PS392 Unit 2 Individual Differences Paper Example

Hiring Happy or Fixing the Belt: A PS392 Unit 2 Individual Differences Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS392: Attitudes and Motivation in the Workplace

Unit 2 Individual Differences Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the recycling plant, the sorters and every figure are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

The Request

Our plant in Tucson sorts the contents of household blue bins for three cities. Sixty sorters on two shifts pull cardboard, film, glass fragments and trash from belts that move faster than most visitors expect. Last year forty-one sorter positions turned over, and twenty-three of those people left in their first sixty days. Each replacement costs us about two weeks of a lead's time spent training, plus the bales that come back from the mill when a new sorter misses film on the fiber line.

The plant manager's theory is that some people are simply built for this work. He pointed to Rosa, who has sorted for nine years, rarely misses a shift and jokes through August. "Find me more Rosas," he said, and asked me to look at personality tests that could screen applicants for a sunny temperament. Before recommending anything, I looked at what research says about whether job satisfaction lives in the person, in the job or in both.

The Case for Disposition

Judge et al. (2002) gathered 163 samples relating the Big Five personality traits to overall job satisfaction. The strongest single link was a negative one: people high in neuroticism, prone to worry and irritation, reported lower satisfaction. Extraversion and conscientiousness each showed a positive link of similar size, agreeableness a smaller one, and openness almost none. Taken as a set, the five traits correlated .41 with satisfaction, which is large by the standards of this research. Only the neuroticism and extraversion results held steadily across the different studies.

Judge and Bono (2001) looked at a narrower cluster they call core self-evaluations: self-esteem, a general belief that one can handle what comes, a sense that outcomes depend on one's own actions, and emotional stability. All four related to satisfaction, and generalized self-efficacy did so most strongly. The same traits also related to job performance, though less strongly.

So the plant manager is not wrong. Some of Rosa's contentment probably travels with her and would have shown up in a different job. Research supports the idea that people bring part of their satisfaction to work with them.

The trait findings explain why Rosa is happy; they do not explain why the pre-sort line loses a new hire every other week.

The Case for the Job

The other half of the picture is the work. Humphrey et al. (2007) combined results from 259 work design studies, and the makeup of the job itself accounted for much of why some people were more satisfied, more committed and less set on leaving than others. Motivational features such as autonomy, variety and feedback mattered, and so did social features such as support from coworkers and contact with others, which added a good deal on top of the motivational ones. Physical conditions, including discomfort and hazards, also counted.

Our sorters' jobs score poorly on almost every feature Humphrey and colleagues examined. Until this spring, outside the day shift lead's crew, most sorters stood at one station for a full eight-hour shift. Nobody saw what happened to the bales they built. Noise from the screens makes conversation impossible on the floor, so coworker support happens only at breaks. The building reaches the high nineties by midafternoon in July despite evaporative coolers.

What Our Own Data Show

Exit interviews from the past year give a rough check. Of the forty-one departures, thirty-three people sat for an interview. The reasons they gave most often were heat, being stuck on one station, a faster-paying warehouse job nearby and not knowing whether they were doing well. Only two mentioned anything I would describe as temperament, both saying the job made them anxious. When I sorted the departures by station, the pre-sort line, where the dirtiest and heaviest material arrives, accounted for more than half of all quits.

If the problem were mainly who we hired, quits would be spread fairly evenly across stations, since new hires are assigned to stations largely at random. Instead they clustered where the work was worst.

Why a Personality Screen Is the Wrong Tool Here

Even granting the trait findings, a satisfaction screen has three problems in our setting.

First, the correlations describe groups, not individuals. A multiple correlation of .41 leaves most of the variation in satisfaction unexplained, and an applicant who scores well on extraversion may still walk out after a July week on pre-sort.

Second, personality tests used to screen out applicants must be shown to relate to the job, and a screen built to find people who will tolerate poor conditions is hard to defend on those grounds. It also sends an uncomfortable message: that the plant would rather find people who accept the job than improve it.

Third, a screen does nothing for the fifty-some sorters already on the floor. Changing the work affects everyone at once.

Where Individual Differences Still Help

Individual differences do not disappear from the plan; they move from selection to placement and support. Judge and Bono's findings about self-efficacy suggest that a new sorter's early confidence matters. We can build it by starting new hires on the container line, where items are larger and mistakes are easier to see, before moving them to fiber and pre-sort. Pairing each new hire with an experienced sorter for the first two weeks offers both skill and the coworker support Humphrey and colleagues found so important.

People also differ in how much heat, noise and repetition they can stand. Rotation lets sorters spend part of each shift at stations that suit them while sharing the hardest work fairly. Asking people at ninety days which stations they prefer is a cheap way to use individual differences without screening anyone out.

Talking With Rosa

I asked Rosa what had kept her for nine years. She laughed and said she liked the people and liked "finding weird stuff," but then added that her first year was miserable and she almost quit twice. What kept her was a lead who moved her off pre-sort after her second week and taught her how to read the fiber belt. Her temperament may have helped, but her story is also about a job that changed around her at the right moment. That account matters, because the plant manager's model employee turns out to be an example of good placement as much as good personality.

Recommendation

I recommended against a personality screen. Instead, the plant will rotate sorters across four stations every two hours, start new hires on the container line with a peer partner, post daily bale results by the time clock and ask about station preferences at thirty and ninety days. I will track sixty-day turnover by station and compare it with last year's figures. If quits remain concentrated on pre-sort after rotation begins, the next step is to look at the physical conditions there directly.

Conclusion

Research by Judge and colleagues and by Judge and Bono confirms that part of job satisfaction comes from the person. Humphrey and colleagues show that the design of the job explains a large share as well, and our exit interviews and station data point firmly at the job. The plant will get more Rosas by building the conditions that kept the first one, not by trying to screen for her temperament.

References

Humphrey, S. E., Nahrgang, J. D., & Morgeson, F. P. (2007). Integrating motivational, social, and contextual work design features: A meta-analytic summary and theoretical extension of the work design literature. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(5), 1332-1356. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.5.1332

Judge, T. A., & Bono, J. E. (2001). Relationship of core self-evaluations traits (self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability) with job satisfaction and job performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(1), 80-92. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.1.80

Judge, T. A., Heller, D., & Mount, M. K. (2002). Five-factor model of personality and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(3), 530-541. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.3.530