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

Does great performance depend on enjoying your work?

What fires you to get through today's pile of work? Does it intrinsically attract you, tugging your curiosity? Or do you feel a weight of obligation to do as you're supposed to? These two motivation sources, enjoying work versus being driven to work, have been well examined in the workaholism literature, with obligation leading to personal outcomes such as anxiety and rising guilt. However, despite popular accounts such as Daniel Pink's Drive, there is limited research contrasting how these approaches translate to workplace outcomes.

Laura Graves and her colleagues set out to remedy this, examining three areas that motivation could influence. The team approached managers on  a 5-day leadership program, 357 of whom consented to complete a questionnaire probing how much they enjoyed work, and were driven by it. They also rated two outcome measures: career satisfaction and current psychological strain. A third key measure was work performance, determined by ratings by those who knew the manager:  peers, superiors, direct reports, and others in the organisation.

Managers who reported more enjoyment of work were better performers, experienced less strain and were more satisfied with their careers; good news for them. But higher self-ratings of 'driven to work' were unrelated to these areas; it didn't help, but neither did it hinder. In fact, being driven to work actually helped maintain performance when the enjoyment motive was lacking. However, under that set of conditions psychological strain did increase, suggesting that the obligation motivation can be a blunt instrument of achieving performance when nothing else is available, but it comes at a cost.

This research is important in reinforcing the benefits of a workforce intrinsically stimulated by its daily activities. The effects of enjoying work can be interpreted in terms of positive mood that  increases cognitive capacity through a broaden-and-build effect, and by ensuring that goals achieved are personally meaningful and thereby satisfying. But these findings also suggest that a traditional, obligation-focused mindset isn't calamitous and can be productive – for the organisation, at least - when interesting work is lacking. Findings like this remind us that if we want to move to a world of more fulfilling, happier employment, we shouldn't allow our arguments to solely rely on the organisation's short-term self-interest.

Graves, L., Ruderman, M., Ohlott, P., & Weber, T. (2012). Driven to Work and Enjoyment of Work: Effects on Managers' Outcomes Journal of Management, 38 (5), 1655-1680 DOI: 10.1177/0149206310363612

Monitoring 'self-managing' employees may provoke negative work behaviours

Good things can come when members of an organisation are allowed to manage their own work, such as greater job satisfaction and better adherence with organisational policy. But this involves management doing an uncomfortable thing: surrendering control. Often, organisations compensate by coupling self-management with surveillance techniques of the  close-up or electronic variety. New research suggests that self-management has even more benefits, but that mashing it with surveillance can end up bringing out the worst in people.

Authors Jaclyn Jenson and Jana Raver conducted two studies, the first looking to establish whether people given freedom would use it to perform more positive, discretionary acts, so-called organisational citizenship behaviours or OCBs. By mocking up a fictional consultancy, the researchers could recruit 211 participants (in their own minds, employees on a one-off, very short-term contract) to show up, review investment advice, and write it up in the form of a report. Before starting their short-term shift, they were given Terms of Service both printed and read aloud; these either emphasised self-management or other-management, a promise cashed out by the shift supervisor sitting passively or actively pacing the room. The work involved discretionary elements, such as how long the report and whether to complete or skip some optional questionnaires. The amount of discretional effort  was turned into a OCB score: individuals in the self-management condition scored higher, making efforts over and above what was demanded.

Study two surveyed individuals across a range of organisations, to offer a field replication and extend the investigation to understand how surveillance interacts with self-management. The survey introduced a further outcome measure, counter-productive work behaviours (CWBs), choosing to undermine the organisation in some way, such as deliberately dragging your heels on a task. The data from the 423 respondents suggested that surveillance in itself encouraged CWBs, but this was driven by its interaction with self-management. When individuals believed they were supposed to be self managing - 'It is my responsibility, and not my organization’s, to monitor my own workplace behavior and job performance' - but the reality was that they were being monitored,  their CWBs were markedly higher. Jensen and Raver predicted this finding, seeing it as an example of psychological reactance: when freedom you believe you deserve is seemingly taken away, you will try to recover autonomy through other means, even at the expense of the organisation. Analysing trust in the organisation, also surveyed, revealed that the normally observed relationship between self management and higher trust was severed once surveillance entered the mix.

