Behavioural Assessments
In just 8 minutes get insight into a person's behaviour at work
- Recruit smarter with people science
- Improve interactions across teams
- Increase engagement and collaboration
- Build a vibrant team culture
- Mitigate and resolve conflict
- Reduce staff attrition
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Thomas' behavioural assessment
The Thomas Behaviour assessment, also known as the PPA or Personal Profile Analysis, helps you understand your strengths, preferred communication and working styles. When used in a team, it can help build closer working relationships and make every interaction smoother.
How our behaviour assessments work
In just 8 minutes, Thomas' assessment of behaviour (PPA) provides an accurate insight into how people behave at work.
8 Minute Assessment
In just 8 minutes, Thomas' behavioural test provides an accurate insight into people’s work and communication preferences. This empowers you to recruit smarter with people science, build a vibrant team culture, support and enable better interactions amongst your people, ultimately improving your team and business performance.
Detailed Profile
Thomas’ behaviour test gives you insights that help you understand a person’s strengths, their communication style, how to better support remote workers, what motivates them, and how they react to risk and conflict.
Deep Insight
Once an individual has completed the Behaviour assessment, you have instant access to business outcome focussed content that enables you to match people to jobs, manage, support, develop, onboard and train your people.
Assessment Information
- Assessment type: Behavioural profile
- Format: 24 questions
- Time to complete: 8 minutes
- Training required: None
Validation:
Registered with the British Psychological Society and audited against technical criteria established by the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations
Click below to download a sample candidate profile from the Thomas Perform platform
Our team sat the Thomas Behaviour assessment, and we all found the results to be very accurate considering how few questions it asked. Using it to gain greater understanding and insight into candidates is invaluable when recruiting, and I can see it being an essential tool for managing a team as well.
Thomas Teams Report
The Thomas Teams Audit gives you insight that helps your teams perform to their maximum ability, and ensure that they are motivated and working towards a common set of goals – whether in a face-to-face, physical or hybrid environment.
Teams, used in conjunction with the Behaviour assessment, will help your teams to understand their combined strengths, limitations and the value that the team brings to the organisation. The insights it gives can:
- Boost the performance of your team through more effective management
- Help you to set a template of the ideal culture, roles and leadership style that your team needs to deliver its objectives
Thomas Teams provides you with a comprehensive report that can answer many questions such as:
- What role does each person play within the team?
- Where are the possible areas of limitation in the team?
- How can you address those limitations
- Are you playing to the strengths of each team member?
- Where could conflict be occurring?
- Is there a skills gap, and are there any training needs?
- What leadership style will best motivate and inspire the team towards high performance?
Background & Theory
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Dr. Thomas Hendrickson developed William Moulton Marston’s DISC theory to produce the Thomas Personal Profile Analysis (PPA) for the work place.
Marston’s original theory stated that actions based upon emotions are an individual’s biosocial response to supportive or hostile social environments. These actions determine how the individual interacts with the environment.
It was theorised that the way in which the individual interacts with the environment takes four basic directions: tendencies to dominate, influence, submit and comply. Marston published his book ‘Emotions of Normal People’ in 1928, which described his theory of human consciousness in comprehensive detail.
The PPA, also known as the Thomas Behaviour assessment, determines whether individuals see themselves as responding to workplace situations that they perceive to be favourable or challenging, and reveals whether their response patterns are active or passive; thus classifying the individual’s behavioural preferences in terms of four domains: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance.
Get deep, actionable insights into your people to create high performing teams & improve business performance
Format
The Thomas PPA is a forced-choice assessment which uses an ipsative referencing method – an individual’s response patterns are compared to themselves rather than the scores of a comparison group. Individuals are asked to select one adjective which they believe describes them most and one which describes them least.
In order to complete the PPA, individuals choose two trait adjectives from a block of four, one 'most like' and one ‘least like’ them. This process is repeated 24 times, giving 48 choices from a total of 96 words.
The PPA is available electronically via the web and in paper-and-pencil format. Thomas has also developed the PPA+ format which is suitable for people with a reading age of 11+ and for candidates who are fluent in English but for whom English is not their first language.
