant management trainees on the mistaken grounds that they are engineers and therefore not good at “soft stuff”)
Rus
Psychometric testing
Hi,
My suggestion is that you need to discover what the individual traits are of that person i.e what is their personality trait, communication style, learning preference, behavioural etc. Once you understand what makes them “tick” then you can engage with them on training basis. I would recommend ” Insights Personal Effectiveness Profiling”, based on the work of Dr C Jung. It is benchmarked alongside MBTI, but for me provides far more detailed analysis of the recipient, in a language that we can all relate to. If you want anymore happy to oblige.
Thanks
Sandra
People Promotions
How does your culture demotivate ?
The logical extension of Rus’s comments is that engineers can be promoted into management because they are good engineers but typically the psychometric profiles required can be different.
Keeping their engineers’ hats on, they see a problem and try to analyse it. Being expert engineers, it can be difficult to challenge their expertise as managers but as Rus said, they are willing to learn and this is the key. There is no simple answer as it depends how much the managers trust you, what you have in place already and your culture. Some coaching from you perhaps on their management style, maybe some 360 data on them, for them to analyse ? Exit interview data ? Their managers, having learned the hard way, can also be your allies.
The engineers on the other hand may well be extremely suspicious of psychometrics and resist any intervention based on its data. I’m not an employment law person, but my guess is you’d need to be very careful about staffing decisions based on psychometrics, especially if not used for development.
If their managers have had some first, they may well be more receptive to your interventions. As Sandra said, Insights can be powerful, I have also found TMS to be well-received and more accessible. Good luck.
Testing
Don’t waste your time with this form of testing. It rarely identifies the root cause. Base your time around discussions and feedback.