This research suggests that if you don't want to evoke petty revenges from employees, it's vital that cultures of self-management aren't tempered by close surveillance. By resisting that temptation, you're likely to yield benefits, your people more willing to perform beyond what is expected.

Jaclyn M. Jensen, & Jana L. Raver (2012). When Self-Management and Surveillance Collide: Consequences for Employees’ Organizational Citizenship and Counterproductive Work Behaviors Group Organization Management, 37 (3), 308-346 DOI: 10.1177/1059601112445804

What's so special about family firms?

Family firms are a significant phenomena on the business landscape. Estimates suggest they account for approximately 90% of all firms. Yet their unique qualities are often ignored by organisational research, or otherwise ghettoised into specialist conversations. According to a new review article in the Journal of Management, this means missing out on insights that can inform organisations of every stripe.

Eric Gedajlovic and colleagues raise some of the unique features of a family firm. The first is they are necessarily run by their owner, which has consequences for the motivations, intent and effort put in by leadership. Deep ties to personal reputation, the use of personal finances for investments, and obligations to future generations (literally, in the form of family descendents), make such owner-managers more likely to operate ethically, prudently, and for the long-term.

Another feature is informality. Businesses that rely on formal governance can't get away with handshake deals and overt, personal reciprocity, but family firms operate more personally, finding quicker ways to get things done that lower transaction costs, such as bypassing a laborious tender process. As a further edge, this is an effective way to cultivate strong, trust-based personal networks. Finally, long-standing family members and other loyal lifers offer a wealth of tacit knowledge: things you know but don't necessarily know you know, that makes things run more smoothly. Family firms can leverage such information, free to use gut and rules of thumb for rapid responses.

There are downsides too. In general, the model is in some tension with meritocracy, and there is evidence that CEOs who get their job through primogeniture tend to under-perform compared to the market. Dishonest or slack managers may be forgiven due to personal ties or outright nepotism. And finally, the strong in-group formed may carry a failure to trust outsiders, and make these firms slower in keeping up, particularly with fast-changing trends such as in technology.

These features of family firms are often magnifications of things present in any work organisation, which makes them worth exploring. Take the tensions, so evident in family firms, between the decision that makes financial sense and the one that 'feels right'. Owner-managers may want to cement power, crave a high status, risky deal, or be unwilling to deviate from the founder's vision, and investigating them has been helpful to prospect theory, looking at the roots of seemingly irrational business decisions. Another perspective looks at how these non-financially driven decisions can help organisations in the long run; such 'mixed motives' in businesses help encourage collaboration and the sense of a mission bigger than any bottom line. As a result, the risks and benefits associated with the way business is done in family firms can be understood and used to develop ways of working for organisations in general.

Eric Gedajlovic, Michael Carney, James J. Chrisman, & Franz W. Kellermanns (2012). The Adolescence of Family Firm Research: Taking Stock and Planning for the Future Journal of Management , 38 (4), 1010-1037 DOI: 10.1177/0149206311429990

Training is more effective for those in their chosen job

Why do some get more out of training than others? One major factor is motivation, leading to such outcomes as greater skill acquisition, higher post-training confidence, and stronger intentions to apply the learning in the workplace. Trainers and researchers now understand ways to act on this, enhancing motivation by giving participants more control over the procedures of training and a choice in whether to participate in the first place. What else could help? Many models suggest that intrinsic motivation is facilitated by autonomy: the sense that you've chosen to be where you are, or do what you are doing. A recent study provides evidence that having a job that you chose to be in is linked, through motivation, to positive training outcomes.