Reliability & Validity
The Thomas PPA has been subject to rigorous scientific testing to determine its reliability and validity as a psychological assessment. The PPA is registered with the British Psychological Society (BPS) after it was audited against the technical criteria established by the European Standing Committee on Tests and Testing, part of the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations.
Thomas conducts on-going psychometric research with the PPA. We have previously collaborated with the Psychometrics Centre at Cambridge University. Please get in touch with [email protected] if you are interested in supporting our continuous development programmes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a behavioural assessment test?
A behavioural assessment is a tool that's designed to observe, understand, explain and predict a person’s behaviour.
Behavioural assessments help us understand many different aspects of a person’s character. They include understanding a person’s thinking style, willingness to learn and leadership capabilities.
Being able to predict how someone will behave on the job, work with others, overcome setbacks or apply themselves in problem solving situations is directly linked to achieving job-related goals, and in turn, achieving business goals as well.
How does a behavioural assessment work?
Based on DISC theory, a behavioural assessment will analyse a person’s fears, motivators, values and behavioural style using four main profile factors: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance.
The Thomas Behaviour assessment (PPA) is our behavioural assessment tool that takes these profile factors into account and tests candidates' attitudes in each area. Plotted on a graph, these four areas will be analysed by proprietary technology that gives employers and recruiters insight into a candidate’s behavioural style.
The Thomas Behaviour assessment is then used to provide deeper insight into these character traits, aligning people with the right role and helping the recruitment process move in the right direction.
Why use behavioural assessments in the workplace?
Behavioural assessments help organisations and recruiting managers understand the level of interpersonal skills that a person has and help predict how they might respond to new and different scenarios.
A person will be hired for having the right skills, knowledge and technical expertise but are most often fired, reassigned or overlooked for promotion because they lack the appropriate interpersonal skills.
Behavioural assessments help ensure that the best-fitting candidates are hired and that the right people are promoted. They enable people to increase their self-awareness and help individuals and groups to better communicate with each other.
How can behavioural assessments help recruitment?
Behavioural assessments take the guesswork out of the recruitment process when it comes to selecting the right candidates based on their behaviour and predicted behaviours in the workplace.
A behavioural assessment can help predict a candidate’s ability to succeed in different areas. For example, it can be used to predict performance; this is known as ‘predictive validity’ and covers the extent to which performance in the assessment predicts performance in a given job.
Behavioural assessments are also found to be a fairer system of analysis than many other assessment tools. This results in selecting candidates regardless of their age, gender or ethnicity but on predictions and analysis on how they will behave within the organisation and in their role.
What is the difference between behavioural assessments and personality tests?
Behavioural assessments look to understand how a person acts or reacts to surroundings, roles and other people; it is an expression of himself or herself. A personality assessment is about understanding who a person is based on an amalgamation of qualities and characteristics.
A behavioural assessment will look at how a person will respond within a role or in a set of circumstances. This helps recruitment managers to understand how that person will behave in the role. For example, a person generally described as "calm, warm and friendly" might become "tense and explosive" in a stressful situation. The same personality traits on a different person might however reveal that they thrive under stressful situations.
A personality assessment is designed to understand the total character of a person. Any given personality is likely to behave differently in a favourable over stressful environment.
Personality is referred to as the combination of values, views, set responses, patterns of thought and characteristics which are relatively stable aspects of an individual. Behaviour on the other hand, is how that individual comes across to others in their actions. In summary, behaviour is what we do, personality is why we tend to behave in a certain way.
How can Thomas help with behavioural assessments?
The Behaviour assessment (PPA) is designed to help recruiters and recruiting managers get a thorough understanding of a candidate’s behaviour in the context of job suitability.
The PPA takes as little as 8 minutes to complete and determines how individuals see themselves responding to workplace situations that they perceive to be favourable or challenging, and reveals whether their response patterns are active or passive.
Giving insight based on widely recognised DISC theory (Dominance, Compliance, Influence and Steadiness) the PPA will produce results in real time so that the recruiting manager can confidently analyse the candidate’s behaviour and determine quickly if this is a suitable candidate for the role being applied for.
If you would like to find out more about our Behaviour assessment, please speak to one of our team.
