The Client
A leading global engineering company with multiple divisions, operations across several continents, and a long-standing record of safety performance that the organisation considered a competitive advantage. Safety was fundamental to their strategy; committed to continuous improvement at every level of the business, the company approached the pre-selection question not from a position of weakness but from one of rigour: they were performing well, and they wanted to know if they could perform better.
The Challenge
The existing safety culture was strong. The gap was upstream, in the recruitment process itself. The organisation had invested significantly in safety training, in management systems, in leadership attention to safety outcomes at every level. What it had not done systematically was align its recruitment decisions with the specific cognitive and behavioural attributes that predicted safety performance, adaptability, and long-term success in safety-critical operational environments.
The practical consequence of this gap showed up in specific and observable ways. New recruits who completed training and passed assessments still varied considerably in how they actually performed in their first weeks. Some were alert, engaged, asking the right questions, operating carefully within the parameters of their training. Others were compliant in the formal sense but not yet safety-oriented, not yet reading the environment with the attentiveness that experienced operators developed over time. The trainers could see the difference. The supervisors could see the difference. The question was whether it was possible to select for the difference, before training began.
We were performing well, but we saw a chance to get even sharper about who we bring in. Safety is not just trained. It starts with who you hire.
Senior Manager, Group Operations
What We Did
Wharton Global conducted a comprehensive diagnostic across global operations before any assessment framework was designed. This began with live observation of onboarding sessions and production activities at multiple sites, which established what the observable differences between strong and average performers looked like in practice. What did experienced operators do differently when they encountered a novel situation? How did they manage uncertainty? What was their relationship with the rules, and how did they apply them when the situation did not exactly fit what the rules anticipated?
Structured conversations with frontline staff, trainers, and site leaders across multiple regions translated those observations into language that could inform assessment design. What trainers consistently said about the recruits who struggled versus those who thrived produced a set of patterns that were consistent across sites and geographies: attentiveness, comfort with uncertainty, willingness to ask questions before acting, and a natural disposition toward procedure that did not require constant external reinforcement.
Document reviews of recruitment frameworks, selection criteria, and safety integration processes established where the existing approach was strong and where the assessment gap was largest. Cross-functional workshops brought together HR, operations, and safety leadership to validate the diagnostic findings and build shared ownership of the solution.
Wharton Global then introduced a pre-selection testing framework specifically calibrated to this organisation's safety-critical requirements. Three areas were central. First, attention to detail and hazard perception: validated assessment of how an individual's cognitive attention operates under conditions of visual complexity and environmental uncertainty, which is meaningfully different from general intelligence and meaningfully predictive of safety-relevant behaviour. Second, cognitive agility under pressure: the ability to make sound decisions quickly when automated processes change unexpectedly, measured in ways that go beyond general reasoning ability. Third, safety-oriented behaviours, specifically rule adherence and adaptability: not just the willingness to follow instructions, but the understanding of why the rules exist and the capacity to apply that understanding in novel situations where the specific rule does not yet exist.
The framework was not a generic safety assessment. It was calibrated against the specific patterns that had been identified in this organisation's highest and most consistent safety performers, across divisions and geographies, and refined through pilot testing before full implementation.
The Results
Across several high-impact divisions following implementation:
35%
Improvement in safety-related readiness scores during onboarding, consistent across divisions and site types
Supervisors reported faster integration into team working practices, stronger first-month performance data, and greater confidence in the job fit and trainability of new recruits. Early attrition in the first three months, a period that carries disproportionate safety risk and operational cost, reduced measurably across participating divisions.
The qualitative difference was reported consistently. New recruits who had gone through the pre-selection framework arrived better prepared in ways that went beyond technical knowledge. They were more alert to their environment, more willing to ask questions before acting, and more naturally oriented toward the safety practices the culture expected. They looked, in the words of one site trainer, like people who had already decided that safety was their responsibility rather than the organisation's.
The company has since embedded pre-selection testing across all business units. A dedicated safety-focused assessment platform is always in use. Individual test profiles are integrated into onboarding, allowing trainers to focus attention and support where the data indicates it is most needed. Continuous feedback loops between hiring data and live safety metrics are being built to allow the framework to refine itself over time.
