Grow, broaden, maintain: HR practices and how they matter for older workers

In the last issue of the Human Resource Management Journal, Dorien Kooij and colleagues investigate how general HR practices might have differential effects for younger and older employees. Given the ageing workforces prevelant in the West, it's an increasingly relevant issue.

800 respondents to a much larger survey were randomly selected to form eight equally sized age groups, ranging from those below 20 to an over-50 group. Participants reported their experiences of HR practices that could influence their ability, motivation or opportunities within the last 12 months. These practices were organised into bundles, the first containing practices that help the employee maintain their performance or minimise drops in capability: this comprised career advice, performance appraisal, opportunities to voice ideas, and access to information needed to carry out the job.

This was to be accompanied by just a second bundle, but confirmatory factor analysis found the best fit to the data was a total of three categories. Consequently the researchers added a development bundle, composed of formal training both for the current role and for anticipated future roles, and a job enrichment bundle, involving challenging job demands, and whether the job called on the full capacity of skills and knowledge that the individual possesses.

Overall, experience of each bundle was positively related to the measures of wellbeing collected in the survey - the individual's organisational commitment, their job satisfaction, and their perceived organisational fairness. The association between developmental practices and wellbeing was weaker for older workers relative to their younger counterparts. This was predicted on the basis that as we develop over our lifespan, our priorities shift away from opportunities for growth towards a 'prevention focus' that is concerned with keeping problems at bay. And indeed those practices within the maintenance bundle had a stronger relationship with wellbeing measures for older workers.

Although for older workers, growth is less important for wellbeing, Kooij's team predicted that it may be vital for their performance . As workplace demands evolve and fluctuate, older workers tend to be more at risk of experiencing obsolescence, which can be mitigated by proactively broadening functionality. Job performance was captured in the survey in the form of a self-rating, and was indeed found to have a significantly more positive relationship with both the development and job enrichment bundles (originally these were to be a single bundle, at which the prediction was pointed).

It should be noted that this 'more positive relationship' was a little odd, as it actually reflects a move from a negative relationship (more HR practices relating to negative wellbeing) to a non-significatn one, rather than from positive to more positive. There are some precedents for this negative relationship; explanations include participants self-reporting poorer performance because they are conscious that the training, while broadening, may be taking them away from the immediate demands of the job. Still, this makes the finding harder to parse, as does the fairly low effect sizes found in the study. (The authors raise this, but counter that effect size is of limited insight in these forms of regression analysis.)

This study suggests that older adults appreciate HR interventions to different degrees compared to their younger counterparts, treasuring more those that keep them on track than those designed for growth. The data at the least poses the possibility that in contrary to these preferences, these older workers may have more to gain from the activities they seek less. A conundrum for the HR sector to consider.

Kooij, D., Guest, D., Clinton, M., Knight, T., Jansen, P., & Dikkers, J. (2013). How the impact of HR practices on employee well-being and performance changes with age Human Resource Management Journal, 23 (1), 18-35 DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12000

Dorien T. A. M. Kooij, Annet H. De Lange, Paul G. W. Jansen, Ruth Kanfer and Josje S. E. Dikkers Age and work-related motives: Results of a meta-analysis Journal of Organizational Behavior 32. DOI: 10.1002/job.665

How disclosing conflicts of interest can pass the burden to the customer

 

We habitually consult experts to advise on personal and professional matters, but their recommendations can be coloured by conflicts of interest. Commonly advisors are required to disclose conflicts: armed with this information, the consumer can account for bias before making decisions. But evidence shows it's hard to make such adjustments. And new research by Sunita Sah, George Loewenstein and Daylia Cain suggests moreover that disclosure may make consumers feel obliged to follow the advisor's best interests.

Their series of studies collected data using a mobile van offering people chances to win prizes - from gift vouchers to chocolate bars - through a dice-roll lottery. They could choose from lotteries A or B, where overall A's prizes were slightly but evidently better. Before comitting, the chooser met another participant, the 'advisor', who handed them a written recommendation of which lottery to pick. In most cases, the advisor had a conflict of interest - they would also get a go on a lottery, but only if the chooser selected the weaker lottery B. The chooser then made their selection, rolled the dice and left; the advisor would then get their turn, if warranted. Participant numbers ranged from 124 to 278 for individual studies.

