Second-rates and saboteurs: possible consequences of employee of the month schemes?

As the BPS' newest employee, I'm thinking about how to make a good impression on my peers and managers. Perhaps I could even make it to Employee of the Month! "EOM" schemes are highly popular across companies, and considered by many to be best practice, so I was fascinated to find a paper by Johnson and Dickinson that starts to explore the motivational consequences of such schemes.

The studies described in the article seem to me preliminary, with a small student sample and favouring eyeballing over statistical analysis; I'll just touch on them below. The literature review, however, is a real eye-opener, and reveals how much opportunity there is for investigation of this area, with “no published empirical studies on EOM, even within a variety of disciplines such as psychology, management, and economics." Moreover, there are a number of criticisms of EOM design, including:

• A competitive structure. If everyone performs well this month, there's still only one EOM: it pays to do better than others, not to excel together.
• A winner-takes-all design. Small differences in performance may make the difference between acclaim and... tumbleweed. The pretty good and the mediocre are treated the same: they're invisible.
• A focus on results over methods. Getting things done by bulldozing your workmates could be a way to win the award.
• Criteria that are often vague and not transparent.

Some EOM schemes attempt to 'share the wealth' by ensuring the award revolves around to new individuals. This could however dampen any recognition value it has: "I've performed best this month... except for maybe Janet and Khaled, who already got it." The authors investigate this: in their sample of six students they don't see visible improvements on a dull computer-based processing task after being told they have won a revolving award.

A non-revolving scheme however, can end up with one or several great performers hogging the award, leaving the swathe of the 'able middle' unrecognised and unmotivated. Johnson and Dickinson look at this also, in a study where they set up their participants to always come in between 2nd and 5th place behind a named (fictional) "co-worker". Over time, a few of the students tailed off somewhat in performance, but a few others didn't. In my view this research doesn't provide compelling evidence for or against these EOM features, but lays some groundwork for subsequent work: watch this space.

One further risk, deliberately excluded from the research by using fictional teams, is that employees may seek the award via counterproductive work behaviours that could even slip into covert sabotage. If Steve is just one flawless restaurant set-up ahead of me, maybe I'll dawdle the next time he's in charge. This is serious business, and the consequence of EOMs focusing on results over behaviour.

Overall, this paper calls to our attention how shaky the theory and evidence for EOM schemes is, despite their obvious attractions as catchy, memorable, and simple ways to try to recognise employees. Raising the number of awards and a greater focus on behaviours seem supportable steps, but it's also key that organisations look inward to how the schemes are viewed by the employees who participate – or not.

Does your organisation have a EOM scheme? What are your views on its strengths and weaknesses?

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Johnson, D., & Dickinson, A. (2010). Employee-of-the-Month Programs: Do They Really Work? Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 30 (4), 308-324 DOI: 10.1080/01608061.2010.520144

Hey co-worker, your family stresses affect me, too

Kim is a little worried about her co-worker Greg. She hears all about his home issues: young kids, ill mother, and a house sale turned ugly.

You hear that his mammoth project has been stuttering recently - unsurprising.

It seems to have affected Kim a little too...

wonder how she is finding work right now?

Greg is experiencing family-work interference (FWI), where an individual struggles in the workplace, home, or in both domains, due to the conflicting demands they make. These include time demands and stresses, together with required behaviours - a workplace may expect an objective and cool style, whereas a family wants your openness and warmth. We vary in how we experience this: men are most likely to perceive the problem as family obstructing their work, rather than the reverse, and ‘Type-A’ traits are associated with more FWI. All in all, though, these clashes cause problems.

Now a new study by Lieke ten Brummelhuis and colleagues suggests that an employee’s levels of FWI affects not just themselves, but their co-workers too. They studied 1,430 pairs of employees from a Dutch policing organisation, and measured whether the FWI of one employee correlated with more sick days and stronger intention to leave the organisation for both members of the pair. They discovered it did: higher FWI produced worse outcomes on both measures for the employee themselves, and somewhat more weakly for their co-worker as well.

