Predictive Index Survey

PI stands for Predictive Index and a predictive index survey is a measurement of personality traits developed for adults in the workplace. It has a variety of criteria that assess multiple aspects of someone's personality and work habits. The information from a PI is often used by human resource departments when interviewing and figuring out how to promote employees. The information can help make transitions easier when instituting cultural change, team-building, and leadership development. All PI assessments are fast to fill out and analyze. Companies can retain employees and improve performance by using the information from a PI to accurately assess peoples' strengths and weaknesses. The insights based help avoid decisions based on chance, snap decisions, moods, and politics. Personality-based, or behavioral, assessments help reduce these subjective influences when hiring, interviewing, and moving employees from one department to another.

Background of the Predictive Index Study

The Predictive Index has been used since 1955 and is currently used by over 8,000 organizations in industries such as financial services, manufacturing, business services, healthcare, hospitality, and transportation. A wide and diverse range of companies and industries. Over two million people completed a PI assessment in 2013.

What Predictive Index Measures:

  • An individual's response level to their environment as reflected by their activity and energy level
  • The degree to which employees seek to control their environment
  • Employee assertiveness and independence
  • An individual's extroversion, or the degree to which they interact socially with others.
  • An individual's capacity for patience
  • The degree to employees seek consistency and stability
  • An individual's formality, or desire for structure and rules
  • An individual's decision-making skills and their style of processing information and communicating

What the Results of Predictive Index Indicate

  • An individual's natural inclinations and needs and how he or she tends to react to certain situations.
  • How an individual may modify his or her natural inclination based on expectations or needs around them in their work place.

Tips for Positive Predictive Index Results

Research the responsibilities in the work place and position and create an image of the behaviors and inclinations necessary to perform well in the role. Figure out how to measure the importance of leadership skills, patience, and ability to work with others. List relevant adjectives that you will check or leave blank when assessing a candidate or employee. Use the same assessment for all candidates or employees you are considering for the same position or comparing with one another.

How Assessments Are Developed

Adjectives and content for the form were reviewed psychometrically and for fairness. They were tested on over 136,000 people with a variety of personalities and job functions over the course of years. Norm tables and scoring models were verified before translating it and sending it through regional review. The PI was analyzed to see if the information from similar tests and previous versions were congruent. They were valid, and the job roles were similar to management positions. Corrected correlations were estimated from meta-analyses as well as initiative, cooperation, and ratings of employees' job performance compliance. The PI Assessment appears to be a valid tool because it reinforced the relationships of behavior to outcomes.

What to do to Become a PI Practitioner

  • A PI Practitioner must be self-reflective: they must know their drives, needs, behaviors and how they influence their environments. They must have a certain degree of emotional intelligence to understand the people they are assessing.
  • They must understand differences among colleagues and learn to interact more effectively.
  • They must be insightful and in tune with the drives, needs, and behaviors of other employees so to help them be more engaged and productive.
  • They must be able to use information to create a strategy to identify the behavioral requirements. And identify how your organization can utilize the insights.
  • Learn all the PI tools and software used for assessments

The PI analyzes the natural inclinations of employees so employers can get an accurate sense of their strengths and weakness, and where they fit into a team. It is a positive tool used to celebrate different personalities and working styles. Ideally, it should be used to make good fits and structure organizations based on behavior and natural inclinations. It is commonly used to predict how people may react in an environment and other employees. They utilize emotional intelligence and the self-knowledge of the PI practitioner. The Predictive Index assessments are in line with guidelines of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and American Psychological Association. It has been shown to be an accurate and useful tool in the work place.

If you need help with a predictive index survey, you can post your legal need on UpCounsel's marketplace. UpCounsel accepts only the top 5 percent of lawyers to its site. Lawyers on UpCounsel come from law schools such as Harvard Law and Yale Law and average 14 years of legal experience, including work with or on behalf of companies like Google, Menlo Ventures, and Airbnb.