In the first study, 53% of choosers took lottery B after merely receiving the advice to do so. When the advisor's recommendation also included text revealing their conflict of interest, compliance advice rose to 81%. Yet in both conditions participants rated lottery A as more attractive (this was consistent across studies). A replication examined whether relatively low stakes were driving this abandonment of self interest, by doubling the prizes and recruiting students with presumably lower income as participants. Without disclosure, only 36% took the recommended B, but disclosure took the proportion to 82%.

Was this an altruistic act, choosers electing to be generous and go on with their day? Unlikely: the post-study survey suggested that after compliance, choosers were less happy, sensed more pressure and felt more uncomfortable about the decision, which doesn't suggest general altruism. Instead, the researchers liken this to a 'panhandler effect', where money is passed over due to discomfort over a face to face refusal. A third experiment investigated this: here, when the chooser learned of the conflict from the advisor compliance stood at 90%. When the information came instead from a 3rd party (embedded in the initial instructions) their compliance dropped to 72%; it's less awkward if you're not told directly by the person who hopes to gain, even if they know you know. And if the 3rd party info also stated the advisor was oblivious that you had been made aware of the conflict, the compliance plummet to 47%. This suggests that when choosers comply, it's partly to avoid the perception that they have betrayed the advisor's interests. Without the shared knowledge - I know that you know I stand to benefit - they're happy to disinherit them.

My only quibble with this argument is that in the final, 47% compliance condition, I might personally view the advisor as shiftier. Holding secret information, I may spend the interaction expectantly waiting for them to 'fess up to the conflict of interest - something the experiment actually prohibits. When they don't, I might feel like punishing them by going against their wishes. However, the post-survey scores suggest that there was no significant difference between how much advisors were liked and trusted in this condition and the other disclosure conditions, which goes some way to minimise this concern.

Overall, disclosure leads to more compliance with the advisors interests, especially when disclosure is face to face. This happens even though trust in the advisor drops, and choosers are less happy with the situation. This suggests that the tactic of disclosure practiced simply may be unhelpful for the chooser and ultimately less conducive to the relationship overall. Sah and colleagues agree that disclosure remains important and necessary, but suggest research into smarter ways to deliver it, as well as alternative approaches when conflicts of interest arise.

Sah, S., Loewenstein, G., & Cain, D. (2013). The burden of disclosure: Increased compliance with distrusted advice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104 (2), 289-304 DOI: 10.1037/a0030527

Further reading:

 Paul M Healy, Krishna G Palepu, (2001). Information asymmetry, corporate disclosure, and the capital markets: A review of the empirical disclosure literature, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Volume 31, Issues 1–3, September 2001, 405-440, DOI10.1016/S0165-4101(01)00018-0.
(link to pdf)

Fitting the office to our evolutionary niche

Imagine a workplace in harmony with our true nature. That's the aspiration held out by Carey Fitzgerald and Kimberley Danner in a recent paper surveying insights from environmental and evolutionary psychology and considering what they say about our work environments. The fundamental observation from which all else follows is that we are creatures evolved to live a life substantially in touch with nature and our own natural patterns. The workplace? Commonly, not so much...

Take greenery. There is evidence that exposure to natural environments improves our quality of life; for instance, jogging in a park is more effective than urban jogging for lowering anxiety and depression. In a workplace, this could translate to the presence of plants, and studies have shown that their presence can improve concentration and remove stress, presumably owing to their contributions to air quality as well as their immediate sensory effects. Similarly, access to windows is nigh-universally prized by workers.

Most workplaces, especially white collar ones, are sedentary environments that contrast with the lifestyles our species developed to cope with. One recent response to this within workplaces has been permitting or encouraging standing desks, which can make a substantial difference to health through upping 'non exercise activity thermogenesis' - the energy you burn off just through daily activities. Other approaches can include building opportunities to exercise, which if taken outdoors could kill two birds with one stone, something our ancestors were presumably more accomplished in than we were.

If we're going to be more permissive with working habits, how about allowing a nap? Inadequate sleep can impact motor skills, insight formation and language perception, and is a product of demanding environments that call for thinking, planning and anticipation, which constitute the bulk of workplaces. But we have a natural escape valve from overtiredness, and it's not sold at Starbucks. A short afternoon sleep is a feature of cultures worldwide, and is more effective than caffeine at improving performance in areas like motor and verbal tasks. It seems likely that napping is a feature of our circadian rhythms: it's a natural way to operate, not just a byproduct of a heavy lunch. 1/3 of surveyed workplaces say they would be ok with napping, but only 16% had provision for it, and only 10% of employees say they had done so at work, despite 48% napping in the last month (presumably on their own time).

