Achal Khanna, CEO SHRM India, on this launch said - ‘This is a very practical tool and an imperative need of the present day. It is the need of the hour to improve the society and better our present living conditions and parameters of safety.’

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Mettl, one of India’s fastest growing talent assessment and skill-measurement companies, has collaborated with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) for an entirely new study and tool on dark traits in the human personality. This tool can help organizations to prevent some of the distressing instances at work and ensure customer safety. 

Titled ‘Uncovering the Dark Traits of Human Personality’: Strive for Better Work Culture and Customer Safety’. The research report comprises of findings from a survey conducted by Mettl and SHRM among several organizations from across various industries, along with inputs from experienced industry leaders and an in-depth analysis of the various personality and behavioral traits in their employees across 23 sectors and 43 specific job roles. Based on these findings, the 8-year old start-up which has the vision to equip organizations with tools to build winning teams - has identified 6 dark traits, namely:

• Self-Obsession (focus on oneself) 
• Opportunism (taking advantage of any situation for personal well being) 
• Temperamental (reacting to situations violently)
• Insensitive (being apathetic towards others) 
• Thrill-seeking (taking high-risk decisions) 
• Impulsiveness (hasty decision making) 

These traits tend to incite undesirable behavior among employees, which in turn negatively affect the organization’s internal work culture, profits, employer branding, image as well as relations with external stakeholders. 

Mettl’s new talent assessment named Mettl Dark Personality Inventory (MDPI), has established a framework to customize MDPI for specific use cases across industries and job roles/levels. It also points towards the riskiest job roles and industries, where the presence of moderate to high levels of certain dark traits can potentially harm a company’s reputation or even human life. In this framework, job roles and industries have been divided into three zones, red, yellow, and green, based on the degree of impact/harm.

Mettl along with SHRM then conducted a survey to identify the most undesirable dark trait for each industry/job role and the resultant impact of these dark traits on the organization across 1900+ survey respondents - spanning across various levels of multiple organizations. 

Key findings of the report:

 • 85 per cent respondents believe that dark traits are the cause of most of the distressing incidents

• 94 per cent respondents said that dark traits need to be identified at workplaces

• 60 per cent people selected assessments as the most effective tool for identifying and measuring dark traits followed by background verification (18 per cent) followed by past work experience (10 per cent) & interview (10 per cent)

The study even identified few key industries that are most vulnerable to dark traits, namely cab services, schools, banks, cab drivers, huge data centers, social media, and daycares. 

On the report launch, Tonmoy Shingal, Co-founder, and COO, Mettl, commented, “MDPI is India’s first and one of its kind assessment tool, which has been co-created by SHRM and Mettl after extensive research. Being a co-founder and a father to 5-year old, I feel that MDPI would fill a huge gap prevalent in society and would make a significant difference in our professional as well as personal lives as far as we talk about prevention of safety.” 

Achal Khanna, CEO SHRM India, on this launch said - ‘This is a very practical tool and an imperative need of the present day. It is the need of the hour to improve the society and better our present living conditions and parameters of safety.’

This new tool aims to be used extensively as a hygiene factor before every organization makes its people decisions to ensure that they aren’t sowing the seeds for its next disaster.Organizations can also use dark personality assessments to create a safe place for customers and employees. Furthermore, HRs can deploy dark personality assessments to prevent hiring potentially dangerous employees that can jeopardize work culture, organizational productivity, and customer safety. Dark Personality Assessment can also help organizations with such functions as leadership development, High Potential (HiPo) identification and succession planning.