Date: Friday, July 20, 2018
A study published by Drs. Connie Wanberg, Ruth Kanfer, Darla Hamann, and Zhen Zhang in Psychological Bulletin has recently been picked up and cited by popular press outlet, USA Today. The original study is a meta-analysis which found that older adults who have lost their jobs remain unemployed longer than younger adults. This relationship is partially mediated by job search self-efficacy and job search intensity.
By: Hannah Ramil
The Ethic of Care (EoC) rests upon the belief that “an awareness of the connection between people gives rise to a recognition of responsibility for one another, a perception of the need for response” (Gilligan, 1982). In essence, the EoC perspective emphasizes the importance of interpersonal relationships and the needs of others in moral reasoning and moral decision-making.
Previous studies have found that care and compassion in the workplace can enhance commitment to the organization (Lilius, Kanov, Dutton, Worline, & Maitlis, 2012), workplace self-esteem (McAllister & Bigley, 2002), and resilience (Waldman, Carmeli, & Halevi, 2011), and reduce work-based anxiety (Kahn, 2001). Building on these previous findings, Lawrence and Maitlis (2012) proposed the EoC as an underpinning for narrative practices in the workplace. They suggested that narrative story-telling of shared experiences, struggles, and possible futures amongst coworkers can be a vehicle for enacting care in the workplace. For example, when a work team debriefs about a recent performance episode, members can take this time to appreciate and acknowledge one another’s abilities and commitments. This practice can lead to group potency, a shared belief among team members in the general efficacy of the team as a whole (Guzzo, Yost, Campbell, & Shea, 1993; Lester, Meglino, & Korsgaard, 2002).
Carmeli and colleagues (2017) empirically examined the EoC perspective as a corporate culture. Corporate culture is “a set of norms and values that are widely shared and strongly held throughout the organization” (O’Reilly and Chatman, 1996, p. 166). These shared norms and values influence worker attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction and organizational identification) and behaviors (e.g,. task performance and counterproductive work behaviors). Their study focused on how corporate culture may influence workers’ likelihood of engaging in sustainability-related behaviors, such as prioritizing environmental concerns, choosing more sustainable alternatives for products, services, and practices, lobbying, activism, and encouraging sustainable behaviors throughout the company (Carmeli et al., 2017).
In their first study, they found that an organizational culture based on EoC increased employees’ satisfaction with the organization’s sustainability concerns and increased employee motivation to follow through with the organization’s sustainability values. This boosted employee involvement in sustainability-related behaviors. Their second study found that EoC was related to increased employee sustainability-related behaviors. Not only did EoC improve sustainability behaviors, but it also enhanced the employees’ identification with the organization.
For organizations hoping to increase sustainability efforts (e.g., WeWork’s new meatless initiative), establishing a corporate culture founded on an EoC may help employee adherence to initiatives.
By: Xinyu Chu
Although automation and robotics has long impacted manufacturing jobs, with recent technological advances, even more traditional office jobs are feeling the change. A New York Times article by Noam Schieber discusses the role automation is playing in the fashion industry. For example, the tasks of a fashion buyer, which typically require intuition about changes in the tastes and preferences of customers in order to predict future fashion trends, are beginning to be supplemented, if not replaced, by artificial intelligence. Machine learning has enabled artificial intelligence algorithms to extract profile information about customers, ranging from the items they put in their wishlists to their search histories or occupations, to make better predictions about which items to stock and recommend. Traditionally fashion buyers work in large groups and each buyer focuses on a specific style of clothing, monitoring the possible changes in trends and customer preferences. With the aid of artificial intelligence, a small group of buyers, or even a sole individual, can handle the job.
Yet, use of artificial intelligence is not without its limitations. For many personalized fashion companies (e.g., StitchFix), although their algorithms can make better predictions of general trends and for each customer, they still require a human touch to collect the data and interact with customers. Many customers do not know exactly what they want, and, at least for now, it takes the expertise of a human consultant to help determine what sorts of input are most relevant for the algorithms. Left unchecked, artificial intelligence can create problems for organizations. For example, t-shirt company, Solid Gold Bomb, used an unchecked algorithm to create thousands of unique t-shirt designs based on the slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On,” replacing carry on with various phrases. Within these thousands of designs, a subset had a range of offensive phrases that no one from the company saw before uploading the options for purchase. Eventually, the company went bankrupt. A little more of a human touch in the process may have prevented these issues and saved the company.