Finally, Fitzgerald and Danner discuss the social factor of human existence. This is something better acknowledged within organisations - conflicts hurt wellbeing and performance, social support can buffer against stress - but what I found notable was a consideration of non-human companions. Bringing a pet to work can reduce your own stress, and a dog in the office can facilitate group cohesion, cooperation and trust.

If we're serious about wellbeing, engagement, and the better workplace, then these cornerstones of a life led adequately - light, air, movement, sleep and companionship - are things that organisations have got to put in place.


Fitzgerald CJ, & Danner KM (2012). Evolution in the office: how evolutionary psychology can increase employee health, happiness, and productivity. Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior, 10 (5), 770-81 PMID: 23253786
 
Further reading:
See the Psychologist article (and mp3 audio) where Craig Knight discusses environmental design - link here

Your boss's expectations shape your performance - but only if you trust them?

The Pygmalion effect is the much-observed finding that a leader's high expectations for their subordinates, if clearly communicated and followed up by supporting behaviours, translate into higher achievements for those subordinates. The leader paints the possibility of another possible self that the subordinate could become - 'be all you can be' - if they apply themselves and follow the path. Thus inspired, the subordinate fixes themself on the new horizon, and with guidance, surpasses themself. The leader keeps the horizon visible, a function termed 'the maintenance of hope'. As you can see, the orthodox view of this is rather unidirectional - leader transmits, others receive. In a theoretical paper, Leonard Kararkowsky, Nadia DeGama and Kenneth McBey unpack how the subordinate is likely to be a crucial factor in this effect: for them, it all comes down to trust.

Trust involves at its base a willingness to be vulnerable and put yourself in anothers hands, believing they will not let you down. Clearly the Pygmalion effect involves risk, as it calls for individuals to abandon old behaviours and strive for something currently beyond them. So it's reasonable to believe trust plays a part. Just how might it do so?

Firstly, the authors note that for trust to occur, the individual has to believe that the trustee has the ability to deliver. This is a cool, cognitive component of trust. Does this leader have the nous to get me from the present to the new possibility? And even before this, do I believe they possess good enough judgment to spot talent? If this trust is present, then the manager's high expectations can raise the subordinate's self-expectations, and with it self-efficacy and motivation to perform.

Just because they can, doesn't mean they will. So trust also relates to beliefs about a person's integrity: how reliable they are, whether their words meet their actions. Coupled with this is an even more important factor: benevolence. While integrity and capability are concerns to coolly appraise, benevolence involves emotional feelings of loyalty and attachment, the sense that this individual cares for you and will go beyond obligations to see you right. When leader Pygmalion behaviours - goal setting, feedback, advice - are viewed through the prism of integrity and benevolence, the subordinate can view them as one side of a social contract, where the leader is delivering effort (integrity) for the subordinate's good (benevolence). This calls for reciprocity from the subordinate, in the form of renewed efforts and changes in their own behaviour.

Karakowsky and colleagues note that the effect has been most deeply researched in educational and military settings - settings where respect for the other's authority and integrity is taken for granted.  The military setting in particular is heavily masculine, which may explain why the research often fails to find the effect with female leaders, who may be perceived through social stereotyping as less capable due to misfit to masculine activities. The authors conclude that for Pygmalion to be fully understood, we need to understand the influence of trust and the active role that subordinates need to take for change to occur.

Karakowsky, L., DeGama, N., & McBey, K. (2012). Facilitating the Pygmalion effect: The overlooked role of subordinate perceptions of the leader Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 85 (4), 579-599 DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8325.2012.02056.x

Further reading:

White, S. S., & Locke, E. A. (2000). Problems with the Pygmalion effect and some proposed solutions. The Leadership Quarterly, 11, 389–415. DOI: 10.1016/S1048-9843(00)00046-1 

Toxic Emotional Experiences: What they are, How they affect us, How to avoid them

When does experiencing negative emotions lead to longer-lasting consequences, for our mental health, our attitude toward work, or our performance? Negative emotions themselves tend to be short-lived, such as the flash of hot anger during a fruitless phone call with your would-be internet provider. These moments in themselves needn't necessarily wear us down; in fact, they can be galvanising, such as anger generated from a sense of injustice. Researchers Tina Kiefer and Laurie Barclay propose that for lasting harm to occur, discrete negative events need to happen against a wider backdrop, to which every event contributes and by which every event is given weight. These backdrops they describe as 'toxic emotional experiences' (TEEs).

