One Fast-Food Chain Keeps Its Turnover Rates Absurdly Low

hbr.org

4 points·snipped··2 comments

“ It has developed and fine-tuned a screening system to evaluate candidates from this notoriously hard-to-manage demographic—a 60-point psychometric survey, based on the attitudes and attributes of Pal’s star performers, that does an uncanny job of predicting who is most likely to succeed.”

I can’t help but instantly dislike this company. I think the use of personality tests, so-called predictive testing and employment practices, to be horrible. Not just in how they inadvertently discriminate, but also my firm belief that no test is going to tell you how great an employee is going to be at their job. We all rise to occasions in different ways, and we all have different strengths and weaknesses. I just don’t buy the notion that a test will tell you who the perfect employee is, it’s more like academic discrimination.

With questions like “Raising your voice may be one way to get someone to accept your point of view”, it sounds like a much shorter test would be "Are you a bad employee?"

With a test that bad, I wonder if the test is completely irrelevant. But perhaps the test makes management think that they've got decent employees and then treat them well.

A lot of fast food chains expect a lot of turnover, plan for it, and thus receive it. It may be that this company just plans for long term employees, and that's the real win. The test may well be making things worse by screening out employees based on hidden, coded biases.

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