UAPP 2053 Organizational Psychology - Lecture 3 Employee Selection

UAPP 2053 Organizational Psychology

Lecture 3 Employee Selection

Objectives

- Determining job requirements.

· Job analysis.

- Recruiting job applicants.

· The recruiting process.

· The selection process.

Job Analysis

- What is job analysis?

· Job analysis refers to various methodologies for analyzing the requirements of a job.

· Job analysis is a method for describing jobs and/or the human attributes necessary to perform them (Spector: 2008).

- There are three elements that comprise a formal job analysis:

· The procedure must be systematic – the analyst specifies a procedure in advance and follows it.

· A job is broken into smaller units – describe the components of job rather than the overall job.

· The analysis results in written product, either electronic or on paper.

- The general purpose of job analysis is to document the requirements of a job and the work performed.

- Job and task analysis is performed as a preliminary to successive actions, including to define a job domain, write a job description, create performance appraisals, selection and promotion, training needs assessment, compensation, and organizational analysis/planning.

- In the field of Human Resources (HR) and Industrial Psychology, job analysis is often used to gather information for use in personnel selection, training, classification, and/or compensation.

- As noted earlier, job analysis techniques can be used to collect information that is job oriented or person oriented, depending on the purpose of the job analyst.

- The Job Oriented Approach

· The principle of job-orientation is to understand the job that is done in terms of the outcomes and the activities used to achieve those outcomes.

· Job-oriented methods can be used both work improvement, job definition and also for recruitment.

· Structured questionnaire: questionnaires and checklists to organize.

· Process analysis: breaking down the activities.

· Observation: researcher just watches what is done.

· Self-reports: the incumbent reports what happens using diaries and logs.

· Participation: the researcher does the job.

- The Person Oriented Approach

· Worker-oriented methods are focused on the person and their experience and perception.

Ø Knowledge

Ø Skills

Ø Ability

Ø Other personal characteristics

Ø KSAO

- Purpose of Job Analysis

· The purpose of Job Analysis is to establish and document the ‘job relatedness’ of employment procedures such as training, selection, compensation, and performance appraisals, as well as career development and legal issues concerning employment.

- Career Development

· Many organizations have systems that allow employees to move up through the ranks to higher and higher positions – career ladder.

· This requires necessary skills and maintains good job performance.

- Legal Issues

· Most industrialized countries have laws prohibiting discriminatory employment practices, especially in the hiring of employees.

· Thus, JA provides a list of relevant KSAOs as the basis for hiring rather than irrelevant characteristic.

- Training

· Job Analysis can be used in training/“needs assessment” to identify or develop:

Ø Training content (based on KSAOs).

Ø Assessment tests to measure effectiveness of training.

Ø Equipment to be used in delivering the training.

Ø Methods of training (i.e. small group, computer-based, video, classroom…)

- Compensation

· Job Analysis can be used in compensation to identify or determine:

Ø Skill levels

Ø Compensable job factors.

Ø Work environment (e.g. hazards; attention; physical effort)

Ø Responsibilities (e.g. fiscal; supervisory)

Ø Required level of education (indirectly related to salary level)

- Selection

· Job duties that should be included in advertisements of vacant positions.

· Appropriate salary level for the position to help determine what salary should be offered to a candidate.

· Minimum requirements (education and/or experience) for screening applicants.

· Interview questions.

· Selection tests/instruments (e.g. written tests; oral tests; job stimulations).

· Applicant appraisal/evaluation forms.

· Orientation materials for applicants/new hires.

- Performance Appraisal

· Goals and objectives.

· Performance standards.

· Evaluation criteria.

· Length of probationary periods.

· Duties to be evaluated.

- How job analysis information is collected?

· Most JA information comes from one of four different sources:

Ø Job analyst

Ø Job incumbents

Ø Supervisors

Ø Trained observer

· Perform the job.

· Observe employees on the job.

· Interview subject matter experts.

· Administer questionnaires to subject matter experts.

· Multiple approaches.

- Methods of job analysis

· Job Characteristics Inventory (JCI)

Ø The Job Characteristics Inventory (JCI) was developed to address the need to match job requirements to worker characteristics.

Ø Allows simultaneous assessment of the job requirements and a person’s KSAOs.

Ø The JCI is a highly valid and reliable, self-report instrument that measures an individual on five dimensions:

o Use of tools and equipment.

o Perceptual and physical requirements.

o Mathematics.

o Communication.

o Decision making and responsibility.

· Functional Job Analysis (FJA)

Ø The most recent version of FJA uses seven-scales to describe what workers do in jobs:

Ø (1) Things, (2) Data, (3) People, (4) Worker Instructions, (5) Reasoning, (6) Math, and (7) Language.

