Using the DISC Personality Assessment in Building a Better Workplace

Understanding more about people can lead to better decisions, including hiring new members for your company. Knowing more about one’s strengths, weaknesses, and other preferences can be helpful in achieving success as a group.

The DISC personality assessment is a helpful tool in making an insightful assessment about a potential candidate. In this article, you’ll learn more about what this assessment tool can do for your hiring process and your team’s potential for success and growth.

What is the DISC Personality Assessment?

The DISC personality assessment is a tool that profiles people’s personality traits based on observable behavior. It gauges people’s placement on a quadrant following the DISC model: Dominant, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness.

As a candidate selection tool, the DISC test can provide useful hiring insights that can be used to match people’s profiles and personalities with a particular job or role. 

It can provide insights into how a potential candidate might behave in a certain role or handle certain situations or coworkers. 

Here are the four personality types of a DISC profile.

Dominance

A person’s dominance score shows how they would typically deal with obstacles that come their way. People with a high dominance score tend to prioritize results over anything.

Individuals who get a high dominance score can be described with words like direct, assertive, decisive, or blunt. People who get a low dominance score may be observed as peaceful, cooperative, and undemanding.

Influence

One’s influence score indicates how one is likely to deal with people and their contacts. High scorers tend to enjoy enthusiasm and collaboration when working with others.

People who get a high score in this dimension tend to be profiled by their peers as outgoing, friendly, optimistic, and trusting. Low scorers are more likely to be logical and factual.

Steadiness

The steadiness score shows how people react to pace and consistency in their environment. Individuals with a high steadiness score are more likely to enjoy providing support to others and being part of an effort to maintain stability in the group.

They are usually described as relaxed, patient, easy-going, and stable. Low scorers on the steadiness scale would more likely be identified with words such as active, demonstrative, and eager.

Compliance

One’s compliance score indicates how well they work with constraints and procedures in their work, where they would typically prioritize accuracy.

A high compliance score indicates that one is more likely to be methodical, analytical, careful, and accurate in their work. Low scorers would usually be described as arbitrary, self-willed, and independent.

How to Use DISC Profiles in Business

Using the DISC personality assessment can show you how a ten-minute test can make a big impact on your business. It’s important to assess the personalities of potential hires because it will inform you on how they may conduct themselves in the workplace and perform in their job. 

Plus, it’s easier to train a new employee on hard skills, but it’s much harder to teach them soft skills. For example, teaching them dominance and assertiveness if they score low on the dominance scale. 

The DISC profile can help business owners and hiring managers assess which candidates would be a more natural fit for any one job.

Here are some ways that even Fortune 500 companies use in the workplace.

Hiring and Screening

When deciding on the best candidate for a job, one’s DISC profile can be used to match them with the requirements of the job itself.

For example, candidates with high conscientiousness scores prefer to strive for perfection and accuracy in their work. This can make them highly effective hires for programming jobs, research-heavy roles, or risk assessment and analysis.

Building Teams

Building a team with a great balance of the right personalities can also help your company have a reliable pool of talent working towards the same goal.

Dominant-conscientious types can be highly effective project managers while influential people can be great at sales-related responsibilities.

Communicating

The DISC personality assessment can also be used in properly communicating with people in the workplace. Personality profiles tend to have their own preference for handling conflict.

Using this information can not only help in resolving and avoiding conflict but also in turning it into a great learning opportunity for the people involved.

A conscientiousness type may need a more logical approach to conflict resolution, while an influential type would need interactive conversation. Knowing this can help you develop an approach that caters to both needs while maintaining a friendly atmosphere for collaboration.

Employee Development

DISC profiles can also be used to help employees with their development in the workplace. Knowing that a conscientious employee will thrive in projects that need a lot of attention to detail can help them increase their skill in managing projects with many moving parts.

This can, later on, be developed into a position that makes them an even more impactful asset to the company.

Motivation

DISC profiles can help managers keep track of what keeps their employees motivated. Referring to an employee’s DISC profile can largely help in keeping them motivated at all times, especially when they need it the most.

For example, a steadiness type personality would feel appreciated from being reminded of their dependability. Similarly, conscientiousness types can be motivated through recognition of their accuracy and logic.

Benefits of Using DISC Profiles to Businesses

Here are some benefits that can be unlocked by using DISC profiles in the workplace.

1. Building a team around matching and compatible profiles can lead to a smoother working dynamic and a more efficient workflow.
2. DISC assessment can be used in customer profiles and buying styles to tailor sales scripts.
3. DISC profiles can be used to create personalized coaching styles and sessions.
4. Improved foresight for leaders and team managers who track motivational preferences.
5. Insightful and productive team-building activities that develop camaraderie based on DISC profiles of team members.
6. Better rules of communication in the workplace.
7. Increased self-awareness in employees can help with self-management and self-motivation.
8. DISC profiles can help managers cultivate a more dynamic leadership style.
9. Knowing how to keep employees motivated can lower turnover rates.
10. Job matching can increase happiness and productivity in employees.

Where Can You Find Free DISC Personality Assessments Online?

DISC personality assessment tools are available online for free if you’d like to test them out on your existing team or on a new hiring process. Feel free to check out these sites to try it out, learn more about the assessment tool, and how to use it in hiring:

• 123test.com
• discpersonalitytesting.com
• Truity.com

DISC Personality Assessment and Virtudesk Virtual Assistants

Believing in the importance of working with compatible personalities, we use DISC profiles here at Virtudesk when matching our clients with our virtual assistants.

During a discovery session, we conduct a guided assessment of our clients’ needs. Combining that with the requirements of the responsibility and tasks they need to have accomplished, we select the top 5 candidates who best match their needs.

This results in a working dynamic where both parties are highly satisfied. Starting on the right foot, they eventually cultivate a remote working dynamic that complements the needs of the business, the client’s growth as a leader, and the virtual assistant’s growth as a contributor to the client’s business.

When used properly, DISC personality profiles can be a helpful guide for success in the workplace. It can be used for making meaningful and productive connections, solving problems and creating solutions, and even in working and collaborating through conflicts.

If you wish to experience working with a virtual assistant whose personality and career needs match your business’s developmental needs, fill out this form, and start your journey towards a scientifically assessed hiring process.

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