Reducing compensation costs through improved pre-employment screening

PDS is one of the nation’s premier specialty recruiting firms with 31 offices nationwide, supplying contract personnel both domestically and internationally. Specializing in highly skilled trades including engineering, mechanics and installers, PDS annually provides more than 10,000 contractors with contracted employment. PDS provides temporary help, temp-to-hire candidates, CAD/CAM engineers, IT pros, and on-site and vendor managers to many industries, including: Aerospace, Civil/Architectural, Electronics, Government, Software, Automotive, Defensive/Military, Energy, Medical, and Telecommunications.

Ever increasingly, PDS is called upon by Global 100 clientele to provide mission critical support for technical projects and talent acquisition efforts abroad. Presently, PDS’ resources are engaged in operations around the globe including the United Kingdom, Sweden, Italy, Kuwait, Dubai, the Philippines, Australia and Brazil.

The solution

PDS determined that productivity and safety were critical competencies they wanted to measure in order to identify candidates that were less likely to be involved in workers compensation claims. Talogy worked with PDS to identify an assessment that measured these critical attributes and fit their logistical and fiscal needs. Additionally, Talogy developed a custom candidate report based on PDS specifications which provided conservative ratings for each candidate based on PDS requirements. After implementing the new assessment, PDS determined that two versions of the assessment would be necessary based on whether or not the candidate was a new hire or a rehire. The new rehire assessment tested more heavily on ‘safety’ because of the information gathered during that employee’s preceding period of employment. In many cases, the employer requested that employee specifically because of the prior, positive job performance.

The results

Prior to contacting Talogy regarding their assessment needs, PDS had averaged 110-115 workers’ compensation claims per year. After three years of implementation, there was an estimated reduction in workers’ compensation costs of over $450,000 per year, with annual workers’ compensation claims decreasing from 115 to 18 claims per year after partnering. It is also estimated that pre-employment screening successfully filtered out 20% of candidates in the pre-employment stage who possessed a higher statistical probability of demonstrating low production and/or unsafe behaviors.