The team provide evidence that the negative outcomes are due to the transmission of emotional states from one co-worker to the other, a process called crossover. They measured states commonly associated with FWI: burnout, where exhaustion and doubts stack up to make daily responsibilities a struggle, and low levels of engagement, an attunement with your job, organisation, profession. The study showed that both crossed-over, and also showed that each appears to have a distinct effect. Burnout was more likely to lead to sick days, whereas lack of engagement, by eroding loyalty, increases intention to leave.

How the feelings caused by FWI cross-over isn’t fully understood. It’s likely to be a combination of negative banter, atmosphere, and displaced tasks from the overloaded employee. As such, it's premature on the basis of this research to recommend how to reduce the cross-over; some may be due to too much sharing between colleagues and some due to too little. But we can clearly see the benefit in seeking to reduce FWI for each and every employee, as the consequences can be far spreading. When Greg is feeling the strain, Kim may be feeling it, too.

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Ten Brummelhuis, L.L., Bakker, A.B., Euwema, M.C. (2010). Is family-to-work interference related to co-workers' work outcomes? Journal of Vocational Behavior, 77(3), 461-469, DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2010.06.001

Arrogant employees are judged poorer at their jobs, even by themselves

We all believed that Neville
was a f f f fine lad
but when we go to know him better
Neville drove us mad.
Neville is a bighead
Neville is a pain
Neville is a pratt without a brain

Toy Dolls – Neville is a Nerd

Most of us can recount work experiences involving people we would call arrogant. However, there's been little research pinning arrogance down, measuring it, or discovering its consequences for the workplace. A recent paper introduces a way to measure it and investigates what sets the arrogant individual apart.

Russell Johnson and colleagues firstly set out their definition: arrogance consists of those behaviours that exaggerate your importance and disparage others. This distinguishes it from narcissism which, although related, includes thoughts and attitudes that don't affect others, such as the physical self-admiration of Narcissus himself.

The authors gathered experiences of arrogant behaviour from employee focus groups to create the Workplace Arrogance Scale (WARS) which they validated through a series of studies. An example item is 'Shoots down other people's ideas in public'. They were then able to turn to the consequences of arrogance, firstly showing that arrogant individuals report fewer organisational citizenship behaviours – acting beyond your job to help others or the wider organisation. They then turned to the biggie: how good are arrogant individuals at their jobs?

To answer this, the researchers recruited eighty-two participants from a number of companies. They provided a range of measures including the WARS, overall task performance and specific performance areas - customers, relationships and development – on which each participant was rated by themselves and by nominated individuals in their organisation. (Getting these other-perspectives was possible as the WARS looks at behaviours rather than hidden thoughts.)

Far from being the most able, arrogant workers were judged weaker in almost every way by one rating group or other. Some of the findings are less surprising: people who think their managers are arrogant grade them as poorer across the board, which may be influenced by a reverse halo effect (overgeneralising a negative feature) or using the rating process to punish those they resent. Some are more compelling: individuals who rate themselves more arrogant rate themselves weaker at relationships and overall performance, with their supervisors and direct reports agreeing.

Another study looked at cognitive ability within another 172 working individuals who completed the Wesman Classification Test, a well-established measure of verbal and numerical reasoning. Weaker performance in either area was associated with higher ratings of arrogance.

There's evidence that arrogant people are aware of these shortcomings, not least in the lower ratings they give themselves. The studies also gathered ratings of more internal features, finding that arrogant individuals report lower self-esteem, greater work-related strain, and are more likely to fixate on minimizing mistakes rather than focusing on success. This paints a picture of the arrogant as anxious to cut it but aware they may be performing at the edge of their ability, preoccupied with failure and trying to survive by cutting others down.

However, as all studies (bar the cognitive ability scores) used subjective ratings, we can't discount the possibility that it is perceived performance that is weaker for the arrogant; perhaps they alienate others and, ostracised, join their critics in discounting themselves. Further research using objective measures of performance (eg sales data) could address this issue. For now we should pay more attention to arrogance in the workplace: it appears the bigheads don't have the capabilities to match.

Johnson, R. E., Silverman, S. B., Shyamsunder, A., Swee, H., Rodopman, O., Cho, E., et al. (2010). Acting Superior But Actually Inferior?: Correlates and Consequences of Workplace Arrogance. Human Performance, 23(5), 403-427. doi:10.1080/08959285.2010.515279

Understanding job demands: hindrances and challenges are not the same

What's in a job? The Job Demands-Resources Model answers this question by defining two types of characteristics: job demands such as workload run down our energy and can harm our health, whereas job resources, including positive feedback, stimulate us and increase engagement. Neat, but the model has struggled with evidence that, against expectations, some job demands also link to higher levels of engagement.

