New employee selection

One advantage of involving others is the wealth of perspectives that multiple opinions can provide. Another advantage is that people able to provide feedback on the selection may have a more vested interest in helping the new employee to succeed as a member of the team. 

The accuracy of assumptions about the effectiveness of recruitment and selection processes wiU vary with the nature of the processes. Chapter 5 examines a number of recruitment and selection processes, with a particular emphasis on their ability to assess (predict) a new employee s safety behavior. This chapter offers recommendations on the design of recruitment and selection processes and on procedures to ensure employees correcdy perceive their organization s ability to predict new employee s safety behavior. 

Often health and safety legislation will require employees to be trained for the work they are undertaking. Associated with this prestart training will be a socialization processes (sometimes referred to as an on-boarding or induction processes) which have general objectives, such as introducing the new employee to the organizations safety policies and procedures. As with recmitment and selection processes. 

The employee selection literature is well developed in the area of structured employment interview development (see Hufifcutt 2011 Levashina et al. 2014 for useful reviews and guidelines). The addition of a set of experience-related questions into a stmctured employment interview will provide a much more comprehensive profile of an applicant s experience and also allow for vastly more accurate predictions of their experience-related risk potential. Furthermore, it will give an indication of how long it may take for the individual, if employed, to become an experienced operator an indicator of the extent of supervision and training which might be needed to ensure the new employee s safety. 

The Influences of Recruitment Processes and Selection Predictors on New Employee Safety... 

Figure 5.1 shows the probable causal nature of the research findings presented in Table 5.1. The top box in Fig. 5.1 represents employee s perceptions of their organization s recraitment and selection processes. Positive perceptions of these processes were found in all three studies to be associated with an increase in trust in new employees to work safely, a decrease in the perceived safety risk associated with new employees, and a reduction in perceived safety risk from new employees was associated with a reduction in behaviors toward the new employee to ensure their (and everyone s) safety. 

Table 5.1 Correlations between trust in selection processes and, trust in new employees, perceived risk from new employees, and employees compensatory behaviors toward new employees obtained in 3 studies...

Study Sample Correlation between trust in selection processes and trust in new employees to work safely Correlation between trust in new employees and perceived safety risk from new employees Correlation between perceived safety risk from new employees and compensatory behaviors to ensure new employee safety... 

The following sections examine two processes associated with recmitment activities (i.e., job analysis, and realistic safety preview), and a range of selection predictors (application blank, applicant interview, cogiutive, physical, psychomotor, sensory/perceptual ability testing, personality testing, and attitude measurement) which an organization can use to help predict job applicant (new employee s) safety behavior, and overall their ability to work safely. Where appropriate, recommendations on how recruitment and selection processes can be used to improve new employee safety are discussed. Finally, this chapter examines how employees perceptions of organizational processes can be made more realistic. 

All recruitment and selection activities should begin with a job analysis. Job analysis allows the task requirements of a job to be precisely determined. Furthermore, job analysis allows the safety risks associated with a job to be determined, and also the identification of the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to work, both safely, and at a satisfactory performance level. It is well established that the occupation or job a person is performing substantially influences accident vulnerability (Ford and Wiggins 2012). In other words, it is vital for safety, for the specific hazards and risks associated with a job to be identified, and conducting a job analysis is an approach which can be used to collect this information. Without the essential information which job analysis provides, it is impossible to provide job applicants with a realistic safety preview for the job (see Chap. 3, Sect. 3.7.2.1), and difiicult to know what competencies a new employee needs to bring to the job, and therefore what should be measured in a selection program. 

Job description and person specification documents that contain safety information can clearly provide the foimdation for the development of a recruitment and selection program which has at least the possibility of a successful outcome. Further, Thompson and Thompson (1982) provide an excellent review of the steps required to help ensure that courts accept job analysis information as the foundation of selection predictor development and or selection decisions. Furthermore, a job description that includes a section on safety can be used in the expectation setting processes as discussed in Chap. 3, Sect. 3.7.2. In contrast, if there has been no systematic attempt to understand what the requirements are to perform a job in a safe manner, it is unlikely that the recruitment and selection system will be delivering the safety benefits that it potentially could. Furthermore, it is likely that employees trust in these processes to deliver a safe new employee may be somewhat misplaced. 

As a final note on tools which might be used to select new employees, there are number of products on the market which claim to predict safely behaviors and safety-related outcomes. Providers of these assessment tools vary greatly in the claims that are made about their tools ability to predict employee safety behavior, and the degree of research based evidence which they provide to support these claims. Organizations using these products need to examine very carefully the nature of the instrument/measure, and the evidence that it is a valid predictor. As with other selection assessments, employees are likely to assume such measures will operate in a valid and reliable way. 

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