Category: Blog

Primed for Success

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

Nudging Retirement Savings Among Older Workers

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.
 

Emotions During Employment Gaps

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.

Did You Google It? Enterprise Social Media Enhances Autonomous Learning

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.

Is Your Leader Giving You The Freedom You Need?

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.

Network Research Highlight: Are You Successfully Aging at Work?

By: Keaton Fletcher

A recent book chapter by Cort Rudolph and Hannes Zacher highlights the complex and dynamic process of aging in the workplace. Unlike many previous conceptualizations of aging at work, Rudolph and Zacher bring attention to the fact that development occurs across the lifespan, not just during youth. Work is increasingly becoming designed to promote continuous learning. This prospect may excite some workers and frighten others, regardless, it has come to be an expected part of modern work. What does this mean for people as they age?

Rudolph and Zacher argued that in contrast to general sentiment, aging does not necessarily imply decline. As we age, some abilities and personal qualities improve while others decline, and others still remain unchanged. Our motivations may shift as we age, valuing autonomy, social support, and meaning from our work, more than complexity and feedback. Successfully aging, particularly in the workplace, means having a positive ratio of gains to losses. Often, this can be an interplay of previous experiences, individual differences, and organizational policies.

Focusing on organizational policies, Rudolph and Zacher argue for flexibility policies that benefit all workers, not just older workers. Flexibility in when, where, and how to do work can benefit employees at all life stages and may help in the successful aging process. Giving employees, especially as they progress through their career, opportunities to job craft, or to move into positions or tasks that fit their abilities and interests can help promote successful aging as well.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has a newer initiative focused exclusively on productive aging and work. The goal of the initiative is to help individuals progress through life and engage in work in a meaningful and healthy way. Specifically, part of the mission of the initiative is to find ways to create aging-friendly workplaces. The initiative has sponsored research such as the project published by Wilkie, Cifuentes, and Pransky (2011) which found that older adults who experience job lock (needing to continue working for employer benefits like health insurance) typically have more limitations on the work they can do. Following an injury, however, older workers regardless of whether they were job locked, experience significant increases in limitations in their functioning at work, needing more accommodations. Another study supported by the NIOSH initiative on successful aging found that an individual’s health and sense of control were positively related to their beliefs in their ability to continue working. This belief, in turn, was negatively related to outcomes like absence from work, retirement, and disability leave. This suggests that maybe a large aspect of successful aging falls to the worker’s health behaviors and personality. Organizations, however, can try to create accommodating workplaces, and institute policies and programs to promote worker health to help facilitate successful aging.

Overall, what does aging at work mean? Does it mean performing worse or losing ability? Not necessarily. There are certainly benefits associated with aging, and, as long as you take steps to protect your health, you should be able to successfully navigate the aging process at work.

Network Research Highlight: The Benefits of Decent Work

By: Keaton Fletcher

Although most people groan and take a bit longer getting ready for work Monday mornings, lamenting the short weekend, David Blustein, Jonas Masdonati, and Jérôme Rossier, suggest maybe we should count our blessings instead since work is a key component of the human condition. In a recent report, Blustein and colleagues highlight the psychological factors that work plays in the human experience. By calling upon vocational and industrial-organizational psychological foundations, the research team identifies ways in which work can actually better people’s lives.

Blustein and colleagues elaborate on the notion of decent work, the idea that jobs that better individual, family, and community health and well-being are inherently decent. Research has consistently pointed toward the lack of a job as a cause of mental health symptoms and increased domestic violence. Obtaining work, particularly decent work, can help minimize these negative outcomes. In the modern economy, however, Blustein and colleagues suggest that precarious work (i.e., work with no clear long-term trajectory, inadequate benefits, or minimal opportunities for skill development) is becoming more common, and may not carry with it the same benefits of decent work. In fact, evidence suggests that precarious work, too, may be associated with mental and physical health problems.

One of the main psychological phenomena Blustein and colleagues focus on in their report is that of identity and self-concept. In the United States, at least, it is common when meeting someone to be asked “What do you do for a living?” or “What are you?” These questions highlight just how closely tied our work is to our understanding of ourselves, and our own identities. People who are involuntarily excluded from the workforce face a challenge of establishing this identity, and may struggle to maintain a positive global self-concept (overall beliefs about oneself). Those who voluntarily step back from remunerated work find themselves having to explain and justify their choice and new identity to others, and, possibly, to themselves.