Kiefer and Barclay explored this concept within a pool of 876 participants recruited online, asking them to anonymously rate their own performance, attitude toward the organisation (in terms of trust, perceived organisational support, and affective commitment, the feeling of belonging), and psychological health. These outcome measures were predicted using negative emotions such as angry or anxious, and as a second component of their model, features that are seen as defining of a TEE. This was based on items describing three features: whether emotional experiences were recurring, draining, and encouraged disconnection from others.

Structural Equational Modelling was used to ask whether and how the TEEs mediated the impact of negative emotions on the outcome measures. Within the data, various effects were found: performance was influenced by levels of disconnection and recurrence, psychological health by recurrence and draining, and attitude to organisation by recurrence. Total TEE also influenced each outcome.

In a second study, Kiefer and Barclay looked at helping behaviours, such as contributing ideas or sharing workload, within 136 individuals from within a single organisation. Contrary to predictions, higher incidence of negative emotions produced more helping behaviours, rather than less. It's possible this is an artefact of certain teams in high pressure, crisis situations, experiencing more negative emotions during a time when they were required to work more closely together. However, TEEs, particularly the recurring component, moderated the effect by making helping behaviours less likely. This study shows that not only are TEEs distinct from raw negative emotional events, the two can pull apart in different directions.

Recurring appeared to be a particularly important component of TEEs. You can see it as the chip, chipping away of resolve due to the sense that problems are continuing without a clear end. This study reinforces the importance of addressing persistent low-level negative issues, as their effects seem to be insidious - a kind of No Broken Windows effect for the emotional workplace, perhaps?

Kiefer, T., & Barclay, L. (2012). Understanding the mediating role of toxic emotional experiences in the relationship between negative emotions and adverse outcomes Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 85 (4), 600-625 DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8325.2012.02055.x


Further reading:

Lee, K., & Allen, N. J. (2002). Organizational citizenship behavior and workplace deviance: The role of affect and cognitions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 131–142. DOI:10.1037/0021-9010.87.1.131

Can more cognitive ability be a liability?

If you want to predict performance at work, you're hopefully aware of the long-investigated benefits that cognitive ability provide in many types of occupation. So hearing about apparently contradictory psychology studies in domains such as 'success under stress' where 'less is more', you're curious. Can cognitive ability - intelligence, roughly told - undermine task performance, or learning adaptability? A critical review by Oswalt and Beier argues that we needn't rewrite our assumptions just yet.

There are differing explanations for why ability could be a liability, all homing in on higher attentional control (through for instance high working memory capacity) biasing one towards highly conscious 'controlled processing', looking for perfect solutions when more automatic processing or loose heuristics do the job better, or at least protect you from falling into debilitating anxiety. If so, we could - we should - favour low-cognitive ability applicants for roles involving the kinds of tasks that show such effects. X and Y draw out three research areas that claim such effects, taking the position that the exceptional findings can be resolved by appraising the complexity of the tasks themselves.

First, 'pressure to perform' research asserts that when attempting difficult tasks, high cognitive ability individuals are more sensitive to pressures such as financial incentives or being observed, and their performance suffers accordingly. This is often construed as lower-ability individuals being more 'adaptable' to pressure. Beier and Oswalt firstly point out that in these studies the performance drop still leaves high-ability individuals doing better than their counterparts, just by a smaller margin than before. They go on to offer another account: under normal conditions, high-ability people do indeed tackle difficult tasks by bringing their attentional resources to bear, which pays off in superior performance. When pressure arises, which can indeed mess with highly conscious strategies, they rely more on the blunt, guessy, heuristic approach which low-ability people were using all along. Under this account, then, higher cognitive ability are *more* adaptable under pressure, changing up their strategies and still coming out top.

A study by DeCaro et al used a procedural learning paradigm where you must figure out the hidden rules to categorise images flashed on screen, varying in colour, shape, number and background. They showed that for simple rules high cognitive ability individuals learned faster, but the situation reversed when the rules were highly complex. Then, low-ability individuals are hypothesised to thrive by going with gut or employing kludgy strategies such as memorising individual successes rather than attempting to generalise to rules. But Beier and Oswalt suggest two problems concerning the goal of the task. The dependent measure of Task-Mastery was based on how long it took a participant to make a run of eight correct responses. But why not five? Or 15? A followup study showed that using 16-trial runs as your criteria, the ability liability disappeared. Perhaps more importantly, the goal was not explicit for participants. If it were, high-ability individuals might have exercised judgment as to whether to bother investing in solving the algorithm, or go for more imperfect tactics, as the reviews believe occurs in pressure to perform situations.

