The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Becker, W. J., Connolly, T., & Slaughter, J. E. (2010). The effect of job offer timing on offer acceptance, performance, and turnover. Personnel Psychology, 63, 223-241.

Speed and timeliness are important during the hiring process. Without devoting some effort to establishing an efficient applicant acceptance process, most hiring managers will continue to be challenged in their efforts to enhance their organization’s ability to compete for talent.

Interpretations of Job Offer Timing

Job offer timing, or the time between an applicant’s final interview and a job offer being made, elicits several different reactions from job applicants, dependent on whether it is faster or slower. Offer timing also impacts the applicant’s offer acceptance decision.

Extending earlier job offers:

• Signifies the hiring manager’s enthusiasm and positive assessment of the candidate.
• Eliminates the applicant’s uncertainty in their evaluation of the job/organization.
• Makes the offer more attractive to the applicant.

In contrast, later offers are more likely to violate applicant expectations and produce less favorable reactions to the offer and the organization. Receiving a later offer causes applicants to assume that the organization is not interested in them, is inefficient, and is unfair. Job applicants will be less likely to accept a job offer if they perceive the selection process or their treatment during it to be unfair.

Additionally, post interview delays in communicating with candidates can lead to negative perceptions of the organization. These views sometimes manifest into action. For instance, delays between submitting an application and being contacted for an initial interview may cause economically disadvantaged candidates to self-select out of the process.

Decision Time

Both student and experienced applicants were more likely to accept job offers that were received sooner rather than later following the final selection interview. Moreover, faster offers to student candidates led to either relatively quick acceptances or long decision times that resulted in offer rejections.

On average, experienced candidates received quicker offers, made faster decisions, and were more likely to accept offers than were student candidates. However, applicant experience did not influence the relationship between offer timing and offer acceptance.

In regards to hiring outcomes, making quicker final selection and offer decisions will not likely influence performance or turnover.

Practical Implications

Improvements in job offer efficiency could help hiring managers to significantly reduce overall hiring costs and free up resources to bolster new employee on-boarding, development, and retention programs.

In case you are still wondering, “why is this important?” Increased acceptance rates, reduced search costs, and lower vacancy times can provide substantial cost savings for the organization. Such changes would require little cost to implement, and would lead to long term savings in regards to not only costs, but also the use of time.

Additionally, for greater efficiency in the job offer/acceptance process, organizations should consider imposing applicant decision deadlines.

Interpretation by:

Kandace Waddy

DeGarmo Group

The following a summary of the research and practice implications from: Swider, B. W., Boswell, W. R., & Zimmerman, R. D. (2011). Examining the job search–turnover relationship: The role of embeddedness, job satisfaction, and available alternatives. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(2), 432-441.

Have you ever searched for available jobs, even though you were employed at the time?  If so, you are not alone – employed individuals are currently the largest population of job seekers. With so many employees perusing the job market, managers may find it is to their advantage to know that certain influential factors could sway their employees to stay or leave. Specifically, managers may be interested to learn that job satisfaction, the availability of job alternatives, and job investment (i.e. embeddedness), affect employee turnover decisions.

The Job Search – Turnover Relationship

Job searching, or the active pursuit of job opportunities in other organizations, is a precursor to the majority of voluntary employee turnovers.  Despite this trend, all job searchers are not necessarily job leavers and all job leavers are not necessarily job searchers. Research has shown that an employee’s job searching behavior is not enough to accurately predict whether he or she quits. However, managers should keep in mind that job searching gives employees the opportunity to compare their current job against an unknown number of alternative opportunities.

Deciding Factors: To Stay or to Leave

As a manager, you may wonder –  if many of my employees are actively looking at available job opportunities, how can I prevent them from leaving for another offer?

In order to retain job searching employees, managers should be aware of what factors affect their decisions to stay with their current job, or quit and pursue another opportunity. The following are three factors that affect employee’s decisions to stay or leave:

• Job Satisfaction: Employees who are less satisfied with their current working conditions are more likely to accept an alternative opportunity.  One reason for this stems from the intention behind the job search.  Dissatisfied employees are more likely to job search with the intention of finding a replacement job, whereas their satisfied peers are more likely to be testing the market, seeking leverage in their current employment, etc.  In addition, dissatisfied job searchers may accept lower quality job offers than their satisfied peers. In contrast, satisfied employees require substantially better offers before they are willing to leave their current organization.
• Job Embeddedness: Job embeddedness is the degree to which an employee feels unable or unwilling to leave his or her job.  This concept is a combination of three sub-components regarding the employee’s: 1) formal and informal ties with the organization, 2) compatibility with the organization, and 3) cost or sacrifice that would be forfeited by leaving the organization. As a job searcher’s level of job embeddedness increases, the risk of turnover decreases.  In other words, job searchers who have fostered ties with their organization, consider themselves to fit in well with their job and organizational culture, and consider the cost of leaving to be great, are less likely to actually accept a suitable alternative.
• Job Alternatives: A third factor that affects job searchers is the availability of suitable alternative positions. In general, the probability of turnover increases when a job searcher has multiple alternatives to choose from. With that in mind, the employees who are highly marketable, or who have a large number of potential alternatives, are at the greatest risk for turnover.

