Behavioural Assessments & Tests | Thomas.co

Behavioural Assessments & Tests

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Behavioural Assessments

Get insights into 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

With the Thomas Behaviour assessment, you can create a behavioural profile using Personal Profile Analysis. It measures your strengths, your room to grow and your preferred communication style. Use it with your team and improve communication, wellbeing and productivity.

How our behaviour assessments work

It only takes eight minutes to get accurate insights into how people behave at work with Thomas.

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8 minute assessment

You’ll get accurate insights into how each candidate behaves, communicates and what motivates them in the workplace. Factor in soft skills and hire someone who is the perfect fit for the role.

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Detailed profile

Our science-backed behaviour test gives insight on a person’s strengths, their communication style, what motivates them, and how they react to risk and conflict.

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Deep insight

Use the insights our platform provides to make smarter hiring choices, move people into roles where they’d shine and really support your team by understanding them a bit better.

Behaviour Assessment info

Assessment information

  • Assessment type: Behavioural profile
  • Format: 24 questions
  • Time to complete: 8 minutes
  • Training required: None

Validation:

We’re registered with the British Psychological Society and audited against technical criteria established by the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations. This means our platform is built from science you can trust.

Read a sample candidate profile to see Thomas in action.

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.

Laura O Driscoll - Talent Solutions
Laura O’Driscoll
Managing Director
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We’ll help build a better team

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?
Behaviour Background & theory

The theory

Our behaviour assessments that create each Thomas profile are built from the scientific DISC theory of William Moulton Marston, developed for the workplace by Dr Thomas Hendrickson.  

Our behaviour assessments measure how someone sees themselves responding to situations in the workplace. Answering questions written by our psychologists, you’ll be able to see any patterns in your answers and your individual behavioural preferences and where it sits within the DISC theory: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance.

Use science-backed insights to improve performance and create a high-performing team

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Format

You’ll be asked to choose two trait adjectives out of four, one that is most like you and one least like you. It uses an ipsative referencing method, which means your answers are compared to yourself, rather than a comparison group. You’ll be given 24 questions and asked to choose between 96 words.  

Our behaviour assessment is available electronically or in paper-and-pencil format. It is suitable for anyone with a reading age of 11+ and who is fluent in English, including those whose first language isn’t English.

Behaviour Validity

Reliability & validity

Our assessments undergo rigorous scientific tests to determine its reliability and validity as a psychological assessment. Our assessments are registered with the British Psychological Society, which means they’re audited against the technical criteria established by the European Standing Committee on Tests and Testing, part of the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations.

Our in-house psychologists continually undergo psychometric research with the PPA and have collaborated with the Psychometrics Centre at Cambridge University.  If you’d like to support our continuous development programmes, get in touch with our psychology team.

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. 

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.