John Patrick and his team from Cardiff University recruited as study participants 232 military instructors from across the British armed forces, themselves about to receive training on how to be a more effective instructor. For 161 participants, instructor was their job of choice, whereas the 72 remaining participants had this job assigned to them. Prior to training, they completed a questionnaire identifying their motivation for the course; after training they indicated their intention to apply the learning in the workplace. On both occasions (pre- and post-training) the instructors also provided ratings of self-efficacy - their confidence in their ability to carry out their instructor duties - and completed items testing their knowledge of the topic areas covered by the training.

Patrick's team built and tested a model wherein being in one's chosen job would cascade through pre-training attitude into post-training outcomes. They found that being in a job of choice was associated with higher pre-training motivation, which had the post-training benefits of greater knowledge acquisition and greater intention to apply the learning in the workplace. Being in a job of choice was directly associated with intention to apply learning, regardless of motivation. Although post-training self-efficacy was also higher for this group, this is less remarkable as the mechanism was unrelated to motivation, but simply that these individuals tended to have higher self-efficacy from the beginning.

The authors conclude that "it is important, whenever possible, to grant employees their choice of job when being moved within an organization" - not just for the sake of long-term aspirations, or their immediate performance, but in terms of their capacity and willingness to improve over time.

Patrick, J., Smy, V., Tombs, M., & Shelton, K. (2012). Being in one's chosen job determines pre-training attitudes and training outcomes Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 85 (2), 245-257 DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8325.2011.02027.x

Sleep less and waste more time online: the temptations of cyberloafing

Cyberloafing is when work time is frittered away on an unrelated online activity, whether it be web comics, perusing news sites or watching the 1982 snooker championship final. A new article suggests that we may be more prone to it when we haven't had enough sleep. Its authors, led by David Wagner, began sifting through Google's publically available data for rates of Entertainment-related searches, judged to be a reasonable proxy of cyberloafing. But how can anonymous data shed light on an issue involving sleeping habits?

The investigators recognised an event that affects everyone's sleep: when the clocks go forward for Daylight Saving Time. Prior evidence suggests we lose on average 40 minutes of sleep per night following the switch, as our body rhythms struggle to adjust. (Exploiting a fixed phenomena is an example of a quasi-experiment; another would be the hurricane that occurred within this study on emotional hangovers.) The researchers used data from 203 metropolitan areas in the USA, weighted by area size, across 2004-2009. They found that Entertainment-related searches on the Monday after DST were 3.1% more prevalent than the previous Monday, and 6.4% than the subsequent Monday . It's worth noting that the data isn't segmented by work and leisure hours, so the effect includes extra surfing that might occur later at night, when people are still feeling awake; however, the bulk of online activity occurs during working hours.

A second study took this to controlled lab conditions. 96 undergraduate students wore a sleep monitoring bracelet overnight before attending a lab session to complete a computer task - assessing a potential new professor for the university by watching a 42 minute video lecture. What the researchers were really interested in was the amount of time they would spend surfing the internet instead. Cyberloafing was higher for participants who experienced more instances of sleep interruption or less sleep overall, as recorded by their monitoring bracelet.

This is another piece of research advancing the ego depletion theory of why we fail to effectively regulate behaviour. This states that willpower is a resource that is used up through effortful acts, leaving us susceptible to temptation or laziness. Researchers have previously argued that sleep is a means of recharging our regulatory resources, and these studies confirm that less sleep does indeed make us prey to counterproductive activities like cyberloafing. However, those who naturally exercise self-discipline may be somewhat resistant: in study two, the effect of sleep interruption on cyberloafing was weaker for participants who scored high on a measure of conscientiousness administered beforehand. (The effect of less overall sleep still remained.) This is consistent with ego depletion, as highly conscientious types are more likely to actively use methods to regulate their effort to overcome counterproductive behaviours, rather than taking the path of least resistance.

