Latest update December 19th, 2024 3:22 AM
Apr 26, 2014 Letters
DEAR EDITOR,
Just a few days ago, in an unpublished comment I inquiringly posed the question “Who will police the police?— accountability mechanism needed”.
Then almost as if someone was privy to my innermost thoughts, or I had the makings of a clairvoyant, here we have the President announcing the initiation of integrity tests geared towards fighting corruption inside and outside of the Police Force. Yes, integrity tests that are compulsory for the senior arms, or should that be the muscles of the law, as they struggle to control the damage that may be for all rhyme and reason, incorrigible. It should be immediately pointed out that integrity can be a behaviour or an action
Integrity testing methods have been developed over the years to assess the honesty of potential employees. According to Collins English Dictionary, “an honest person is one who is not given to lying, cheating, and stealing – he or she is trustworthy, not false or misleading, genuine, and characterized by sincerity and candor”. Integrity is defined as “adherence to moral principles, honesty; the quality of being unimpaired”. The two terms are generally employed to convey the same meaning.
An integrity test is a specific type of personality test designed to assess an applicant’s tendency to be honest, trustworthy, and dependable. A lack of integrity is associated with such counterproductive behaviours as theft, violence, sabotage, disciplinary problems, and absenteeism. Integrity tests have been found to measure some of the same factors as standard personality tests, particularly conscientiousness, and perhaps some aspects of emotional stability and agreeableness.
While I hail this bold move on the part of the Guyanese government in endeavouring to fight corruption inside and outside of the Police Force, it should be noted that most integrity tests ask very specific questions about things that an individual has done or believes is okay to do in the workplace. On a cautionary note, if the employer does not follow through to ask the behavioural interview questions to dive deeper around these items, he may screen out high quality individuals who had issues in the past, but they do not today.
Integrity tests have come a long way to partly providing solutions for problems facing organizations in regard to theft and other counter-productive workplace behaviours, something that has plagued the beleaguered force.
While the tests are not to be seen as a panacea and do not provide straightforward solutions to organizations, their use has proved to be more beneficial for organizations, and this may be the case for the Guyana Police Force. Incidentally, concluding on another questioning note, “On whom does the onus fall for administering these tests, and who will score and review the results? Nothing ventured and nothing gained. Or is it just another case of ‘Talking Half and Leaving Half?
Yvonne Sam
Dec 19, 2024
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