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Simulation SystemsAs society increasingly becomes aware of the value of creating a more diverse workforce, effective diversity management becomes an important facet of Human Resource Management. Moreover, the relationship between diversity and retention is one that should be better understood. However, when considering this relationship, the focus should not merely be on demographics, but on an organization’s diversity climate. Continue reading
Category Archives: Diversity Management
Selection Strategies: Balancing Diversity and Performance
One of the greatest challenges that organizations face during the selection process is trying to hire both a diverse and high-performing workforce. Unfortunately, some of the best predictors of job performance (such as measures of cognitive ability) also tend to produce substantial differences between applicants of different races. This could result in lower hiring rates for minority groups. Continue reading
Age Stereotypes in the Workplace: Common Stereotypes and Guidance for Practice
It is widely known that the workforce in the United States is aging. With this, comes a more prevalent risk of age stereotyping within the workplace, affecting a larger group of individuals. If stereotypes cause an increase in the rate of turnover within older workers, organizations fail to take advantage of skilled and productive workers. Continue reading
Is Your Company Putting the Best Face Forward When Recruiting Minority Candidates?
In recent years minority recruitment has become more and more imperative for companies. A diverse company can avoid legal woes, improve public image, and legitimize itself to minority customers. With the increased importance of a diverse workforce, it has become important to consider the best practices for recruiting minority candidates. While it may seem that the same guidelines for recruiting majority candidates should be used, this is not entirely accurate.
Selecting an Employer
Consider yourself as a minority candidate deciding between two companies that have each extended a job offer. The companies are similar in a number of aspects, but they are not identical. Company A overtly displays the presence of minorities in the organization through recruitment literature, while Company B exhibits no such minority presence. Additionally, you were pleasantly surprised by the prevalence of minorities whom you were introduced to during your site visit at Company A, and you were equally disappointed to see minority representation only existed at the lowest levels of the organization in Company B. As a minority candidate, which company would you perceive as more friendly?
When minority candidates are selecting an employer they will, either implicitly or explicitly, more likely choose the company they perceive as the most positive toward minorities. While a company may try to portray an image that discrimination against minority candidates does not occur, the perception of a job seeker can be drastically different.
Changing Impressions
To make your company appear more favorable to minority job seekers, it is important for the job seeker to see that your company hires and promotes minorities. While this can be advertised through recruitment literature, it will not be fully accepted by the minority job seeker until the candidate visits the company.
The Site Visit
Site visits are generally a late step in the recruitment process, and candidates who have reached this point are more likely to be offered a job. However, this step in the process is also the point at which 75% of job seekers decide whether or not to accept an offer, if one is extended.
With the site visit being so important to a candidate’s choice of accepting an offer, it is important to maximize the chances of the candidate choosing your company.
To ensure minority candidates view your company favorably during the site visit, it is important for them to notice a minority presence in the company, both with potential coworkers and supervisors. This can put the candidate at ease, because they will see that your company has a culture that accepts and promotes minorities. Additionally, the candidate may be more at ease knowing that they are not the only minority in the workgroup.
The final important aspect of the site tour is meeting with the potential supervisor. While the recruiter cannot change who the supervisor is, the recruiter can take steps to ensure the supervisor’s behavior is inviting to the candidate. Many people can unknowingly display negative non-verbal reactions to minority candidates, like blinking excessively, being physically avoidant, or maintaining poor eye contact. Recruiters can help ensure that the supervisor avoids these pitfalls by discussing them with him or her in a tactful manner. For instance, the topic of minority recruiting does not need to be broached with the supervisor; instead, just remind the supervisor that the applicant is interviewing the company as much as the company is interviewing the applicant. In that context, the recruiter can remind the supervisor of some potentially negative non-verbal queues that should be avoided with all applicants.
Remember, recruiters have more contact with the candidate than anyone else in the company pre-hire, so recruiters should pay extra attention to avoid exhibiting negative body language and be as friendly and inviting as possible.
