Understanding your people is the foundation of a strong workforce, and employee personality tests have been a staple in hiring, leadership development, and team-building for decades.
But do those personality tests actually help employees thrive in their roles? While personality assessments for employees offer insight into behavior, they can’t tell you how people are likely to think, solve problems, or collaborate in real-world work environments.
What Is an Employee Personality Test?
An employee personality assessment is a tool used by organizations to evaluate an individual’s behavioral traits, interpersonal tendencies, and work preferences. These assessments help employers make informed decisions about hiring, team composition, leadership potential, and employee engagement.
Understanding an employee’s personality can help leaders place individuals in roles that suit their natural tendencies, improve collaboration among teams, and foster a more productive and harmonious work environment. While personality assessments do not measure intelligence or skills, they provide valuable insights into how an employee handles communication, teamwork, and problem-solving.
How Are Personality Assessments for Employees Used?
Business leaders rely on employment personality tests to uncover valuable insights into workplace behavior. Some of the most common applications include:
Recruitment & Hiring Process
Pre-employment personality assessments are commonly used to evaluate whether a candidate is a good fit for a role and how they may contribute to company culture. These tests provide insights into a candidate’s soft skills, work ethic, and interpersonal style—factors that may not be immediately evident from a resume or interview. However, not all types of personality assessments are designed for hiring purposes, and organizations must ensure they use validated tools to make fair and effective hiring decisions.
Manager & Leader Development
Organizations leverage personality assessments to design leadership development programs that align with an employee’s natural strengths. By identifying key attributes such as communication style, decision-making approach, and interpersonal effectiveness, these insights help managers refine their leadership skills and nurture team members through tailored coaching, mentorship, and career development initiatives.
Improving Team Effectiveness
Effective teams require an understanding of diverse perspectives, work styles, and thinking preferences. Personality assessments can help teams enhance collaboration by providing insights into individual differences, improving communication, and reducing workplace friction. When used strategically, these tools enable leaders to create more balanced teams, fostering stronger alignment and engagement in group dynamics.
Change Management & Innovation
Understanding how employees react to uncertainty and new challenges is critical during organizational change or transformation. Personality assessments provide valuable insights into how individuals process change, adapt to shifting priorities, and contribute to innovation efforts. By leveraging these insights, organizations can build more resilient teams, foster creative problem-solving, and drive innovation initiatives with greater success.
What Are the 10 Best Employee Personality Tests?
With so many assessments available, selecting the right one depends on your specific needs, whether they relate to hiring, leadership development, or team collaboration.
HBDI® (Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument)
While it is often lumped in with popular workforce personality tests, the HBDI® is actually a cognitive preference assessment that measures how individuals think, process information, and make decisions. It categorizes thinking into the four quadrants of Whole Brain Thinking® —analytical, structural, relational, and experimental—helping organizations improve collaboration, problem-solving, and leadership effectiveness. Unlike personality tests, the HBDI® focuses on cognitive diversity rather than fixed personality traits, making it an effective tool for developing adaptable, high-performing teams.
DiSC Personality Test
The DiSC assessment categorizes individuals into four primary behavioral styles: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. It is commonly used for communication training and conflict resolution, helping teams understand different work styles and improve collaboration. While effective for interpersonal dynamics, DiSC focuses more on behavior than cognitive processes, limiting its usefulness in strategic decision-making and innovation. (More on the difference between DiSC and the HBDI®.)
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
The MBTI categorizes individuals into 16 personality types based on four dichotomies: Extraversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perceiving. It is widely used for team-building and leadership development, offering insights into how people interact and make decisions. While popular, the MBTI lacks strong scientific validation, and test-takers often receive different results upon retesting, raising concerns about its reliability. (More on the difference between MBTI and the HBDI®.)
The Big Five Personality Traits (OCEAN Model)
The Big Five model measures personality across five broad dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. It is one of the most research-backed personality assessments and is commonly used in workplace psychology and academic studies. Despite its strong scientific foundation, its broad nature makes it less actionable for improving leadership, collaboration, or day-to-day workplace interactions.
CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder)
The CliftonStrengths assessment identifies an individual's top strengths from a list of 34 talent themes, emphasizing natural abilities rather than weaknesses. It is widely used for personal and professional development, helping individuals leverage their strengths in workplace roles. However, it does not offer a structured framework for improving adaptability or understanding how different cognitive styles interact within teams. (More on the difference between CliftonStrengths and the HBDI®.)
Predictive Index (PI) Behavioral Assessment
The Predictive Index evaluates workplace behavior, assessing traits like dominance, extroversion, patience, and formality to predict job fit and leadership potential. It is frequently used in hiring and talent optimization, helping organizations align individuals with roles based on their behavioral tendencies. While useful for workforce planning, it does not measure cognitive ability, technical skills, or deeper personality dynamics that influence long-term performance.