Rather than completely eliminating employees from the workplace, the introduction of automation may simply change the way in which people work and the types of tasks they need to focus on.
By: Brian Hengesbaugh
How can we enhance goal setting and increase performance? Prime the mind with effort.
Priming is the process of using a stimulus to subconsciously activate stored knowledge and psychological processes. As an example, if you were to read the following sentence “The fire truck ran through the intersection, ignoring the stop sign” and then were asked to think of a color, any color, you would most likely think of red. At a neuronal and cognitive level, our minds hold networks of interconnected ideas, and activating one node in the network, primes the other nodes for activation. We can capitalize upon this to improve performance.
In an experiment conducted by Latham and colleagues, pictures of weightlifters lifting various weights were used as the stimulus to prime participants with different levels of effort for the upcoming task of pressing on a scale. Before performing the task, participants either saw a picture of a weightlifter lifting 20 lbs (easy goal), 200 lbs (moderate goal), or 400 lbs (difficult goal). The study found that participants who were primed with the picture of the weightlifter lifting 400 lbs (difficult goal) exerted more effort during the task than the participants who were primed with the moderate and easy goals. A following experiment by Latham, which used a brainstorming task, showed that participants primed with the difficult goal consciously chose to set more challenging goals for themselves and performed better than the participants primed with easier goals.
What about using goal priming in the workplace? Shantz and Latham primed workers at a call center with a picture of a woman winning a race. Employee performance was then measured based on the amount of pledged donation dollars raised during the subsequent three-hour shift. When compared to the control group that did not receive a prime, the group of primed workers raised significantly more money than the control group. Latham and Piccolo, later showed that priming the call center workers with an image of three smiling individuals on headsets, improved performance above and beyond the general success prime.
More research is needed in order to thoroughly understand the subconscious processes of goal priming. Bargh’s automaticity model, which explains the relationship between primed goals and performance, has been criticized for a lack of theoretical framework describing the mechanisms that link the subconscious priming stimulus to behavioral changes. Latham and his colleagues look to fill this void with Goal Setting Theory – an explanation of the positive relationship between the difficulty of a consciously set goal and performance towards that goal, with factors such as effort, persistence, choice, strategy, and conscientiousness used to mediate the relationship.
As research continues, two key takeaways remain:
(1) Effort levels can be primed
(2) Increased effort leads to increased performance
By: Brian Hengesbaugh
It is never too late to save for retirement. With the Baby Boomer generation rapidly approaching retirement age, it is imperative to promote healthy retirement planning.
Although we know that saving for retirement is important, voluntary retirement savings plans are often underutilized. Changing saving habits can be challenging – especially among older employees. Standard interventions that aim to increase retirement savings often focus on the importance of being able to compound the value of savings over many years. This type of intervention often leaves older employees with diminished motivation to increase saving for retirement due to the limited number of years they have remaining to contribute to their savings plan. Older workers may also be harder to influence with interventions because they have had comparatively more opportunities to develop and adhere to personal retirement savings strategies.
A recent study conducted by a research team at North Carolina State University explored an inexpensive way to nudge older employees to prepare for retirement. The research team developed an informational nudge that highlighted the importance of increased retirement savings specifically for older workers. This nudge was an email sent to older public sector workers that provided information regarding increased either liquidity, catch-up provisions, tax advantages, longevity risks, and increased maximum contribution limits for older workers. The email also included a link to the website for the supplemental retirement plan.
The experiment found that, as a result of a nudge, there was a statistically significant increase in supplemental retirement plan contributions among older workers who were already participating in a supplemental retirement savings plan. Additionally, those that received a nudge reported they were more likely to have a retirement plan and feel more confident with their retirement preparedness. The effect of a nudge was limited to individuals who were already participating in a supplemental retirement savings plan and did not influence older workers to begin making voluntary retirement savings contributions.
What did this experiment show us?
(1) Low-cost informational nudges in the form of emails targeted to older individuals who are already saving for retirement are shown to be a valid intervention to improve retirement income security.
(2) There are different situational factors and lived experiences that frame the decisions of older workers. These situational factors and experiences must be taken into consideration as we seek to improve economic stability for workers of all ages.
By: Haleigh Streak
In the modern economy, with the rise of automation and gig work, employment gaps are common. These gaps may be voluntary (i.e. caretaking for new children or aging parents/grandparents, spouse relocation, etc.), or involuntary (i.e. downsizing and termination). No matter the nature, employment gaps signify considerable interruptions in career paths, and carry with them significant emotional strain. A recent article (Dust et al., 2018) published in Journal of Organizational Behavior provides compelling evidence for one factor that can help navigate the complications and stress associated with employment gaps: emotional intelligence.