Interpretation by:
David Daly
DeGarmo Group
This was a summary of the research and practice implications from: Mckay, P. F., & Avery, D. R. (2006). What has race got to do with it? Unraveling the role of racioethnicity in job seekers’ reactions to site visits. Personnel Psychology, 59, 395-427.
A Better Way to Use Personality for Predicting Performance
Using personality assessments to help predict job performance is nothing new, but by understanding the factors that influence personality traits related to job performance, organizations can increase the effectiveness of their assessments.
Many personality assessments utilize “contextualized items”, meaning items are written to be answered within a particular context. For example:
- I keep my desk and workspace very organized.
- My coworkers would describe me as outgoing.
The example items above include a “workplace” context. For use in organizations, personality assessments using a context (like that illustrated here) are far more effective than assessments that do not provide a context for providing responses.
What both general, and contextualized, personality assessments fail to do is give real consideration to the situations people are in – the environment that draws out their personalities. Understanding the situations surrounding how individuals’ personalities affect their performance has the potential to allow for better predictions of performance.
Situational Aspects:
Whether or not a person will express a particular part of their personality depends on different aspects of the work situation:
- Task aspects are the day-to-day demands of performing the job.
- Social aspects are the interactions a person has with coworkers, subordinates, or superiors.
- Organizational aspects are the most broad, and relate to the culture and climate of the organization.
Value of Personality-related Behaviors:
Along with the three different aspects of the situation, personality-related behaviors are evaluated as either beneficial or detrimental in value to job performance.
For example, if the behaviors of being social (an expression of the personality trait extraversion) is seen as contributing to job performance, then those behaviors will be positively valued and encouraged – whereas if being social is seen as being detrimental to performance, it will NOT be valued and therefore discouraged.
Situational Aspects and Behaviors Coincide:
It is important to note that different personality traits (e.g., extraversion, agreeableness, or conscientiousness) may be brought out by different aspects of the work situation. Additionally, a particular trait may be brought out by multiple aspects of the situation, but valued differently for each.
For example, being friendly and outgoing (extraverted) while serving customers (a task-related aspect) may be valued and beneficial; while those same friendly and outgoing behaviors may be distracting to coworkers (a social-related aspect) and viewed as detrimental.
How Can Organizations Use This Information?
There are three critical ways that organizations can get the most out of the information they collect through personality assessments. Each is focused on a detailed understanding of how a person’s personality drives his or her behavior.
- Conduct a thorough job analysis, focusing specifically on how personality traits relate to job-focused behavior.
This is the best way for organizations to determine which personality characteristics are the most desirable in their workforce. The O*NET (Occupational Information Network) Resource Center contains tools that can be useful as a starting place for gathering this type of vital information.
- Document the activities associated with the three aspects of the work situation.
Organizations should take the time to consider the task, social, and organizational aspects of their work situations to identify which personality characteristics are likely to emerge in each.
- Evaluate people’s personalities and behaviors appropriately.
Personalities are expressed through behaviors in response to different aspects of the work situation (task, social, and organizational aspects). These behaviors are often evaluated by others, usually through annual performance appraisals. Problems may occur when the person conducting the evaluation relies too heavily on his or her own personal theories of what the best personality traits are for the position they are evaluating.
For example, a person in a sales position may behave in a confident and assertive manner, which contributes to her high level of sales. Yet this person’s performance ratings could be low if her supervisor thinks that being confident and assertive is a negative characteristic (because it makes that person difficult to manage), and allows this opinion to overshadow the evidence of the person’s performance.
Organizations currently, or considering, using personality assessments will be best served by spending some time to truly consider how the information they gather can be best utilized for predicting performance. This may take some time and effort, but it has the potential for creating a strong return on their investment.
Interpretation by:
Kathleen Melcher
DeGarmo Group
This was a summary of the research and practice implications from: Christiansen, N.D., & Tett, R.P. (2008). Toward a better understanding of the role of situations in linking personality, work behavior, and job performance. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1, 312-316.