Birkman Assessment
The Birkman Method combines personality, motivation, and occupational interests to provide a comprehensive understanding of workplace behavior. It is commonly used for leadership coaching and team development, offering insights into both usual behavior and stress responses. While detailed and data-rich, it requires professional interpretation, making it less accessible for quick implementation in smaller organizations.
Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI)
The Hogan Personality Inventory assesses personality traits and leadership potential, evaluating how individuals are likely to behave in professional environments. It is widely used for leadership selection and development and to identify risk factors that may impact workplace performance. Although highly predictive of workplace success, it requires expert analysis and can be costly, limiting its accessibility for smaller businesses.
Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS)
The Keirsey Temperament Sorter groups individuals into four temperament types: Guardian, Idealist, Artisan, and Rationalist. It helps organizations understand communication styles and decision-making preferences, making it a useful tool for team dynamics. While easy to use, it lacks the empirical support of more scientifically validated models, and its broad categories may oversimplify personality differences.
Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI)
The Eysenck Personality Inventory assesses individuals based on two main dimensions: Extraversion vs. Introversion and Neuroticism vs. Emotional Stability. It provides a foundational understanding of personality traits and offers insights into emotional regulation and social behavior. However, its binary approach to personality may oversimplify complex workplace dynamics, making it less effective for nuanced team-building and leadership development.
Drawbacks of Employee Personality Tests
Despite their benefits, personality assessments do have limitations for the workplace. They do not always accurately predict job performance, as behavior can be influenced by external factors such as company culture, leadership, and stress levels. Additionally, some candidates may manipulate their responses to appear more desirable for a role, leading to skewed results.
Fixed Labels Can Create Stereotypes
One of the biggest concerns with personality typing is that it can lead to rigid thinking—both for employees and the people managing them. When someone is labeled as a certain personality type, they may feel locked into that identity, believing they’re only suited for certain roles or responsibilities.
For example, if an assessment tags someone as introverted, they may assume they aren’t suited for leadership roles or public-facing positions. Likewise, managers may overlook their potential, reinforcing workplace biases. Instead of helping employees stretch and grow, these tests can box them in, limiting their long-term development.
Many Personality Assessments Lack Scientific Validity
Not all employment personality tests are scientifically validated to predict job performance or workplace success. Employees who take these tests multiple times may receive different personality types, raising questions about their reliability.
Additionally, these assessments often rely on self-reported answers, meaning results can be skewed by mood, biases, or how questions are framed. This makes it difficult to determine whether the test is capturing someone’s true workplace tendencies or simply their self-perception at a given moment.
One-Time Workplace Assessments Don’t Drive Long-Term Growth
Most personality test results provide a one-time snapshot of an employee’s traits, but they don’t offer a framework for applying the assessment results. Without integration into daily work, team collaboration, and leadership training, these assessments become passive exercises—something employees complete but rarely revisit.
Why the HBDI® Is a Better Alternative
If traditional personality assessments for employees focus on who they are, the HBDI® focuses on how they prefer to think. It provides a model for understanding cognitive flexibility—one of the key reasons why you should use an employee assessment that goes beyond personality typing.
A Framework for Growth
Rather than labeling employees as a particular personality type, the HBDI® helps team members understand their dominant thinking preferences. Unlike personality typing, which can limit how people see themselves, the HBDI® encourages employees to flex between these different thinking styles based on the situation. This leads to stronger decision-making, greater adaptability, and better working relationships.
More Effective Team Collaboration
One of the biggest challenges in any workplace is helping team members collaborate productively. Traditional team-building personality tests can provide insight into work styles and personality strengths, but they don’t always help employees understand how to work with people who think differently from them.
The HBDI® offers a practical approach to team collaboration by helping employees recognize:
- How their thinking style influences their communication and problem-solving.
- How to adapt their approach when working with people who think differently.
- How cognitive diversity leads to stronger, more innovative teams.
Leadership Development That Drives Real Performance
A single personality type doesn’t define the best leaders; they’re defined by their ability to shift their thinking styles to meet different challenges.
Personality tests can provide insights into traits associated with good leadership, but they don’t teach leaders how to use that information to adapt as situations demand. The HBDI® helps leaders strengthen their decision-making, improve interpersonal communication, and build the cognitive agility they need to lead in today’s fast-changing world.
Rethink Employee Personality Tests: Go Beyond Personality Typing
If you want your employees to thrive, it’s time to move beyond one-and-done personality tests and invest in tools that actually help them grow. While personality assessments might be interesting, they don’t teach employees how to apply their insights in their daily work.
The HBDI® gives your team the cognitive flexibility and problem-solving skills they need to succeed. Instead of boxing people into fixed personality types, it helps them think better, work smarter, and adapt to any challenge.
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