The costs of cyberloafing have been estimated at around £300m a year, so it's worth understanding when we're more vulnerable to its temptations;  UK employers should remember this when our clocks go forward on the 25th of this month. Aware of its power, I've included only one extraneous, non-work related link in the above text, and it's a niche one at that. But if you're a classic snooker fan with a tricky deadline, I'm so sorry. Just think about all the time I wasted considering the alternatives.

Wagner, D., Barnes, C., Lim, V., & Ferris, D. (2012). Lost Sleep and Cyberloafing: Evidence From the Laboratory and a Daylight Saving Time Quasi-Experiment. Journal of Applied Psychology DOI: 10.1037/a0027557

MBA early career challenges: handling others and reconceiving yourself

MBA courses are meant to prepare their students to become effective business leaders, and give a lot of attention to that goal. This mid-late career focus makes it reasonable to wonder how MBA graduates are equipped for their earlier career, when they take their classroom knowledge to a managerial role with significant responsibilities. Beth Benjamin and Charles O'Reilly of Stanford University conducted a qualitative investigation into early-career challenges for 55 such “manager-graduates”, to understand the near-term needs of a newly minted MBA, and hence how their course could leave them better prepared.

Their interviews, exploring especially challenging episodes in the early career of these manager-graduates, illustrated how an educational experience emphasising analytical problem solving, graft, and individual success, inevitably shapes a more task-oriented approach. Often knowing 'what' to do, the manager-graduate is less sure on 'how to do it', notably in the social dimension.

Aggressively outdoing his peers to wind up with a promotion, one interviewee entered his role only to have several team members - once his peers - walk out. His learning from this was to “treat your peers as though they might someday be your boss or direct reports.” Another trap was assuming that others share your approach, motivation and skills towards work issues; this can lead to overly relaxed expectation-setting or misjudging how to motivate others for a new direction. One interviewee baldly stated "[Business School] doesn’t prepare you to manage a wide swatch of people", such as those whose life doesn’t revolve around business excellence.

Another theme of the research was the need for manager-graduates to shift mind-set. They needed to flourish when their role didn't provide opportunity for direct personal achievements, by embracing being a "caretaker for something larger than myself". They also needed to cope with, and learn from, personal disappointments, which can be a real challenge for a perennial straight-A student unused to such situations.

All the challenges represented some form of transition point, where the manager-graduate had to drop old assumptions, turn to different skills, renegotiate relationships or take a new approach. Such transitions are vital times for spurring learning forward, but can be problematic if they come before the individual is ready for them.

Benjamin and O'Reilly fear the MBA system doesn't accomplish this preparation, as "teaching leadership principles without sufficient application opportunities runs the risk of making complex leadership concepts appear simple and obvious"; for instance, we should be empathic leaders - but how do we manage that? Although applied learning does occur in MBAs, they feel there is a need for better integration, to understand the how in the context of the what, to provide their students well-practiced strategies to carry them through the situations of stress that will undoubtedly define their early career.

Benjamin, B., & O'Reilly, C. (2011). Becoming a Leader: Early Career Challenges Faced by MBA Graduates The Academy of Management Learning and Education, 10 (3), 452-472 DOI: 10.5465/amle.2011.0002

Some of us experience bigger 'emotional hangovers', whether from fun activities or hurricanes

While some of us may be generally happier than others, all of us experience different emotions from day to day. A fascinating new study suggests that these fluctuations are due to two factors: a cycling of emotion levels across the working week, and our unique personal sensitivity to both good and bad daily events. The study even has hurricanes.

Daniel J. Beal and Louma Ghandour from Rice University set out to track the daily affect patterns of participants from an IT services company. They were particularly interested in how intrinsic task motivation – how fulfilling the participants found their work that day – influenced emotion or affect. Ten days in, Hurricane Ike struck the region. Recommencing some weeks later, the study also took the chance to examine how this negative one-off event influenced matters.

