A study was conducted on 7774 field executives of a banking company. A holistic approach was adopted to assess this group's behavioural or employability skills. This approach included administering a psychometric assessment test, 3SAQ, which focused on 3 main clusters viz. cognitive skills, behavioural skills, and integrity.
The current study is focused towards understanding the trend of various behavioural skills and integrity among this group of field executives.
3SAQ focuses on 9 behavioural skills viz. communication skills, collaboration, stress tolerance and impulse control, situational adaptability, openness to learning, ability to work independently, result orientation, customer orientation, and negotiation skills. The group of field executives were further classified into three main vintage bands- 1-100 days, 101-365 days, and more than 365 days. Also, the participants were categorized as high performers and low performers depending on the internal rating awarded by their supervisors.
A higher percentage of good-performing employees (>100 days) scored high in Communication, Collaboration and Result Orientation.
Employees with <100 days on the job scored low in Ability to work independently and Situational adaptability.
Low-performing field executives across all vintage bands scored low in Customer Orientation and Negotiation Skills.
The study depicted that a higher % of good-performing employees who have worked in the organization for more than 100 days had scored high and medium on skills such as communication skills and collaboration skills. 45% of high and medium-performing employees who had completed more than 365 days had scored high on stress tolerance and impulse control. Similarly, 34% of high and medium-performing employees who had completed more than 365 days had scored high on openness to learning. Also, the study reflected that low-performing employees who had completed less than 100 days in the organization had scored low on ability to work independently in comparison to the other two vintage bands. It also led to the finding that a higher percentage of high-performing employees who had completed more than 100 days in the organization had scored high and medium scores on result orientation in comparison to employees who had spent less than 100 days. Also, a greater number of field executive employees across all three vintage bands had scored high and medium on result orientation. The study showed that low-performing field executive employees across all three vintage bands had scored high on customer orientation and negotiation skills.
The study revealed that on-the-job training helped field executives with communication skills, collaboration skills, and stress tolerance, openness to learning, result orientation, customer orientation, and negotiation. Low-performing employees who had spent less than 100 days displayed low levels of situational adaptability, and ability to work independently.
An assessment of integrity was also conducted on the same group. The test of integrity focussed on 4 counterproductive work behaviours and preferences towards values. The study revealed that good and medium performers with higher vintage in the organisation displayed lesser tendencies towards unethical practices and counterproductive work behaviours in comparison to low performers with lesser number of years of experience.
