Human factors in Industrial and Organizational Psychology

OBJECTIVES
Describe the four basic concepts of working with people; Define workforce diversity; Describe the factors leading to workforce diversity; Describe the three changes that have occurred in the new world of work; and Know three critical workplace behaviours.

Working with People: Individual Differences

It may be said that organization's exist to serve people, rather than people existing to serve organization's. I/O psychologists recognize and rightly so that work settings can be made both pleasant and productive by taking a people-centric approach. Human Dignity Workforce Diversity (Over 400 million women are employed in various streams. Over 30% of the workforce in IT sector is women. Socially disadvantaged people have entered organisations as a result of policies of reservation and concessions.) Old employees have grown in number due to increased life expectancy and better medical care.

Organisations are indeed becoming leaner and meaner

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Sociable and Assertive Quiet and Shy

Extroverted (E)

Introverted (I)

Unconscious Sensing Intuitive Practical Processes (S) (N) and Orderly Uses Thinking Feeling Use Reason (T) (F) Values & and Logic Emotions Flexible Judging Perceiving Want Order (J) (P) and & Structure Spontaneo us

The Big Five Model of Personality Dimensions

Sociable, gregarious, and assertive Good-natured, cooperative, and trusting

Extroversion

Agreeableness

Conscientiousnes s Emotional Stability

Responsible, dependable, persistent, and organized

Calm, self-confident, secure under stress (positive), versus nervous, depressed, and insecure under stress (negative)

Openness to Experience

Curious, imaginative, artistic, and sensitive

Factors leading to workforce diversity

Legal Requireme nts

Capacity Building

Workplace Diversity

Social Responsibility

Increase in International Business

The New World of Work

melting pot approach and salad bowl approach The only thing constant is change.

Downsizing- is the act of scaling down the number of employees on a companys payroll permanently
(as opposed to temporarily like layoffs). Major reasons of downsizing are strategic or structural: to improve productivity, plant obsolescence, mergers and acquisitions, transfer of locations, new technology, and so on. The employer-employee relationship is moving away from long-term and stable in the direction of short-term and contingent (Khandelwal, 2009).

Force Field Analysis Model

Desired Conditions

Restraining Forces

Restraining Forces

Restraining Forces

Driving Forces

Driving Forces
Current Conditions Driving Forces

Before Change

During Change

After Change

Three distinct steps for achieving behavioural and attitudinal change

Unfreezing the diagnosis stage Participants are made aware of problems in order to increase their willingness to change their behaviour.

Changing
the intervention stage Individuals experiment with new workplace behaviour. Re-freezing the reinforcement stage Individuals acquire a desired new skill or attitude and 9 are rewarded for it by the organization.

Restraining Forces (Resistance to Change)

Many forms of resistance
e.g., complaints, absenteeism, passive noncompliance

View resistance as a resource

1. Symptoms of deeper problems in the change process 2. A form of constructive conflict -- may improve decisions in the change process

Beers Rational model of organizational change.

Amount of Change = (Dissatisfaction(D) X Model(M) X Success(P)) > Cost of Change

QUALITY CONSCIOUSNESS
Quality has become the new mantra. Customers are no longer loyal to a particular brand. It thus becomes imperative for organisations to enhance and deliver quality.

New terms like Total Quality Management (TQM), six sigma(DMAIC), and business process engineering.

Employee turnover
Just as brand loyalty is a thing of the past, similarly lifelong loyalty of employees to the company or to the employer is extr INVISIBLE costs of turnover include the impact on the morale and productivity of work units, a possibility of a snowball effect, i.e. turnover itself causes more turnover (Mowday et al., 1982), delays on important projects, discontinuity of customer/client service with resultant negative impact on customer/client satisfaction, loss of intellectual capital with the assumed possibility that a former employee may become a future competitor (Wagner and Hollenbeck, 1995).emely rare.

The Future ahead.?

o We will increasingly be creating virtual organisations (Burke & Cooper, 2002).

o Will it lead to greater flexibility or better work-life balance, particularly for women?
o Will companies prefer hiring women? How will the employeremployee relationship change?

o Will a new employment contract emerge?

o Will teamwork be a major factor in the way work is carried out?

o Will there be a greater emphasis on softer skills like communication, negotiation, flexibility, etc. to perform successfully in newly evolving jobs?

WORKPLACE BEHAVIOURS
Ethical Behaviour in Organisations. Sexual Harassment at the Workplace.

Employee Privacy Issues- For instance, as attraction the workplace is becoming common (estimates say about 80 percent of employees have either observed
or been in a romantic relationship at their workplace), some companies have a strict no dating policy among employees. The fundamental idea of CSR is that business corporations have an obligation to contribute to the welfare of the society and to work for social betterment

Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB)

OCB is a unique aspect of individual activity at work, first mentioned in the early 1980s. According to Organ (1988), it represents individual behaviour that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognised by the formal reward system, and in the aggregate promotes the efficient and effective functioning of the organisation He identified five categories of OCB: Altruism the helping of an individual coworker on a task

Courtesy alerting others in the organisation about changes that

may affect their work

Conscientiousness carrying out ones duties beyond the

minimum requirements

Sportsmanship refraining from complaining about trivial matters

Civic virtue participating in the governance of the organisation.

Deviant Workplace Behaviour

Voluntary behaviour that violates significant norms and in doing so threatens the well-being of an organisation, its members or both (Robinson & Bennet, 1995, p. 556). Interpersonal deviance. This targets specific stakeholders such as coworkers and can include gossiping about coworkers, spreading rumours, blaming coworkers, and so on. Organisational deviance. This includes production deviance (leaving early, intentionally working slowly, wasting resources, etc.), property deviance (theft, sabotage, intentional errors in work, misusing expense accounts, etc.), and also includes withdrawal behaviour like tardiness and being absent from work.

Employee Silence and Cyber loafing

Employee silence Cyberloafing is a
This is intentional or unintentional failure to withhold any kind of information that might be useful to the organisation. new form of workplace deviance has emerged as the use of technology becomes

a much bigger part of peoples lives. This includes simply surfing the web and doing non-work related task on the internet such as chatting on social networking site and other.