It may not only be people outside of the paid workforce that lack the benefits to self-concept and self-esteem that work provides. Individuals in precarious or indecent work may also not reap these benefits. Those who change jobs or occupations frequently (an increasingly common phenomenon), or those who work in occupations that are not socially valued or desirable may not be able to easily identify with their work, or incorporate their work identity into their self-concept. It can be challenging, then, to reap the psychosocial benefits of work. To see improved individual well-being society must find ways to aid in the creation and solidification of identity and self-concept for those in non-traditional, precarious, or indecent work, or perhaps make decent work more accessible.

 
If you are interested in decent work or related initiatives, follow the links below:
UNESCO Chair of Lifelong Guidance and Counseling
International Labour Organization’s Decent Work Agenda
United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 8)

Reading the IT Leaves: NSF’s ITEST Program & the Future of Work

By: Keaton Fletcher

Technology is clearly changing the entire workforce, but how can workers change to keep up? To help this massive transition, The National Science Foundation sponsored ITEST (Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers). ITEST works to connect students from prekindergarten through 12th grade with professionals in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers to help students gain the necessary skills and knowledge for a successful career in the modern workforce.

To put the ITEST program into context, Malyn-Smith and colleagues (2017) published a paper reviewing the current workforce trends given the changes in technology. They argue that disruptive technologies and innovations are changing the status quo. Work will look fundamentally different in this new augmented age, when humans are enhanced by working with machines. To be successful, the modern worker, regardless of career path, industry sector, or job, must become knowledgeable about technology.

Malyn-Smith and colleagues point toward multiple technology-driven changes in the modern workforce to which workers will need to adapt. More and more frequently, workers will have to work in interdisciplinary teams of humans, but these teams will also include machine-based teammates as well. Given the technology-based increase in human capacity, workers will now be able to address problems that were beyond the realm of possibility ten years ago. However, these problems cannot be solved by solitary workers, or even teams of workers all with the same knowledge, skills, and abilities. Malyn-Smith and colleagues argue that the types of projects and problems that will become common in the modern workforce will require teams of individuals with unique skillsets and knowledge bases, all of whom will have to interact with machines in order to complete their tasks.

Workers will also have to become comfortable working with massive amounts of data. As machine learning, artificial intelligence, and automation become more common, the role and accessibility of data, especially big data sets, has become great. Modern workers will need, at the very least, to understand the role of data in problem-solving, how to present data, and also how to protect it.

Many organizations, Malyn-Smith and colleagues suggest, are already relying on informal learning in the workplace, and worker-initiated formal learning (e.g., certificate programs or higher education) during personal time to help address these changing demands. As the nature of work continues to change, the modern worker must be driven by personal interest to learn new skills. Malyn-Smith and colleagues argue that organizations may begin to care less about formal degrees or certifications, instead giving more value to evidence of specific skill sets that can be applicable across a variety of contexts.

Enter, ITEST. By exposing children to STEM careers from a young age, the NSF sponsored initiative seeks to not only normalize STEM careers, but also to help the next generation of workers begin thinking in ways that will be necessary in the modern workforce (e.g., data-driven). Since 2003, ITEST has sponsored over 300 projects, working with over 560,000 students and roughly 17,000 educators in the United States. Students learn scientific and technology-based content while being exposed to careers in STEM fields. Through this program, teachers are also given an opportunity to develop their own skill sets to better help prepare their students for the modern workforce. A multitude of scientific papers (e.g., Blustein et al, 2012; Christensen et al., 2014) have been published examining the efficacy of ITEST, all of which point toward its success.

Arguably the main takeaway of the NSF ITEST program and Malyn-Smith and colleagues’ paper is to promote early STEM learning, particularly in the face of the current changes in the workplace, so as to best prepare the next generation of workers for what lies ahead.

After Automation: Will There Be Enough Jobs?

By: Keaton Fletcher

Will your job be replaced by a robot? A report by McKinsey Global Institute suggests probably not.

Most people in the workforce today have, like those before them, wondered whether they will be replaced by new technology. The concern is so great, that Time Magazine released an article and an associated widget that tells you the odds of your job becoming automated. In a recent podcast, Peter Grumbel interviewed James Manyika, a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, about this very subject.