Work Sample Tests and Potential Adverse Impact
Adverse impact in employee selection is a crucial concern for human resource management. Adverse impact occurs when a protected class of applicants is hired or selected at a substantially lower rate compared to other groups of applicants, which can potentially lead to costly court charges and lawsuits. Thus, reducing actual and potential adverse impact against protected groups is a key priority for most HR departments. This goal has led companies to search for the most effective selection tools possible that maximize differentiating among applicants of different qualifications and abilities while minimizing adverse impact.
Some selection tools, such as general cognitive ability tests, have reputations for producing adverse impact. Other tools, such as work sample tests, have generally been considered to be effective while producing little adverse impact. Work sample tests require applicants to perform brief exercises that are similar to functions they would be performing in their jobs. Examples of work sample tests include:
- Role playing exercises (e.g., supervisor or customer service roles)
- In-basket exercises (e.g., writing memos or scheduling employee work hours)
- Technical skills exercises (e.g., troubleshoot a computer problem or solve a work-related math problem)
Thus, work sample tests are often recommended for use by many sources in place of other tools and instruments that are seen as more likely to result in adverse impact. However, research has discovered that the risk of adverse impact using work sample tests may actually be much greater than once thought.
Problems with Past Research
Several studies have claimed that work sample tests exhibit less adverse impact than other HR tools. However, this research contained some important limitations, including:
- Using only job incumbent ratings and not job applicants, which can affect statistical results by attenuating the range of scores.
- Some research grouped minorities together for analysis (for instance, combining African American and Hispanic data rather than analyzing it separately).
- Some of the research combined work sample tests with other types of selection assessments, which prevented adverse impact information from being calculated just for work sample tests.
Current Research Findings
Recent evidence indicates that incumbent work sample tests show higher adverse impact than was expected. Applicant work sample scores have nearly double the commonly expected difference between whites and blacks. Work sample tests demonstrating the largest differences are in-basket exercises and technical and scheduling sample tests. Oral briefings and role-playing exercises, however, both exhibit low difference scores.
The recent research also analyzed work sample exercises based on what constructs they were measuring. A construct here refers to underlying psychological attributes like personality, communication ability, cognitive ability, etc. Work sample tests that exhibit large group differences appear to tap into constructs involving cognitive ability and writing skills/knowledge, while work sample tests that exhibit lower group differences tap into constructs like leadership and interpersonal oral communication.
Implications for Practice
As research has indicated that adverse impact can be a bigger problem with work sample tests than previously thought, some recommendations for reducing the risk of adverse impact with work sample tests include:
- Selection decision makers need to consider what constructs will be evaluated with a particular work sample test. Any given work sample test will likely involve several different constructs (e.g., in-basket exercise involving cognitive ability, personality, communication, and/or psychomotor skills).
- Measured constructs must be closely aligned to key job functions and duties. For example, is general cognitive ability or certain social skills really necessary for satisfactorily completing the tasks of a particular job?
- Record detailed information about applicants, incumbents, ratings, and specific types of work sample tests for adverse impact analyses.
The recent research does not indicate that work sample tests (or any other HR selection tool) will necessarily produce adverse impact. However, the results do indicate that HR professionals need to be more aware of the potential for adverse impact and to not take for granted the idea that work sample tests will be more acceptable.
Interpretation by:
Donnie Johnson
DeGarmo Group
This was a summary of the research and practice implications from: Roth, P., Bobko, P., McFarland, L., & Buster, M. (2008). Work sample tests in personnel selection: A meta-analysis of Black-White differences in overall and exercise scores. Personnel Psychology, 61, 637-662.
Reducing Discrimination in Selection
Although great strides have been made in the past half-century to improve the representation of minority groups in the workplace, disparities still exist. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that men are 4 times more likely to hold a position at the highest levels of an organization than women. Additionally, white employees are 11 times more likely to hold a position of management than blacks and Latinos.
Although there are many factors that contribute to these disparities (poverty, education, etc.), the failure of organizations to select and promote minority applicants is partly responsible for this gap. Despite the best intentions of the organization, if individuals who are responsible for hiring and promotion give preference to higher status groups – either intentionally or unintentionally – this trend will continue.