Ø Each scale has several levels that are anchored with specific behavioral statements and illustrative tasks.

Ø Like other job analysis instruments, FJA is a methodology for collecting job information.

· Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ)

Ø The position analysis questionnaire is a structured job analysis questionnaire containing 194 items called job elements.

Ø These elements are worker-oriented. Using the terminology of the Department of Labor’s 1972 job analysis formula, they would be classified as worker behaviors.

Ø The items are organized into six divisions:

(1) Information input

(2) Mental processes

(3) Work output (physical activities and tools)

(4) Relationships with others

(5) Job context (the physical and social environment)

(6) Other job characteristics (such as pace and structure)

Recruitment Process

- Sources for recruiting

· Newspapers

· Employment agencies

- Recruiter characteristics

· Based on research, graduates recruiters to spend the interview period providing information about the company.

- Campus recruiting

· Finding new recruitments in campus.

- Realistic Job Previews (RJP)

· A Realistic Job Preview (RJP) is any part of the selection process that gives the applicant a clear idea of what it will be like to work at the job if they are hired. The preview typically happens early in the selection process.

· The purpose of the RJP is to give the candidate as much information about the job as possible so that they can make an informed decision about their suitability for the job.

· In order for the RJP to be successful, it must objectively outline not only the positive aspects of the job, but also the potentially negative or unique aspects of the job as well.

· For example, it should include information regarding shift work, special characteristics of the job, hours, specific requirements, a “typical” day on the job, etc.

· For best effect, there should be a pause in the selection after the RJP – to give the candidate an opportunity to think about those requirements he or she might not like or be able to fulfill.

· The idea is to allow the candidate an opportunity to quit before he or she is hired.

Selection Process

- How do organizations select employees?

· The purpose of employee selection is to hire somebody who is expected to be successful on doing the job.

· There are several approaches of selecting employees.

· There are two important elements in employee selection must be considered:

Ø Criterion

o Although it may seem obvious to hire the person who is expected to be the best performer, it is not easy to define good performance.

o Example: attendance.

Ø Predictor

o It is anything related to criterion.

o Measures of KSAOs can be used to as predictors of a criterion of job performance.

o Example: knowledge of the subject matter should be a good predictor of a teacher.

· Thus, determining if a given predictors relates to the criterion require a validation study.

· To conduct this sort of study, both the criterion and the predictor are quantified – use statistical test to see if they are significantly related.

- Step 1: Conduct a job analysis.

· Job analysis provides information about the task involved and also information about KSAOs.

· Hiring people with characteristic that are not related to the job requirements would be foolish at best and illegal at worst if it results discrimination.

- Step 2: Specify job performance criteria.

· Once you have a good idea about what the job entails – develop criteria for good job performance.

· E.g. teacher is required to teach secondary 1 students.

Ø Criterion – able to teach small children.

Ø Predictor – caring, loving, etc.

Ø (The criterion might be predicted by one or more predictors).

- Step 3: Choose predictors.

· Potential predictors might be chosen to assess KSAOs directly.

· Organizations prefer to hire graduate students, why?

- Step 4: Validate the predictors.

· In this step, measures of the criterion and the predictors are taken on the sample of people to see if the predictor relates to the criterion – e.g. organizational settings.

Ø Concurrent validation study.

o Participants are current employee.

o They are asked to provide predictor data by taking assessment test.

o Then the test score would be correlated with their recent performance evaluations.

o If related, the predictor is valid.

Ø Predictive validity study.

o The predictors are measured before the criterion.

o A sample of job applicants might be given the predictive assessment.

o Then they are hired and later assessed on the criterion or criteria (time span – months or years).

o The predictor scores would be correlated with criterion scores.

- Step 5: Cross-validate.

· To replicate the result of one sample with those of another sample – need 2 samples.

· First sample is used to determine if the criterion and predictor are significantly correlated.

· Second sample is used to see if the significant relationship found in the first sample can be repeated in the second sample.

UAPP 2053 Organizational Psychology - Lecture 2 Research Method in I/O Psychology

UAPP 2053 Organizational Psychology

Lecture 2 Research Method in I/O Psychology

Objectives

- Why research method is important?

- Goals of scientific method

- Key terms of scientific method

- Research design

Why Research Method Is Important?

- Imagine that you are I/O psychologist in a company. You are assigned the task of determining if a new training program is effective in producing better performance in employee.

- How you want to find out if the training works?

- Psychology is a scientific study of human behavior and mental processes…thus…

- Science, at a basic level attempts to answer questions (such as “why are we aggressive”) through careful observation and collection of data.

- These answers can then (at a more complex or higher level) be used to further our knowledge of us and our world, as well as help us predict subsequent events and behavior.