The 65 participants completed 21 end-of-day surveys (prompted by an email reminder), rating intrinsic task motivation, together with how much they felt emotional states like frustrated, discouraged, happy and proud. As per other recent research, the negative emotions showed a cyclical pattern, peaking at Wednesday with a projected bottoming out on Saturday; positive emotions showed the inverse pattern. There were also individual differences in average scores: some people are generally more frustrated than others.

The authors also calculated each participant’s ‘affect spin’, a measure of day-to-day emotional volatility, a high score meaning that person experienced a wide range of different affect states from day to day. The authors found that having a motivating day's work affected that day’s positive mood for everyone, but individuals with high affect spin saw a kind of positive hangover into the next day as well.

After Hurricane Ike, everyone experienced lower levels of positive affect. This began to recover as the event receded into the past, but not for those with high affect spin, who seemed to be suffering a longer hangover again, but this time with negative consequences.

Individual differences in emotional state matter, and this study reminds us that we don't just differ on average, but also in how dynamically our mood responds to events. It's possible that offering a fascinating problem to your reactive employee on a Monday will generate benefits that carry forward, and battle the mid-week dip. The authors conclude that “mapping the terrain of positive and negative affective events and their implications for worker well-being can help to ground the field of organizational psychology in a truly experiential understanding of work life.”

Beal, D., & Ghandour, L. (2011). Stability, change, and the stability of change in daily workplace affect Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32 (4), 526-546 DOI: 10.1002/job.713

Considering how others can help with goals leads us to plan less effort towards reaching them

We can't achieve our goals without making some effort. Summoning the willpower to put things in place and see them through can be tough. A recent study suggests that under certain conditions, we're willing to surrender motivational responsibility in the hope that our support networks will pick up the slack.

Gráine Fitzsimons and Eli Finkel looked at planned health behaviours across several experiments. Female participants were firstly asked to provide an example of their life partner helping them to fulfil a goal, either related to their health or, as a control condition, their career. They then rated how much time and effort they intended to put toward their future health goals. Those that recalled their partner helping with health goals slacked off, committing to less effort for the future. (We could think of this as the Jiminy Cricket gambit.)

To better understand the effect, the investigators evaluated depletion theory, which proposes that our capacity to self-regulate is a resource that is eaten up by use. In one of the experiments, participants completed an easy or tricky typing task before giving their examples and ratings; the tasks were designed to deplete a little or a lot of regulation effort. The slacking-off effect was greater and more significant for those in the tricky task condition, suggesting that being short on resources makes you more willing to let another shoulder the strain.

Another experiment examining academic goals found that considering partner support leads us to throw cautious willpower conservation strategies out of the window. Here, students of both sexes were given a fun puzzle to play before a valuable but taxing task that researchers claimed would benefit future test-taking. Half the participants were warned the puzzle would soak up effort needed for the taxing task, and they strategically spent less time on the puzzle, hoarding their efforts for later – unless, that is, they’d been asked at the experiment start to think about their life partner helping them in academic situations.

Personal goal-setting at work commonly involves identifying others who can support your goal. This is intended to enable and encourage, but this research demonstrates the possibility of perverse effects. However, it doesn't differentiate between support for activities that were possible anyway ( getting up for a 6am run) from support that provides a platform for further progress (sign-off for a work shadowing exercise). I suspect the latter, enabling support is genuinely motivating as it decreases, rather than increases, excuses for inaction.

Regardless, it’s clear that under some conditions we let others act as our conscience while we decrease our motivational efforts. We can resist this, by making it clear from the outset that we alone are responsible for success. Or, like Fitzsimons and Finkel, we could take a more celebratory view, seeing that “partners may develop shared self-regulatory systems” that allow them “to best make use of their limited self-control resources over time.” But we should definitely keep an eye on this tendency. Preferably you, if you have a minute.


Fitzsimons, G., & Finkel, E. (2011). Outsourcing Self-Regulation Psychological Science DOI: 10.1177/0956797610397955