Право/ 4.Трудовое право, и право социального обеспечения

A.V. Neverova, D.C. Bagents

South-Russia State University Of Economics and Service

The use of psychological testing in labour relations

The question whether to apply psychological tests for candidates for a vacant position has been discussed for a long time and it is still a personal choice of a director and not a legal procedure. Anyway a candidate will have to agree on testing. And here is a question of psychological testing necessity, its legality and the correct data it can give to an employer. In this article we will try to answer these and many other questions.

It is necessary to define the term «test». According to the psychological test definition test is the method of psycho diagnostics that uses standardized questions and problems and has a certain rating scale. Tests are often applied at career guidances, vocational training, employment, the advisory and psychotherapeutic help, psychological consultation in the companies and many other fields. Test allows defining an actual level of development of a person, necessary knowledge, personal characteristics and skills.

The procedure of employment of the candidate, as a rule, consists of one or several interviews. But short conversation with the person does not give some full and authentic knowledge about the candidate. The first impression can be deceptive. Besides he/she can have a headache, can be disturbed by urgent problems or just have bad mood at the moment. Or you just don’t like each other. A candidate can even look and sound a pleasant interlocutor and his/her personal data can meet formal requirements to vacancy but who knows whether he/she will work successfully, achieve real results, how quickly he/she will learn new things and react in difficult situations? No interviews can give the comprehensive answer to an employer about moral-ethic or professional-business qualities of a candidate.

Interpretation of tests is another problem, especially if it is done by an employer (basically at the intuitive level). Only the skilled psychologist can process data and judge about psycho neurological qualities of a potential employee for the following reasons:

1) standard printed copies contain terminology that is not clear for nonprofessionals.

2) they are contradictory, and only the expert knowing theoretical model on which the test is based can interpret these contradictions.

3) if actions are carried out by the psychologist he/she will avoid random answers and abstraction.

During the interview, as a rule, it is not accepted to ask the record from a psycho neurological clinic. Therefore one more important function of testing is to detect mentally sick candidates. Many employers face this problem. It is difficult enough to distinguish such person during the first interview. It can become much more difficult to dismiss him/her. But he/she can easily fail the job and even disorganize the whole staff. Therefore many organizations use expensive and time taking application tests just to be on the safe side.

The development of psychological consultation practice in the commercial organizations opens a wide field to an employer for test application. During the consultation an expert touches upon almost all aspects of human life. People often address to tests to know more about themselves and sometimes to change themselves. It generates a special class of test techniques: from popular, quite often not serious questionnaires to freely structured projective methods exploring the depths of human mentality.

In labour relations, first of all, we have both common and different interests of two persons - an employer and an employee.

An employer needs employee’s knowledge and skills to reach his/her aims. A boss demands from an employee such work that will increase profitability of the company etc. Accordingly, the community of interests of an employer and the employee helps to achieve common aim. And as a result it entails prosperity for both of them.

Summarizing all the researches on this problem we came to conclusion that the process of primary informing of an employer is limited to article 65 Labour Code of the Russian Federation and the employer has no right to check the reliability of the data presented to him/her due to article 22 Labour Code of the Russian Federation. And in the course of work an employer has no right to interfere in his/her private life, to search for the information about him/her and check it.

Besides an employer abuses provisions of the article 65 Labour Code of the Russian Federation and goes far beyond their limits demanding candidate’s consent to processing of his/her personal data and carrying out validity check.

Potential candidate often tries to hide information about him/her or to give false data in order to get a vacant position. The way to learn more about a candidate can be: summarizing the results of testing, the results of the interview and the results of polygraph testing. According to the Russian legislation the results of psychological testing cannot be the reason for dismissal or refusal.

Any information that is not listed in the articles 65, 88 Labour Code of the Russian Federation concerning the private life of an employee for example about his family, health, about his/her location and off activities etc. falls under protection according to the articles 23 and 24 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The liability for constitutional infringement of the guaranteed rights is provided in the article 80 Labour Code of the Russian Federation (possibility of an employee to terminate the labour contract in time specified by him/her in the statement) and the article 90 Labour Code of the Russian Federation (administrative responsibility in the form of the fine up to 10 thousand rubles.); and the article 13.11 of the Administrative Code, item 137 Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (the criminal liability in the form of arrest for the term up to six months); the articles 150 and 151 Civil Code of the Russian Federation (compensation of the moral damage to an employee).

Taking into consideration all the information we come to conclusion that the legislator has not provided and even has not mentioned psychological testing in the articles of Labour Code. In this article we have considered the labour relatios of an employee and an employer and tried to reveal their objective legal status. I believe it is necessary that the legislator should make amendments in the Labour Code of the Russian Federation and include provisions concerning psychological testing.

The bibliography

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