Social Dominance Orientation
Within most human societies, there is a social hierarchy in which some groups hold more power than others. Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) is a tendency to support the social hierarchy in which some groups hold more social power and some groups hold less power.
High SDO is associated with prejudice against low-status groups such as women, blacks, and Latinos. This can be problematic when employees high in SDO are responsible for hiring or promoting within organizations. These individuals may tend to prefer candidates of high-status groups, thus preserving the social hierarchy.
Some individuals are higher in Social Dominance Orientation and some people are lower in SDO. People high in SDO are not necessarily members of a high status group. Minorities can also have high SDO. In a hiring context, a minority hiring manager with a high SDO may be just as likely to prefer a candidate from a high status group.
Directives from an Authority
Fortunately, organizations can use Social Dominance Orientation to their advantage. Because individuals high in SDO strongly support the social hierarchy, they tend to stringently follow directives from supervisors. Recent research has shown that explicit instructions from an authority figure to focus on job qualifications during selection can mitigate high SDO employees’ failure to select qualified minority applicants.
Practical Advice
Failure to select a candidate based on his or her social status can potentially result in a number of undesirable outcomes for an organization. Some of these include the loss of a high-performing employee, absence of diversity within the organization, and possibly even legal issues resulting from discriminatory hiring practices.
However, because individuals high in SDO tend to follow directives from supervisors, organizations can take action to reduce the probability of these outcomes. Some of these include:
- Develop a list of specific job requirements for each position.
- Ensure that employees responsible for hiring and promotion understand the qualifications for each job.
- Implement written policies that support these initiatives and communicate these policies to employees.
These recommendations can help to counteract high SDO employees’ tendency to discriminate against qualified minority applicants.
Interpretation by:
Michelle Toelle
The DeGarmo Group
This was a summary of the research and practice implications from: Umphress, E. E., Simmons, A.L., Boswell, W. R., & Triana, M. (2008). Managing discrimination in selection: The influence of directives from an authority and social dominance orientation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(5), 982-993.
Work-Family Conflict May Be Affecting Your Latino Workers
While the premise of what is termed “work-family conflict” is simple – demands from, and responsibilities to, work and family interfere with each other – the way different populations are affected is more complicated.
Work-family conflict explained
There are three major types of work-family conflict:
- Time-based conflict – missing a family event due to work responsibility
- Strain-based conflict – mistreating family after a stressful day at work
- Behavior-based conflict – treating family members like subordinates at work
The demands naturally associated with both work and family life consume a person’s limited resources, leaving individuals with too little time or energy to attend to activities with family.
How work-family conflict affects people
There are a number of serious health-related consequences associated with the stress related to work-family conflict: depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms, obesity, high blood pressure, etc.
Having to attend to these health-related issues can then cause even greater conflict, due to the increase in demands and time away from both work and family.
The missing link
While there is a wealth of knowledge on work-family conflict, a missing link remains on how different populations are affected. The majority of research studying work-family conflict has focused on white, educated, working professionals – and until recently there has been a lack of research focusing on any other ethnic or socioeconomic group. The different cultural and social circumstances surrounding populations may be instrumental in the way they are affected by work-family conflicts.
How the Latino population differs
There are some specific ways in which the work-family conflict differs for the Latino population.
- Cultural orientation
The Latino culture tends to have a more collectivist (group/family) focus, where hard work is seen as a way to secure the well-being of the family (immediate and extended), not just the individual. Immigrants from Latin countries have tended to come to the United States to attain greater financial wealth for their families. Because of the cultural emphasis on and expectation of working hard, many traditional episodes of work-family conflict may not be viewed as stressful by Latino workers. In essence, Latino families tend to accept the fact that the job comes first for the family.
- Gender expectations
The expectations of women in Latino populations tend to remain traditional: their primary responsibilities are child-rearing and household maintenance. The virtual necessity of two-income households can cause greater amounts of work-family conflict for females in Latino cultures, resulting in more harmful physical and mental effects for women.