The international research team (Scott Dust, Joseph Rode, Marne Arthaud-Day, Satoris Howes, & Aarti Ramaswami) examined employment quality following reemployment, in the forms of person-organization fit and person-job fit. The former entails alignment of employees’ personal values with the organization’s values, and the latter involves the pairing of employees’ knowledge, skills, and abilities with the demands of their specific jobs. Results from the 10-year field study of 157 alumni of a large American Midwestern university suggest self-esteem can help explain the relationship between facilitation-based emotional intelligence and employment gaps. In other words, individuals who are especially able to harness information about their emotions to enhance their thinking tend to have higher self-esteem which may actually help reduce the length of an employment gap.
Furthermore, the researchers found that the ability to distinguish between emotions and to understand their causes may protect individuals from the effects of employment gap length on subsequent person-job fit. In general, as a gap in employment lasts longer, an individual’s fit with the new job following reemployment tends to decrease—this may not be the case, however, if you are particularly able to understand your emotions and what they mean in the context of your life.
The article suggests that effectively understanding and coping with stress and emotions plays a pivotal role in managing unemployment. Those who have a better understanding of emotions may be better at coping and may have a heightened sense of control, which in turn, helps to find higher quality employment following an employment gap.
Generally, emotional intelligence is seen as an inherent, relatively stable quality about a person, but there is evidence (e.g., Slaski & Cartwright, 2003) that we can improve our emotional intelligence. Thus, individuals who strengthen their emotional intelligence may find that their gains do not just benefit their short-term interpersonal and professional experiences, but rather, their abilities to manage their career paths and any employment gaps they may face.
Author: Brian Hengesbaugh
Humanitarian Work Psychology (HWP) is theapplication of the scientific principles of psychology to the context of work with the deliberate goal of enhancing individual human welfare (Clayton and Foster, 2013). HWP was first established in 2009 when a group of Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychologists met in London to discuss their common interest in using work to improve outcomes for underserved populations (Stringer, 2016). As a subdiscipline of I-O Psychology, HWP represents the intentional expansion of the scope of psychological sciences to include data-driven practices for improving living and working conditions for people across the globe (Clayton and Foster, 2013).
Because work provides opportunities for individuals to interact directly with the social, political, and economic factors that shape their lives (Blustein, 2008), it holds unique power as a humanitarian tool. HWP therefore draws from a variety of established psychology domains that examine work.
| Psychology Field | Topics of Interest | HWP Example |
|---|---|---|
| I-O | Motivating factors Worker and task selectionTraining and performance managementWorker productivity and organizational effectiveness (Blustein, 2008) | Using results of personality profiles as criteria for bank loans for women who would otherwise be denied due to lack of formal financial documentation (Klinger, 2011) |
| Vocational | Career and work-based decision makingIndividual strengths Interaction with the environment (Blustein, 2008) | Investigation of the impact of marginalization and exclusion on immigrant workers seeking employment in a new job market (Maynard et al., 2010). |
| Occupational Health | Employee healthSafetyWell-beingOccupational stressorsWorkers’ families’ outcomes (Ahmed, 2017) | Understanding the nature of stressors, coping mechanisms, and psychological wellbeing in humanitarian workers in Colombia (Vergara & Gardner, 2011) |
| Positive | Human strengths and virtuesOptimal functioning of individuals, groups, and organizationsMeaningful life (Gable & Haidt, 2005) | The role psychological capital plays in explaining the relationship between decent work and motivation at work. (Ferraro et al., 2017) |
HWP is similar to these domains of psychology in that they are all evidence-based, interdisciplinary fields concerned with understanding the interplay of psychological, social, and organizational factors in improved outcomes for individuals and organizations (Ahmed, 2017). But unlike other domains, HWP primarily focuses on expanding access to decent work, especially for those living in poverty or in developing countries, in an effort to specifically achieve humanitarian outcomes (Clayton & Foster, 2013).
At the core of HWP is the notion of decent work (Carr & Thompson, 2013). Decent work supports the economic, psychological, and physical health of workers, families, and communities (Duffy et al., 2016). It provides fair income, secure work environments, opportunities for growth, freedom to express concerns, and the ability to contribute to decisions that affect workers’ quality of life (Duffy, Blustein, Diemer, & Autin, 2016). The primary outcome of securing decent work is the fulfillment of three individual needs: survival, social connection, and self-determination (Duffy et al., 2016). The attainment of these needs through decent work creates a foundation upon which people can experience job fulfillment and individual well-being (Duffy et al., 2016).
