HUCAMA Factors: the next generation in people assessments

In a survey conducted by Personnel Today of UK-based companies, 75% used psychometrics within their organisation in some capacity.  If the right tools aren’t engaged to select the most suitable people and to prompt personal growth within teams, there can be detrimental consequences to an organisation’s progression – companies can only sustainably grow as fast as the teams who are running them (Fast Company, 2022).

The use of workplace personality assessments is growing by as much as 10% every year. Given the abundance of psychometrics available in the marketplace, if you are in the field of HR or L&D, you will likely be familiar with the struggle to determine:

  • which assessment tools are appropriate for your business to support different purposes;
  • whether the tools you choose are complementing one another;
  • whether your assessments are having a positive impact on your company’s talent management objectives.

At Edgecumbe, one of our main responsibilities is to ensure that our clients’ employees and candidates are being assessed using only the highest quality psychometric assessments that accurately predict potential and performance. Without the foundation of robust and accurate human capital insights, organisations will struggle to shape the capabilities of their workforce to meet their vision, mission and goals, and will waste precious time, energy and resources. And, scarily, this can happen without anyone ever realising why.

Over the years, we have come across a range of ways in which companies have been let down by their assessment tools:

#1 The assessment outputs offer limited insights

Having access to a high-quality questionnaire is all very well, but if the presentation of the data in the resulting report is limited to a one-dimensional perspective, then opportunities for discovering potential (or indeed risk mitigation within selection and development processes) are limited.

It is also fundamental that the outputs should meet the needs of different audiences. This ranges from having user-friendly reports to share with participants that elevate self-awareness, to having access to specific reports for selection/development purposes that draw out useful insights without being cumbersome to use.

#2 The challenge of having to use multiple tools to support different applications

To date, in order to get an all-round understanding of an individual, multiple psychometric assessments have been required to measure various aspects of personality (for example, their typical behaviours, strengths and development areas, motivations, risks and derailers, team contribution, etc.). This poses several challenges. As well as the substantial cost of using multiple tools (relating to training practitioners, license fees and ongoing costs), it takes more time for participants to complete the assessments, which can frustrate the participant experience.

Whilst being able to triangulate the results of different assessments is an effective way to confirm or disconfirm insights when used side by side, this sometimes results in the challenge of having to reconcile conflicting profiles from the different assessments. At Edgecumbe, we have highly experienced occupational psychologists to amalgamate and interpret the results produced by these various tools. However, a simpler solution for many organisations is to have a versatile tool that can generate outputs that can be used for diverse applications.

#3 The assessment tools allow participants to distort the results

One of the criticisms often levelled at personality questionnaires is that they are easy to fake. Rather than answering truthfully, participants may be tempted to answer in a way that adheres to the responses they expect the company wants to hear. Normative questionnaires, which ask you to rate yourself, are said to be easier to distort than ipsative questionnaires that force you to choose a response. However, the latter solution can make it trickier to make comparisons between people. If the assessment tool does not take account of response style, then answers from a participant seeking to project themselves in a positive light could compromise the assessment and any subsequent people decisions made based on the assessment results.

#4 The assessment tools used across the organisation don’t align

Companies often find that the assessment tool they use for one level of the organisation is either not suited, or too costly, to use at other levels, so they end up using a combination of different psychometrics to suit different requirements. Alternatively, they may restrict the use of assessments to one level. This makes it more challenging to harness the people analytics data gathered across the organisation and use this to support interventions across the employee life cycle.

How the HUCAMA Factors suite addresses these challenges

Created by renowned psychometrician, Dr Rainer Kurz, (who formerly created market leading assessments for SHL, Saville Consulting and Cubiks) and Michele Guarini (CEO at HUCAMA), the HUCAMA Factors suite comprising Personality Factors (measuring dispositional traits), Ability Factors (to assess cognitive reasoning) and Competency Factors (to measure performance at work) is informed by 40 years of science in the prediction of potential and performance.

Building on from the Big 5 and Great 8 Competencies, whilst integrating the latest developments in psychometrics, HUCAMA Factors offers ground-breaking testing and reporting that can be used in an integrated and scalable way throughout the various levels of an organisation. Shorter assessments of personality and competency can be deployed measuring:

  • 16 facets (for entry-level roles);
  • 32 facets (for professionals);
  • 48 facets (for managers and leaders).

HUCAMA Personality Factors only requires the completion of one questionnaire. The results can be explored using innovative online reporting. This enables users to navigate through the profile and provides a more engaging and interactive feedback experience for participants. It provides sophisticated interpretation features for expert practitioners (such as looking at talent gaps, under pressure responses, item range and item level reporting), enabling users to delve much deeper into the profile.

The Personality Factors assessment not only provides a comprehensive measure of dispositional characteristics that underpin how people behave; it also intelligently incorporates elements that would otherwise be assessed using a range of tools, such as:

  • overuse risks (which gets into the territory of derailment);
  • competency predictions (which can be related to organisation’s talent frameworks)
  • team roles preferences.

This generates a wealth of information from one assessment and removes the risk of conflicting and therefore confusing data outputs from separate sources.

We have also collaborated with HUCAMA to develop the Primary Colours® Leadership Report (PF48), a measure of our proprietary framework, which we use in the assessment of and development of aspiring or existing leaders. This report provides a comprehensive assessment of leadership approach, positive impact areas and their overuse risks, as well as development areas and their underuse risks.

We are delighted to be partnered with HUCAMA to provide this revolutionary range of assessments to our clients. Please get in touch to find out how HUCAMA Factors will enable you to:

  • Conduct advanced people assessments by being able to delve more deeply into a participant’s profile through HUCAMA’s enhanced interpretation features.
  • Streamline and simplify your people assessments – assess people at all levels of an organisation in an integrated way against the HUCAMA framework without the need to use multiple tools.
  • Create cleaner outputs and more professional and reliable reporting by mitigating the need to use multiple tools for accessing a diverse range of insights.
  • Facilitate engaging and insightful interactions with participants through its revolutionary, interactive online reporting functionality.

We provide a one-day accreditation in the HUCAMA Factors assessments, which enables you to access their full range of psychometric tools and apply these within your organisation. If you would like to request a free demo, or download a sample report, please contact us at enquiries@edgecumbe.co.uk or call us on 0117 332 8255.