- Job type
The nature of jobs filled primarily by immigrants tends to be non-professional, low-paying, manual labor positions. Work of this type tends to require long hours and multiple shifts – meaning many people are working both nights and weekends. This increased time spent at work can lead to greater time- and strain-based work-family conflicts for Latinos. Additionally, the high physical demands of many of the jobs filled by Latino immigrants can be exhausting, resulting in free time being spent resting rather than with family. These effects tend to be felt more strongly for Latino women than men, because of the heavy cultural emphasis on women as family caretakers.
Implications for practice
Understanding how different populations may view and be affected by work-family conflicts can assist organizations in creating and promoting policies aimed at mitigating or decreasing the negative effects of work-family conflict.
Organizations employing Latino, and particularly immigrant, populations may want to consider how instituting family-friendly policies, such as flex-time or on-site childcare could help mitigate the stress experienced by staff.
Interpretation by:
Kathleen Melcher
DeGarmo Group
This was a summary of the research and practice implications from: Grzywacz, J.G., Arcury, T.A., Marin, A., Carrillo, L. Burke, B., Coates, M.L., & Quandt, S.A. (2007). Work-Family Conflict: Experiences and Health Implications Among Immigrant Latinos. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(4), 1119-1130.
The Importance of Organizational Diversity Cues in Reducing Employee Absenteeism
The cost of absenteeism is estimated at $200 – $700 per employee, per day absent. With numbers like these, it’s no secret that every employer has a vested interest in keeping missed workdays to a minimum. In some cases, chronic absenteeism can be a precursor to turnover, another costly organizational problem. Several studies have been consistent in their findings that black employees are more likely to be absent than white employees. Until now, few have addressed the issue of why this is happening.
Perceived support from the organization and its members plays an important role in determining who is more likely to miss work. Employees who feel supported by their organization feel obliged to return the favor, which results in higher job satisfaction and commitment to the organization, as well as reduced absenteeism and turnover. Perceived support by one’s supervisor is also a key component because the supervisor is seen as a personification of the organization.
The race discrepancy in absenteeism may be explained by the fact that black employees often perceive their work environments to be less supportive than white employees. One study showed that black employees are more likely than whites to experience discrimination and endure a less supportive work environment.
Implications for Organizations
Employees’ perceptions of the organization’s support for diversity are key. If a black employee perceives that his or her organization places a high value on diversity, he or she will perceive that the organization will be more supportive of minorities in general – “more support for diversity means more support for me.” A high perceived organizational value of diversity decreases the discrepancy between black and white absenteeism levels.
In addition, consistent messages about the value placed on diversity are paramount. Black employees are more likely to be absent when they perceive that the organization places a low value on diversity, but not if employees had a same-race supervisor. These findings indicate that mixed messages about the value that an organization places on diversity can be detrimental.
These findings underscore the importance of emphasizing an organization’s value of diversity to employees.
Practical Suggestions
Some suggestions to increase employee perceptions of the value your organization places on diversity:
- Devote resources to ensure that diversity is being managed effectively.
- Establish a system of accountability for ensuring diversity promotion – make managers accountable for the success of diversity initiatives.
- Ensure equal access to networking and mentoring opportunities for all employees.
- Use Management by Objectives (MBO) or succession plans to ensure development opportunities and promotions exist for minority employees.
- Conduct diversity audits.
- Provide high quality diversity training for employees.
- Target efforts to recruit minorities.
- Promote practices emphasizing equal opportunity.
Although this study focused primarily on black-white differences, other work has found that a low perceived value of diversity was related to higher turnover intentions across all groups, including majority groups. This indicates that diversity promotion within your organization is important for improving employee perceptions and improving employee commitment to the organization for all groups of employees.
Interpretation by:
Michelle Toelle
DeGarmo Group
This was a summary of the research and practice implications from: Avery D. R. McKay, P. F., Wilson, D.C. Tonidandel, S. (2007). Unequal attendance: The relationships between race, organizational diversity cues, and absenteeism, Personnel Psychology, 60, 875-902.
Age and Employee Performance
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) was put into law to protect older individuals (those over 40 years of age) from being discriminated against in all employment decisions. Included under the umbrella of employment decisions is: hiring, termination, compensation, placement, training opportunities, and advancement, just to name a few. While older individuals hailed the achievements of the ADEA, many employers, even now, begrudgingly obey the law.