Marginalization, however, creates significant obstacles to accessing decent work (Duffy et al., 2016). For example, students in poverty and students of color report feeling less connected to academic institutions than their peers, which is a contributing factor to diminished work outcomes (Duffy et al., 2016). Further, workers with physical disabilities reported that their co-workers’ lack of knowledge regarding the severity of their disability created interpersonal barriers that were cited as being more challenging than structural barriers like climbing the stairs (Crooks, 2007).
When considering access to decent work, individual attributes such as proactive personality (i.e., propensity to take initiative) and critical conscience (i.e., ability to use moral awareness to challenge social constructs) are influential factors. In addition to the individual-level factors, HWP explores the role of sociocultural factors (e.g., language, education, attitudes, family structure, etc. ) in work related decisions and the work experience for all people, particularly those who are marginalized on the basis of race, social class, disability, and/or gender. To understand the psychological nature of work, we need to study these sociocultural factors, especially as they relate to the context in which marginalized people experience work (Duffy et al., 2016).
HWP has grown in concert with the rising global emphasis on addressing the needs of underserved and marginalized populations, as outlined in the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals released in 2000. Economic circumstances such as the Great Recession, in conjunction with the growing influence of technology, also played a role in the establishment of HWP (Duffy et al., 2016). These economic factors produced a diminished job market that disproportionately affected individuals lacking high level professional skills (Duffy et al., 2016). This led to heightened concentrations of income and wealth among the upper decile of the population and further reduced the socioeconomic power of the poor (Duffy et al., 2016), thus highlighting the need for systemic changes to lift underserved populations out of poverty.
In 2008, the ILO developed a framework of Decent Work Indicators used to measure the growth of decent work within an economy (International Labour Organisation, 2013). The measurement framework is built on four strategic pillars: full and productive employment, rights at work, social protection, and the promotion of social dialogue (International Labour Organisation, 2013). The ILO asserts that countries should use the measurement framework as a starting point for monitoring decent work, and that the statistical indicators of decent work are expected to change as research in this field continues (International Labour Organisation, 2013).
Overall, the nascent field of humanitarian work psychology reflects global and local workplace and social trends. By applying the psychological, social, and organizational concepts of existing work psychology domains to the Millennium Development Goals through the focus on access to decent work for all people, HWP can help researchers and practitioners better understand the social, economic, and individual factors associated with the working experience of impoverished and marginalized individuals.
Practical HWP Takeaways:
Further Reading:
Ahmed, S. (2017, October). Humanitarian Work Psychology and Occupational Health Psychology: Two sides of the same coin? Global Organisation for Humanitarian Work Psychology Newsletter. Retrieved from http://gohwp.org
Blustein, D. L. (2008). The Role of Work in Psychological Health and Wellbeing: A Conceptual, Historical, and Public Policy Perspective. American Psychologist, 63 (4), 228-240
Carr, S. C. & Thompson, L. (2013). Humanitarian Work Psychology: Concepts to Contributions. Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Inc. (2013), 24
Clayton, A. & Foster, L. (2013). Psychology In Action: Humanitarian work psychology at North Carolina State University’s IOTech4D Lab. Psychology International, 24 (2), 6-9
Duffy, R. D., Blustein, D. L., Diemer, M. A., & Autin, K. L. (2016). The Psychology of Working Theory. The Journal of Counseling Psychology 63 (2), 127-148
Gable, S. & Haidt, J. (2005). What (and Why) is Positive Psychology? Review of General Psychology 9 (2), 103-110
International Labour Organisation (2013). Decent Work Indicators: Guidelines for producers and users of statistical and legal framework indicators. ILO Manual, second version. Retrieved from http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—integration/documents/publication/wcms_229374.pdf
International Labour Organisation (2018). Decent Work. Retrieved from http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/decent-work/lang–en/index.htm
United Nations (2015). We Can End Poverty: Millennium Goals and Beyond 2015. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
Stringer, H. (2016). Humanitarian Work Psychology: This new psychology field focuses on underserved populations. Monitor On Psychology, 47(4), 61.