- But, this requires a systematic/universal way of collecting and understanding data – other wise there is chaos.

- How do we find scientific truth? The scientific method is NOT perfect, but it is the best method available today.

- To use the scientific method, all topics of study must have the following criteria:

1) Must be testable (e.g. can you test the existence of god?)

2) Must be falsifiable – easy to prove anything true (depends on situation), but systematically demonstrating a subject matter to be false is quite difficult (e.g. can you prove that god does not exist?)

Goals of Scientific Method

1) Description – the citing of the observable characteristics of an event, object, or individual. Helps us to be systematic and consistent.

· This stage sets the stage for more formal stages – here we acquire our topic of study and begin to transform it from a general concept or idea into a specific, testable construct.

· Operational Definitions – the definition of behaviors or qualities in terms of how they are to be measured. Some books define it as the description of… the actions or operations that will be made to measure or control a variable.

· Examples:

Ø How do you define job satisfaction, absence, etc. in a way that is testable and falsifiable?

2) Prediction – here we formulate testable predictions or HYPOTHESES about behavior (specifically, about our variables).

· A hypothesis is a specific, testable prediction about what you expect to happen in your study.

· For example, one may hypothesize that as workload increases, job performance decreases.

· Hypotheses are usually based on THEORIES – statements which summarize and explain research findings.

· A theory is a well-established principle that has been developed to explain some aspect of the natural word.

3) Select Methodology & Design – choose the most appropriate research strategy for empirically addressing your hypotheses.

4) Control – method of eliminating all unwanted factors that may effect what we are attempting to study (we will address in more detail later).

5) Collect Data – although the book is a little redundant and does not differentiate well between this stage and selecting the design and method, data collection is simply the execution and implementation of your research design.

6) Analyze & Interpret the Data – use of statistical procedures to determine the mathematical and scientific importance (not the “actual” importance or meaningfulness­) of the data. Were the differences between the groups/conditions large enough to be meaningful (not due to chance)?

7) Report/Communicate the Findings – Psychology is a science that is based on sharing – finding answers to questions is meaningless (to everyone except the scientist) unless that information can be shared with others. We do this through publications in scientific journals, books, presentations, lectures, etc.

Key Terms of Scientific Method

1) Variable – any measurable condition, event, characteristic, or behavior that can be controlled or observed in a study.

· Independent Variable (IV) – the variable that is manipulated by the researcher to see how it affects the dependent variable.

· Dependent Variable (DV) – the behavior or response outcome that the researcher measures, which is hoped to have been affected by the IV.

2) Groups (of subjects/participants) in an experiment – experimental vs control

· Experimental group – group exposed to the IV in an experiment.

· Control group – group does not exposed to IV. This does not mean that this group is not exposed to anything, though.

· For example, in a drug study, it is wise to have an experimental group (gets the drug), a placebo control group (receives a drug exactly like the experimental drug, but without any active ingredients), and a no-placebo control group (they get no drug…nothing).

· Both groups must be treated EXACTLY the same except for the IV.

3) Experimenter Bias – if the researcher (or anyone on the research team) acts differently towards those in one group it may influence participants’ behaviors and thus alter the findings. This usually not done on purpose, but just knowing what group a participant is in may be enough to change the way we behave toward our participants.

4) Participant Bias (Demand Characteristics) – participants may act in ways they believe correspond to what the researcher is looking for. Thus, the participant may not act in a natural way.

5) Validity – does the test measure what we want it to measure? If yes, then it is valid.

· For example – does a stress inventory/test actually measure the amount of stress in a person’s life and not something else?

6) Reliability – is the test consistent? If we get same results over and over, then reliable.

· For example – an IQ test – probably won’t change if you take it several times. Thus, if it produces the same (or very, very similar) results each time it is taken, then it is reliable.

· However, a test can be reliable without being valid, so we must be careful.

· For example – the heavier your head, the smarter you are. If I weighed your head at the same time each day, once a day, for a week it would be virtually the same weight each day. This means that the test is reliable. But, do you think this test is valid (that is indeed measures your level of “smartness”)? Probably NOT, and therefore, it is not valid.

Research Design

- Causal Research

· When most people think of scientific experimentation, research on cause and effect is most often brought to mind.

· Experiments on causal relationships investigate the effect of one or more variables on one or more outcome variables. This type of research also determines if one variable causes another variable to occur or change.

- Descriptive Research

· Descriptive research seeks to depict what already exists in a group or population. The description is used for frequencies, averages and other statistical calculations.

- Relational Research

· A study that investigates the connection between two or more variables is considered relational research. The variables that are compared are generally already present in the group or population.