Assessing for health and fitness

Many organisations insist on health check ups for candidates before hiring. Health check-up is considered a hygiene factor and most candidates clear the medical tests.

We all know healthy team members naturally means a lot of advantages like lower absenteeism, better productivity and more.

What is hidden are the underlying reasons why you should hire healthy and fit candidates.

Healthy person implicitly signifies a strong commitment to a task. A person committed to maintaining fitness would need to put in effort every day without seeing immediate results. He would need to get up when the alarm clock rings, put on his running shoes and get into his exercise regime. He would need to do this over a period of time without expecting to see marked difference.

This translates to a competency which many of us are familiar with – perseverance & resilience.

Healthy person would need to be disciplined to stay fit. It also implies that he would need to let go of quick gratifications and is willing to stay on for the long haul. He would have a strong mind – willing to say “no” because he is able to see the long term vision.

Disciple, perseverance, resilience, goal orientation, long term thinking – aren¹t these some of the competencies you look for in your ideal employee.

So my advice – next time you are interviewing , you might want to add in a question – “what do you do to stay fit?” 

One last word : This Ganesh Chaturthi, while you eat all those modaks, you may want to think about what you do to stay fit!!

To know more about how to assess better – write in to smita@ableventures.in

I am in expert in assessments having conducted assessments for over 8000 participants.