Finally, researchers investigating 'adaptive performance' have suggested that when learning a complex task, such as tank-battle simulations - a sudden change in the task demands (a massive terrain shift) is harder to stomach for those of higher cognitive ability, who experience a larger drop in performance at the point where we leave the familiar old world and bravely enter a new one. Again, this is marshalled as evidence of lack of flexibility due to commitment to one strategy.

In this particular study, the authors' analysis suggests that higher-ability people are not learning at a faster rate than their counterparts (presumably they begin with a higher capability, given that just as in the Pressure to Perform literature they do perform better overall than their counterparts). But through some simple modelling Beier and Oswalt demonstrate that this is hard to believe, as it suggests that in a complex situation with constantly changing demands - hundreds of brave new worlds - higher ability people would get worse and worse with respect to those with less ability, which is a radical claim. Instead, they suggest that the parallel learning rates are due to the analysis approach used, and that in truth the finding is more intuitive: higher ability means you learn a situation more quickly, and thus have more to lose at the moment where the conditions are altered.

This line of research line will continue, as we seek to better understand how performance is influenced by a range of interlocking factors. For now, Beier and Oswalt conclude that their review "is strongly aligned with one of the most consistent findings in over a century of psychological research: Cognitive ability exerts a main effect such that the smarter you are, the better you will perform on just about any complex task, all else being equal."

Beier, M., & Oswald, F. (2012). Is cognitive ability a liability? A critique and future research agenda on skilled performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 18 (4), 331-345 DOI: 10.1037/a0030869

Further reading:
 
Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 262–274.
doi:10.1037/0033-2909.124.2.262

Saving the world through psychology

Can Occupational Psychology play a part in saving the world? Absolutely, insisted Prof Stuart Carr in his keynote presentation at the DOP conference. After all, work is deeply woven into the world, so transforming one can influence the other. Carr brought this home through examples of the United Nation's 2015 Millennial Development Goals, which include reduction of poverty, which manifests in the wages that workers derive; education, which depends on the capability of teachers and other staff; and gender equality, which can be combated in the workplaces in which we spend much of our waking hours.

This exemplifies a humanitarian approach to work psychology, ensuring decent work for all workers and ensuring that the work they do meets responsibilities towards multiple stakeholders, rather than the bottom line. Carr provided some examples of how he and collaborators are making inroads into this, for instance by organising a Global Special Issue on Psychology and Poverty reduction that spanned multiple journals, raising awareness of how psychology can point at these issues.

Carr also raised another way to use psychology to improve the world: by applying it directly to the conditions of those involved in Humanitarian Work. These roles can involve risk and be demanding, so it would be useful to investigate this and take steps to foster well-being. And any way to improve the impact of the humanitarian work itself would obviously be beneficial. Carr reported on the creation of online networks such as Humanitarian Work Psychology that connect researchers,  students and those on the ground, who are commonly isolated, to allow them to share knowledge and put it to work on actual problems.

So we can change the world through 'Humanitarian' Work Psychology to make conditions of work decent everywhere, coupled with 'Humanitarian Work' Psychology that focuses attention on those aspiring to be levers of change in the world. Further examples abounded in the presentation, including a global task force to address pay disparities in humanitarian work: the dual pay levels for foreign and national staff causing distancing of the two groups due to negative appraisals - the former rationalising the latter's low pay as reflecting their capability, the latter becoming demotivated and distrustful of the attitude of the foreigners, causing a vicious cycle.

There is much more to do, and the keynote was a call to arms to the profession as a whole. As Carr reminded us, much occupational psychology work developed in the Peace Corps in the 1960s and following, and only later became concentrated in focus on the for-profit sector. A shift is possible and long overdue. Carr likened this to a Koru, the fern frond native to many countries including his home in New Zealand, whose spiral shape suggests a return to beginnings, and whose swift unfurling denotes the possibility of change.

Carr, S., McWha, I., MacLachlan, M., & Furnham, A. (2010). International–local remuneration differences across six countries: Do they undermine poverty reduction work? International Journal of Psychology, 45 (5), 321-340 DOI: 10.1080/00207594.2010.491990