OPRA Articles

OPRA is committed to providing the NZ and international market with the information required for organisational success. OPRA regularly contribute to a range of HR and I/O Psychology publications and we are respected for our ability to combine research and experience into practical and effective guidelines. Detailed below are a series of best practice articles prepared by OPRA for your review, please click on the relevant article under each business arm.

Assess

Assessment and Development Centres - Factors for Success
Assessment and Development Centres are powerful techniques that will help you recruit and retain the best employees - but they should be used with care. This article highlights seven key defining factors that will ensure success.

Differentiating Recruitment Firms
The fast-growing recruitment industry has primarily developed as a transactional service, swiftly placing people in jobs, rather than a strategic business partnership between recruitment providers and their clients.  To assist people in the selection of a recruitment provider an eight-point checklist is provided. 

The Myths and Realities of Psychometric Testing  Part 1  Part 2
Psychometric testing (personality and ability testing) is increasingly used to select the right candidate for a job. Indeed, an article on selection practices in Personnel Psychology found the level of testing in New Zealand is greater than in all but three other countries.

Intelligence in Relation to Jungs Personality Types
Furnham, Moutafi and Paltiel (2005). The relationship between Intelligence, measured by the Critical Reasoning Test Battery and the Jung Type Personality Dimensions are established, with relationships found between intelligence and the Jung Type Personality Dimensions. The ability for these dimensions to predict verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning, and the implications for selection of candidates are discussed.

Intelligence: The Relationship between Conscientiousness and Fluid and Crystallised Intelligence
Wood and Englert (2009). Using the General Reasoning Test Battery, the Fifteen-Factor Questionnaire and the Occupational Personality Profile relationships between conscientionsness factors and fluid and crystallised intelligence were found to be negative. The relationship between concientiousness factors and intelligence and intelligence compensation theory have implications when selecting for roles requiring both conscientiousness and intelligence factors.

International Perspectives on the Legal Environment for Selection
In the United States, the legal context plays a major role in how psychologists approach selection system development. Psychologists know well the set of protected groups, the approaches to making an a priori case of discrimination (e.g., differential treatment vs. adverse impact), the key court cases influencing selection, and the prohibitions against preferential treatment (e.g., the 1991 ban on score adjustment or withingroup norming).

Norms - Using Norms in the Interpretation of Test Results
Eatwell, J. (1997). Using norms in the interpretations of test results. In H. Love & W. Whittaker (Eds.) Practice issues for clinical and applied psychologists in New Zealand (pp. 268-276). Wellington: The New Zealand Psychological Society.

Personality & Performance at the beginning of the new millennium - What do we know and where do we go next?
Barrick, Mount, and Judge (2000). The usefulness of personality to predict job performance has long been debated. To date, supporters and opponents of personality assessment have tended to defend their position by arming themselves with a barrage of anecdotal evidence and unsubstantiated claims.

Psychometric Assessments - Comparing Apples
Why have psychometric assessments gained so much popularity and traction over recent years? This is because they provide some of the most crucial information in selection decisions. Without including psychometrics in selection decisions, there is a greater tendency to rely on more subjective measures of likely behaviour and performance,and key areas of relevance for the job may be overlooked in the absence of assessment results. 

Consult

360 Surveying - A Checklist for Introducing 360 Degree Feedback
In today's changing and volatile market, organisations are continually looking for ways to improve performance and satisfy the demands of all stakeholders. Achieving this goal invariably involves change, which then becomes the pivotal dynamic for success.

Consultants - Choosing and Using Consultants
Buying expert advice for a specialist project or when you simply need the people power is mandatory in today's business environment. The question is, how do you choose and manage the consultant - as opposed to letting them manage you?

Survey

Exit Interviewing - How to Keep Your Best People
Retaining top performers in an uncertain economic climate is critical to the success of organisational strategies, goals and financial performance.  Star employees continut to organisational success for than others, and set the standard to which others aspire to.  But the reality is that turnover affects the employees and organisation can least afford to lose. 

Train and Develop

Psychometric Assessment and Action Planning in Career Guidance
Psychometric Assessment for Careers. Diagnostic tools have been a common component of many career counselling interventions since the early 1960s. One of the more common diagnostic instruments used in the counselling process is an interest-based inventory. As a guide, there are three key applications for which interest inventories can be used.

Stress - Managing Workplace Stress: a best practice blueprint
(CBI Fast Track Series). Stephen Williams and Lesley Cooper. John Wiley & Sons Ltd. London 2002. As its title suggests, this book is a blue print for organisations who wish to take a proactive approach to managing stress among employees. It is the latest offering by Dr Stephen Williams, a recognised world authority in the area of workplace stress and author of the Pressure Management Indicator.

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