What’s Wrong with Older Employees?
The short answer to this question is: nothing. Unfortunately, some individuals rely on very serious misconceptions regarding the ability of older individuals to be productive in the workplace. Some of the common stereotypes include:
- They work slower
- They are difficult to work with
- They cannot be trained
It is important to realize, with any stereotype, that they are generally not true. They only thrive because people have a tendency to look for examples that prove the stereotype more than examples that disprove the stereotype. In other words, there may be 100 older employees in an office who are all a pleasure to work with, but we tend to remember the one difficult person in the group and justify our stereotype based on this one case.
Older Employees and Task Performance
Research has often looked at one single characteristic when examining age differences: core task performance (performance in key job functions). The prevailing stereotype was that employees are less productive as they get older. This belief is evident in the fact that older employees are rated as worse performers by their peers. To the contrary, supervisor ratings and objective measures, such as sales numbers or work output, tend to suggest that older employees are equal or better performers compared to their younger peers. Thus, peer ratings are showing a clearly incorrect bias against older employees.
Several explanations exist as to why older employees may be better performers than younger employees. One such explanation is that the poor performers in a specific job are weeded out at a younger age, leaving only the top performers after the age of 40. Another explanation is that older employees have been doing the job longer and have learned how to do the job more efficiently.
Beyond Task Performance
While task performance is certainly important in judging the success of an employee, there are many other important employee characteristics to consider.
Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are, simply put, behaviors that an individual engages in that are helpful to other employees and the company. OCBs can include staying late to help out on a project, helping other employees to complete their work, and not complaining about trivial, red-tape matters. Putting to rest the ‘difficult to work with’ stereotype, older employees actually perform more OCBs than younger employees.
Older employees also engage in fewer counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), like ‘milking the clock,’ stealing from the office, arriving late, and calling out of work. CWBs are detrimental to organizations. Employee theft alone is estimated to cost between 15 and 25 millions dollars to American organizations. That doesn’t even include the cost of absenteeism, which costs employers time and money.
So, Are Older Employees Perfect?
One of the stereotypes mentioned previously does have some validity: older employees do not perform as well in training classes as younger employees. However, this relationship is not terribly strong, and is largely attributable to the technologal gap that currently exists between the baby-boomers and younger generations who have grown up using computers.
The Bottom Line
Older employees are an invaluable asset to companies and should be treated as such. Not only do they perform at least as well as younger employees, but they also help to amplify group harmony by performing more OCBs, increase profit margins by engaging in fewer CWBs, and contribute valuable insight through their additional work experience.
Interpretation by:
David Daly
DeGarmo Group
This was a summary of the research and practice implications from:Ng, T. W. H. & Feldman, D. C. (2008). The relationship of age to ten dimensions of job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(2), 392-423.
Reducing Race and Sex Subgroup Differences in Selection
Using valid and cost-effective methods for selecting new employees is vital for organizations to remain competitive. However, some of the most valid selection procedures can result in lower scores for minority groups. This is problematic because it is in an organization’s best interest to employ a diverse staff, both because of the benefits to the organization – such as improved employee morale and increased creativity, but also because of the negative legal consequences that might result from unequal hiring practices.
Traditional Selection Methods and Trade-offs
Traditionally, tests of cognitive ability have been the most widely used and valid selection measures. However, these measures often lead to significantly lower scores for females and non-white minorities than their male or white counterparts. By relying on measures of cognitive ability alone to select employees, organizations will likely hire a disproportionate number of white males relative to minority and female applicants.
There are many alternative methods to cognitive ability that can be used for employee selection. However, these alternative methods often involve trade-offs in the form of decreased effectiveness or other negative consequences. In order to minimize these problems, organizations should:
- Ensure that alternative selection measures are valid predictors of job performance.
- C hoose selection methods that reduce the likelihood of applicant faking.
- Analyze time and cost investments of alternative selection methods.
- Consider the practicality of implementation and fit with your organization.