James Manyika suggests that previously, new technology, rather than replacing workers entirely often simply provided workers with additional support, or removed the need to complete mundane, routinized tasks. He suggests, however, that this may not necessarily be the case with the modern rise of machine learning and other methods of capitalizing on technology at work. Data suggest that computing power may have increased by roughly a 1 trillion-fold since 1956. The ability for modern computers, networks of computers, and cloud computing to rapidly complete complex calculations has added to the growing concern and excitement about what the next few years have in store for the modern workforce. Manyika suggests it is not just the computing power, but the accessibility of data. More than ever before, humans around the world are uploading unique data at unfathomable rates. For example, an estimate in 2012 suggested people upload about 250 million photos to Facebook per day. A similar report in 2014 estimated people upload about 1.8 billion photos per day across all social media platforms. The algorithms behind machine learning and artificial intelligence can use this surge in data points to help become more accurate.

Manyika argues that the unprecedented power and access to data will allow algorithms and AI to boost economic performance for companies and countries. But, what about workers? Based on their research, Manyika suggests that if your job consists primarily of data collection or processing, or if you are completing manual labor in a predictable and stable environment, your job will likely be automated. These three tasks prone to automation make up about 51% of economic activity. The good news, however, is that a mere 5% of occupations are primarily these tasks. A majority of jobs (60%) are a mixture of roughly 1/3 these tasks, 2/3 less easily automated tasks.

What does this mean for workers? Manyika suggests that most people will experience some major change in their jobs, but probably will not have to change occupations entirely. Future-oriented CEOs and organizations have already begun the process of training and developing their employees to be better able to adjust to the coming shifts in their workload and demands. Manyika also suggests that occupations in the care industry, or jobs that require empathy and judgment will be more common and more resistant to automation. By 2030, Manyika predicts about 16% of jobs, globally, will have been automated to some extent (this number rises in more industrialized countries), meaning that big change is coming for a large portion of the population.

So, are robots going to take your job? Probably not, but they will almost certainly change it.

Humans: Predictably Irrational

By: Keaton Fletcher

Humans are predictably irrational, and organizations can capitalize upon this fact to enhance the working experience as well as their own profits. In a recent podcast, Tim Dickson, on behalf of McKinsey & Company, hosted Julia Sperling, Anna Güntner, and Magdalena Smith to talk about a variety of ways organizations can influence the predictably irrational behavior of their employees.

First we must acknowledge that humans are neither rational, nor entirely unpredictable. Part of this fact stems from the process by which the human brain narrows the roughly 11 million unique pieces of input it receives at any given point down to about 50, of which only 7 to 10 are retained in conscious short term memory. This filtration process means a lot of information is either left entirely un-perceived, or is processed at a level below the conscious mind. Organizations can provide information that makes it past the initial mass filtration, but does not find its way into short term memory, and therefore has a subtle influence on behavior, a tactic called nudging. Nudging holds great promise in promoting or inhibiting behaviors (e.g., wearing safety gear) by creating an environment which pushes workers toward this behavior without them feeling as if their choices are being restricted or even influenced. It is, to a degree, the same way theme parks have a subtle way of pushing people in a specific path around the park to minimize congestion without parkgoers noticing they are being manipulated.

Beyond nudging, organizational leadership and employees alike need to be aware of some of the irrational behaviors and beliefs that are common in the workplace so as to actively avoid them. The podcast briefly describes phenomena such as ingroup bias in which we prefer to interact with, and be surrounded by, individuals from our own group (whatever that might be). As such when making hiring or promotion choices, managers may find that left to their own devices they fail to bring in new ideas or perspectives, instead favoring candidates who are very similar to themselves. When interacting with others we tend to look towards our peers and superiors for information; often, we find our opinions align with what the majority or the high-status individuals suggest. This agreement is not because we initially agreed, but because when we are in ambiguous situations we treat other people’s opinions as helpful information that our brains nonconsciously incorporate into our own beliefs. The guests of the podcast suggest that to combat this, in group meetings, individuals should write their opinions down first or that those of high-status should not be allowed to chime in until others have had a chance to do so.

In one of the greatest predictable irrational choices of the workplace, we consistently find that money is not a great motivator. As long as you are earning a competitive wage, additional money will not necessarily translate into improved performance. Instead, to influence your motivation, organizational leadership should provide you with opportunities to feel accomplished or in control, or give you opportunities to interact with others.