These pages contain information about how our services were produced and how they can provide the same kinds of benefits to your organization as they have for nearly twenty years to other clients who use them.

Our services were developed by applying rigorous scientific methods and appropriate statistical procedures. For example, prior to its commercial application, the DEFT Survey was administered to hundreds of people whose responses were statistically analyzed, such that, the instrument measures four “cornerstone” behavioral traits with a high level of accuracy.

The Survey generates four scores, one for each trait, and those scores form the individual’s personal profile. The trait with the highest score explains up to 50 percent of the individual’s behavior, and the remaining traits pinpoint behaviors that also are affirmed to be true by the Survey-taker, thereby, providing one test of the validity of the instrument.

Decision-makers

High: Individuals whose highest score is for the “D” trait need to be “in-charge,” to be in control. They are strong-willed, and they expect their ideas and decisions to prevail and to be respected.

Low: Individuals whose lowest score is for the “D” trait prefer not to be responsible for major decisions; they would rather defer to others who are comfortable with authoritative, managerial roles.

Encouragers

High: Encouragers are synonymous with “extraverts.” They are highly sociable, people-oriented, outgoing individuals, who are good communicators with a persuasive, “seller” style. They are good at encouraging and motivating others.

Low: Low “E’s” are the opposite of extraverts, and while they are not effervescent, spontaneous talkers, many are sources of wisdom due to their natural style that requires them to “think” before they speak.

Facilitators

High: Facilitators tend to be gentle, patient individuals who accept supportive roles. They are nice people to have around, because they are non-confrontational and work hard to gain approval for all they do to help and please others, family, friends, coworkers or superiors. They have a servant’s heart.

Low: These are face-paced, highly impatient people who want what they want, and they want it yesterday.

Trackers

High: High “T’s” are compulsive about “tracking down” and taking care of details. They prefer to follow-up and carry-out assignments given to them by authorities they respect rather than to initiate action steps conceived on their own. They are naturally neat, orderly and organized, often checking and rechecking their work for accuracy. They have a strong need to be “right.”

Low: People with low Tracker scores think of themselves as being independent, “original,” out-of-the-box thinkers; they are non-conformists and may not pay close attention to details; they expect others to keep them organized.

Note; DEFT profiles are read in the order of their ranking in the string, as in “DEFT,” or “EFTD,” or “FTDE,” etc.

“DEFT” actually is an acrostic where “D” stands for Decision-maker, “E” means Encourager, “F” refers to Facilitator, and “T” describes a Tracker. In the table that follows a brief description is given for the highest score and the lowest score for each trait.

Individuals who take the DEFT Survey provide the raw data from which all Precision Insights reports are generated. This means that in less than ten minutes, Survey responses for any number of individuals, from one to hundreds, can be posted and securely stored on the WorkTraits Website. Then, at the click of a mouse, immediate feedback is available for each person’s Personal Profile followed by WorkTraits reports for any two profiles that are paired together. Finally, customized benchmarks reduce complicated statistics to decision-making Percentage Fit scores, such that, selecting the best available job candidates becomes almost as easy as looking at a graph.

The rest of this page has been reserved for a fuller discussion of DEFT Benchmarks, how they are developed and their many benefits.

DEFT Benchmarks provide organizations with information that predicts “success” for job candidates on a wide range of user-selected criteria. In other words, our customized benchmarks tell the user which candidates are most likely to be above average “performers” in specified positions and what their promotional paths will be within the organization even before the candidates are hired. Our best estimates of average per person Returns on Investment is in the thousands of dollars, where the System has been applied appropriately.

This is how it works!

Many objective measures of success (sales, tenure in the position, proneness to accidents, absenteeism, excessive Work Comp claims, and many others) can be distributed along a continuum that forms a normal distribution curve, as displayed in Chart 1. The individuals whose “performance” is on one half of the distribution will be preferred over their counterparts on the opposite half.

In general, individuals who are most successful one year will continue to perform at better than average levels on repeated evaluations, and the opposite is true for the less successful, as well. The consistency of performance over time indicates that "success" is not accidental or random. Indeed: Success is caused by attributes that are possessed by certain members of the group and possessed in lesser amounts, or not at all, by other members of the group

When true causes of success can be identified, the predictive co-relationships between particular attributes and important outcomes can be reduced to mathematical equations, which we convert into “benchmarks.” The benchmarks, in turn, can be valuable tools in the selection process in the workplace. Thus, if attributes "A," "B and "C" are found to cause high success and the absence of those attributes to cause low success, the benchmark identifies the job candidates who are most likely to succeed, and that information is available before the candidate is hired.

Whereas, the mathematical formulas by which customized benchmarks are developed are complicated, the reports are displayed in graphic form containing a simple, decision-making Percentage Fit value, as shown in Chart 2. When the Percentage Fit is in the range from 50.0 to 100.0, the candidate possesses the set of attributes that predicts “success” on the criterion. Benchmarks can be developed for every position and for many important purposes within position, such as, “sales volume,” “risk,” “tenure,” and others.

Many thousands of selections have been made with our customized benchmarks. One of our clients, a large insurance company, has used the System since 1990 with average growth in profits and revenues in excess of 20 percent compounded annually. The HR Employment Manager attributes that growth to “We hire right!” based on the use of the System. And, the President of that organization said of the System: “It gives us excellent people; we wouldn’t hire without it.”

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