By: Keaton Fletcher
It has become expected by both employers and employees that jobs will require continued learning over the course of one’s career; enterprise social media is one method that companies can use to facilitate learning. According to a conference paper published by Carine Touré, Christine Michel, and Jean-Charles Marty, enterprise social media is essentially corporately sponsored online forums. These forums capitalize upon the current way most of us search for information outside of work (hint: we Google it).
Although there are many methods corporations can use to facilitate learning (e.g., formalized training programs, informal mentoring programs), evidence suggests that roughly 75% of learning at work occurs informally. Understanding this, organizations have tried different methods to ensure that employees have access to correct information when they need it. This started as knowledge management systems that functioned as repositories for knowledge. In theory, employees could search these knowledge repositories for the information they needed, when they needed it. However, oftentimes these static knowledge repositories are difficult to use or search, and are left unused, collecting digital or literal dust.
To address the weaknesses of these static knowledge management systems, organizations turned toward communities of practice. These communities introduced a social aspect to learning, allowed workers to share their experiences, learning from one another. In theory, communities of practice capitalize upon the social nature of humans, allowing the members to identify with their community, motivating them to participate. Touré and colleagues, however, suggest that these fall short of aspirations as well. Often, there are questions about the validity of information provided through communities of practice. Who determines who is eligible for the community, and how do they make this decision?
More recent attempts to address these issues rely on enterprise social media, to combine the benefits of traditional knowledge management systems and communities of practice. Online forums that connect workers within an organization, or across a discipline, allow for the creation of a large, and easily searchable knowledge repository. They also allow for social interaction through commenting and “liking” or “upvoting” answers or posts. This combination creates a dynamic and engaging way to create opportunities for informal learning on the job.
To test the design of an enterprise social media intervention, Touré and colleagues worked with a water treatment and distribution company in the south of France. The company originally had a traditional knowledge management system that acted as a catalog of information that was digitally accessible to employees. Employees reported not using this function to learn or to solve their problems. The researchers worked to implement an enterprise social media system for the company; they interviewed employees about how best to do this. Employees wanted comments to be moderated to prevent overuse or abuse, they wanted posts to be labeled with their level of information coverage and their level of utility. The researchers found that users thought the new system was easier to use, but that usage did not actually change because people still felt that they were already experts.
So, what have we learned? Combining digital repositories of knowledge with social media platforms offer companies ways to enhance informal learning. The next steps for companies may be helping employees recognize their own limitations, and the utility of seeking information from these systems.
By: Keaton Fletcher
Findings from a recently published meta-analysis (a method of combining the findings from many different smaller studies) by Gavin Slemp, Margaret Kern, Kent Patrick, and Richard Ryan suggest that good leaders support your autonomy in the workplace.
Leadership has long been a useful tool for organizations to motivate and manage the workforce. Perspectives on leadership have shifted from what rewards and punishments a leader should use, to how can a leader facilitate workers’ own motivation. One perspective on leadership behaviors is that of leader autonomy support. The idea behind leader autonomy support is that a good leader should recognize that workers have their own perspectives, should encourage the workers to be self-starters, and give employees opportunities to make decisions and have input. Further, leaders should avoid the use of rewards and punishments or controlling language/communication, to help the workers feel empowered and motivated to make their own decisions.
The perspective of leader autonomy support is tied to a main motivational theory, self-determination theory, which suggests that humans have three needs beyond those for survival: a need for autonomy, a need for competence, and a need for relatedness. Work can help people meet each of these needs, particularly if it is well designed and workers have leaders who support these ideals. Leader autonomy support has been shown to relate to people’s perceived ability to meet each of these needs through work. In turn, meeting these needs then predicts workers’ autonomous motivation. In other words, if you feel like your work is fulfilling and meeting your needs, you are more motivated to work because you like it and you value it, not because someone else is telling you that you have to, or because you need the rewards (e.g., pay) it provides. Workers who are more highly autonomously motivated, in turn, experience a wide range of positive outcomes. They have higher levels of well-being, work engagement, and lower levels of general distress.
So, what is the takeaway? Leaders in the workplace should be helping you to motivate yourself by giving you opportunities to act autonomously. This is why everyone complains when they feel like their boss is micromanaging, or when they feel like there is no room to grow or work on projects they care about. Having the autonomy to determine, to some extent, when, where, how, and what work you do can help keep you engaged and happy with your work. This will be particularly important as people continue to live longer, and staying in the workforce until one’s 70s or 80s is optional, but can be valuable both for the individual (if the work is meeting your needs) and society.