Best Practices
The most effective strategies for reducing race and sex subgroup differences include:
- Using alternative methods such as interviews and assessment centers as selection measures.
- Assessing the entire range of knowledge, skills, and other abilities needed to perform the job effectively.
- Test banding – Grouping applicant scores rather than looking at them on a continuum. Applicants in the same “band” or group are considered to have the same score.
- Minimizing the verbal ability requirements of the predictor measure so that they meet, but do not exceed, the needs of the job.
Organizations should take this information into account and be aware of the trade-offs between validity and subgroup differences along with the organizational and legal consequences, when designing or choosing a selection system.
Interpretation by:
Michelle Toelle
The DeGarmo Group
This was a summary of the research and practice implications from: Ployhart, R.E., Holtz, B.C. (2008). The diversity-validity dilemma: Strategies for reducing racioethnic and sex subgroup differences and adverse impact in selection, Personnel Psychology, 61, 153-172.
Effective Affirmative Action
Equal employment concerns are a major factor in Human Resource and Management efforts, particularly for selection and placement programs. Some of the most valid approaches for selection (i.e., cognitive ability testing), also pose a potential risk for adverse impact. One way to reduce adverse impact in the selection process is to use test-banding, which equates people within a certain range of scores, to reduce group differences. Perhaps a more effective way is to implement a meaningful affirmative action plan (AAP) aimed at strengthening the organization by reducing group differences.
AAPs and Preferential Treatment
Affirmative action is defined as any attempt by an organization to rectify past and current discrimination against members of protected classes, as defined by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There are four levels of AAPs. These are (in order of increasing preferential strength):
- Ending discriminatory practice(s).
- Providing enhancement opportunities (e.g., training) for protected/targeted groups that don’t affect employment decisions.
- Selecting protected/targeted group applicants over equally qualified non-target group applicants.
- Using quotas and selecting less qualified protected/targeted group applicants over more qualified non-target group applicants.
AAPs and Organizational Outcomes
Preferential AAPs, such as those described in the last two bullets above, are difficult to justify legally. The real (or perceived) use of preferential AAPS has negative psychological consequences as well.
When it is perceived that preferential treatment has been used in selection, the new hires are viewed as less competent. In fact, belief they were given preferential treatment because of their group membership can even lead to self-doubt and loss of confidence for some members of certain target groups.
Although limited, research has demonstrated that affirmative action in general has not had any negative effects on organizational performance.
Implications for Practice
Steps an organization can take to make their AAPs as effective as possible include:
- Gaining support from top-management.
- A culture that supports AA and also holds employees accountable for AAP success.
- Recruitment targeted at underrepresented groups, including use of diverse recruiters.
- Developing relationships with target group communities and schools.
- Showing organizational diversity in advertising materials, especially diversity among supervisors.
- Use of technical methods (such as test banding) for reducing adverse impact in selection.
- Establishing internship and mentoring opportunities that include target group members and are not preferential in nature.
- Developing and enforcing policies that decrease workplace harassment and incivility.
- Training managers in diversity-management (including better management practices in general).
- Providing employees with effective diversity training that emphasizes unintentional forms of discrimination.
- Providing training opportunities in skill areas that may especially benefit members of underrepresented groups (such as improving English composition skills), but are offered equally to all employees.
- Offering benefits to all employees that can be particularly attractive to members of underrepresented groups, such as day care.
- Work with suppliers and other organizations that are owned by members of underrepresented groups or that are successfully administering their own AAPs.
Practical conclusions from the research are that use of strong preferential treatment for AAPs is almost always counterproductive, both for legal and psychological-social reasons. However, there are several steps that organizations can take to increase the recruitment, selection, and retention of employees from underrepresented groups while not alienating majority and other non-target group members. Key tips include emphasizing that your AAP is not preferential in nature and reaching out to target groups on several levels.
Interpretation by:
Donnie Johnson
The DeGarmo Group
This was a summary of the research and practice implications from: Kravitz, D.A. (2008). The diversity-validity dilemma: Beyond selection – the role of affirmative action. Personnel Psychology, 61, 173-193.