A study by Anja Van den Broeck and colleagues approaches this by integrating work that carves demands into two further types. First are hindrances, e.g., repeated conflict: these provoke negative feeling, encouraging us to retreat into managing our feelings. Second are challenges, which include workload: these are still effortful but draw us toward a problem-solving stance which can lead to fulfillment and stimulation. Both types can run down our energy, but challenges can reward us in return.

Integrating this view into the model could remedy the inconsistencies - but not without answering some questions. Specifically, the hindrance-challenge research rarely considers job resources, and it's important to know what the beneficial effects of challenges are after resources are taken into account. (If increases in workload were sometimes accompanied by a free expresso, we'd want our analysis to separate caffeine from the workload effect.)

The study asked participants to complete questionnaires reporting levels of exhaustion (a measure of energy depletion) and vigour (stimulation), together with ratings of various job characteristics: demands (negative work–home interference and emotional demands), challenges (workload and cognitive demands), and resources (autonomy and social support). It used two samples, seeking to generalise beyond a single industry: these were 261 call centre agents and 441 police officers, distinctive due to more education and seniority.

They found that higher vigour - the good stuff - was not only associated with lower hindrances and higher job resources, but also with higher job challenges. Modelling the data confirmed that challenges had a significant and separate effect to job resources. (Bang goes my expresso theory.)

The story for exhaustion was less straightforward. Generally it increased with higher job demands and lower job resources*, in line with expectations. However the authors found no relationship either way to job challenges – surprising, as traditionally these would be classed as job demands, and demands = energy depletion. The authors recommend future work consider treating energy as elastic rather than as a fixed resource: challenges may produce energy to balance what they expend.

The study makes it clear that job challenges are made of different stuff from both job resources and their job demand cousins, hindrances, and modelling the data using three characteristics did a better job than the Demand-Resource model (or indeed, other ways to pair the characteristics).

Implications

As a practitioner, a model is a useful way to carve up the world: to consider the stresses and supports in a role for job redesign, or as touch-points for a developmental discussion. Many such models are spirited out of the air, and an approach that's evidence based is hugely preferable.

But when a model doesn't reflect the nuance of personal experience, people won't buy it. For many people, the cognitive load of a job isn't simply a hassle, a drain. It has a further quality, one the study's authors relate to Selye's concept of eustress- stress that spurs us forward. To separate these challenges from the disruptive distress of a hindrance feels right, and this study provides evidence that doing so sharpens this solid model of what's in a job.

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Van den Broeck, A., De Cuyper, N., De Witte, H. & Vansteenkiste, M. (2010). Not all job demands are equal: Differentiating job hindrances and job challenges in the Job Demands–Resources model. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 19(6), 735-759. doi:10.1080/13594320903223839

*For the call centre workers, job resources did not relate to exhaustion. The authors suggest that in this group of more temporary workers exhaustion was driven by immediate concerns rather than long-term issues the resources can shield against.

Introducing the BPS Occupational Digest

This is a place for news, reviews and reports on how psychology matters in the workplace. It's intended for HR professionals, occupational psychologists, managers, consultants, students or anyone who is curious about how people operate at work and ideas on how to improve that.

This blog is produced by the British Psychological Society to promote psychology and make it more accessible. It builds on the successes of its inspiration the BPS Research Digest and magazine The Psychologist. The Occupational Digest is funded by the Division of Occupational Psychology, the part of the Society that looks after that profession in the UK.

We have a lot of ideas on how to make this site valuable, accessible, and distinctive. Our initial priority will be summary reports of research findings, following the format that made the Research Digest such a success. Over the coming months, we will be looking to you to help us understand what is most useful - so we can do more of it! One way to do this is to use the comments function for this, or any post: acess this by clicking where it says 0 comments (or 1, or 14) at the bottom of the post. Alternatively you may contact me directly by email on alex [dot] fradera [at] gmail [dot] com.

I'm your editor, Alex Fradera, and I look forward to the conversation we're about to start.