The MRA Notebook holds a series of essays, articles and background information to help our clients enhance their productivity and profitability.


To discuss employee personality testing, visit our blog: You Who?



Use MRA to Structure Rewards   In times when earnings and growth are stagnant, or even contracting for a period, how do you make the work day a rewarding experience for your staff? MRA profiles give you a way to maximize the positive impact of motivational and rewards programs.



Avoid Hiring Mistakes - Throw Away the Dartboard!   My employee selection and hiring process was revolutionized when I met Larry Sartor, President of MRA, a human resources development firm. Larry introduced me to the MRA process that not only changed my selection process, but helped me understand how to capitalize on my own strengths and compensate for my always-present restraints.

Broaden Job Descriptions to include Role Profiles   Adding a "role profile" to a job description can increase hiring accuracy. A well-crafted role profile may align with MRA Profile results more concretely than a traditionl job description.

Do Unto Others (Or Not)   Use your knowledge of the four MRA Profile Groups to sell to others the way they want to be sold to. Consider the sales proposal that contains way too much - or way too little - detail for the prospective customer. You presumably included just the right amount of detail for you. What to do?

Employee Retention   Why do employees quit? What can a manager do about it? Our MRA Profiles help you address most of the factors that lower employee retention. Knowing how to keep the "good ones" makes you a stronger manager and protects your bottom line, too.

Is "Onboarding" a Word?   Not too many years ago "employee orientation" was a minor, perfunctory task handed off to a manager or HR staffer who happened to be free. Today the "onboarding" process is a top priority which, in some cases, is partially outsourced to specialized vendors. Profit by making MRA profiles a central component in your onboarding effort.

Is MRA Profiling Legal?   The courts have firmly stated that aptitude testing, applied uniformly, is legal. Read the details of the definitive cases in our MRA Notebook article.

Is MRA Profiling Scientifically Valid?   Reliability and validity statistics are available for MRA Instruments. This means we have an idea of how reliable and valid they are, on average. That is: Reliability stats show how much, on average, the result tends to change if you complete the same questionnaire a second time. Validity stats show how well, on average, the questionnaire measures what it claims to measure, in the purpose/context for which it was intended. For example, a handedness test might do a good job of showing whether you are left- or right-handed.

Motivating Termites   The idea of using a stick and a carrot as motivators is an ancient one. But what if you want to motivate termites? Then you've got it all backwards! The hungry little bugs will swarm toward the stick for a wooden munch. Sure, it's a silly example, but the problem is a serious one. What motivates people? Do you know what constitutes a genuinely desired reward for another person? Let's look at two of the four behavioral traits which MRA Profiling measures and see what "valued recognition" might look like to different people.

The Cost of Turnover   The hidden costs of employee turnover - lost productivity, low morale and additional turnover when other employees watch their coworker leave - that many employers ignore, and it eats away at profits. Add hidden costs to the better-known expenses - such as the price of recruiting new workers - and the total cost of turnover can be 150 percent of each departing worker's salary.

The Paul Principle   The Paul Principle says "Continue to provide people with what they need to succeed." It sounds like simple common sense, but business people too often substitute the Peter Principle: advancing people until they're incompetent. Use MRA Profiles to avoid Peter and stick with Paul.

We Don't Care What You Think   "Psychological" tests, like Myers-Briggs, talk about inner processes and unconscious urges, but make no dependable predictions about behavior. But isn't anticipating behavioral patterns what hiring, career management and training are all about? In business, you want a tool like the MRA Leadership Matrix that helps identify what a person is going to do, rather than how they're going to think.