Practical Implications

It is important for employers and HR managers to foster positive work attitudes and embeddedness in order to retain employees. Workplace initiatives, such as job enrichment and providing a supportive work climate, are proven tactics for increasing job satisfaction.  Job embeddedness can be promoted within the organization ( e.g. work teams and committees) or within the community (e.g. facilitate home ownership).

HR managers may also want to target retention efforts for the high risk individuals, or those who are less satisfied, not embedded in their jobs, and have other alternatives available.  To do so, organizations may benefit from assessing employee work attitudes, employee links to the organization and community, and occupation-level labor trends.

Interpretation by:

Kelly Whalen

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Nyberg, A. (2010). Retaining your high performers: Moderators of the performance-job satisfaction-voluntary turnover relationship. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(3), 440-453.

Voluntary turnover is problematic on any level, however, not all voluntary turnover has the same organizational impact. Specifically, high performing employees are especially costly to lose.

Not only does turnover of high performers lead to costs due to lost productivity, recruiting, and training, but also to losses of overall organizational knowledge and leadership.

Turnover Risk of High Performers

High performers can be viewed as either more or less likely to leave an organization voluntarily. According to one belief, high performers are more likely to stay at an organization, given that there is a clear line drawn from performance to rewards. On the other hand, high performers are more likely to leave when they feel under-rewarded or when there are greater external opportunities.

Some additional factors that change the performance-voluntary turnover relationship are listed below. Factors that impact high performers’ likeliness to turnover include:

• Comparable employees being paid the same amount (or more) for less work, which increases high performers’ likeliness to turnover.
• High performers who perceive that they are being equitably paid for their efforts in comparison to their co-workers, are more likely to stay.

Keeping this in mind, managers must take extra steps to monitor and reduce the risk of high performer turnover.

Performance-Voluntary Turnover Relationship

Both pay growth (the rate that an employee’s total pay changes) and the unemployment rate interact with performance to influence the performance-voluntary turnover relationship, such that high performance leads to low voluntary turnover (and vice versa). Pay growth is important because organizations often use it as a tool to enhance retention. Additionally, on a larger scope, salary growth and bonuses have been found to influence the performance-voluntary turnover relationship.

To combat the likelihood that a low unemployment rate will lead to high performers leaving, it is crucial to keep pay growth high. Moreover, these factors work independently of employee job satisfaction influences.

Practical Implications

Compared to low performer turnover, high performer turnover can be excessively detrimental to organizational success. The unemployment rate and pay growth findings together show that managers should focus extra attention on higher performing employees when the unemployment rate is low, because if pay growth is also slowed, high performers become more likely to leave.

Ultimately, supervisors and upper level managers should keep a few things in mind:

• Due to the differences across performance levels in employee reactions to various organizational environment factors, such as a close relationship between performance and rewards, managers may benefit from tailoring policies toward specific performance groups to achieve desired performance outcomes for each employee.
• Pay growth influences turnover regardless of job satisfaction. Therefore, managers should pay close attention to pay growth.
• Even though current employment markets have produced few job opportunities, managers should remain vigilant about retaining their better performers, who may still be able to find alternative employment.

Interpretation by:

Kandace Waddy

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Loi, R., Yang, J., & Diefendorff, J.M. (2009). Four-factor justice and daily job satisfaction: A multilevel investigation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 770-781.

Job satisfaction has been shown to be directly linked to positive work outcomes such as organizational citizenship behaviors. Although it is relatively stable over time, a person’s job satisfaction does vary on a day-to-day basis. One key aspect that influences a person’s daily job satisfaction is the perception of justice in the organization.

Four-Factor Model of Organizational Justice

Organizational justice is the subjective perception a person has of how fair their organization is. There are four types of organizational justice. The first two are structural forms of justice, meaning they are stable over time. These are:

• Distributive justice – fairness of the distribution of organizational resources.
• Procedural justice – fairness of the organizational procedures.

For example, compensation and rules for allocating pay do not change day-to-day, therefore the fairness perceptions toward the organization based on the distribution and procedures will be stable.

The other two types of organizational justice are social forms of justice, meaning they are more variable and dependent on day-to-day events and interactions. These are:

• Interpersonal justice – fair and respectful treatment within the organization.
• Informational justice – fair amount and timeliness of shared information.

People will encounter different levels of respect and information shared with them depending on the situation. Therefore, their interpersonal and informational justice perceptions are likely to change more often than the structural forms of justice.

How Do the Four Types of Justice Affect Daily Job Satisfaction?

People will base their perceptions of fairness on the most readily available information. While all forms of justice are positively related to job satisfaction, regular appraisals of job satisfaction are heavily influenced by the daily interpersonal and informational justice perceptions, as this information is more current and accessible.

The structural forms of justice enhance (or constrain) the relationship social forms of justice have with everyday job satisfaction.

Specifically, the positive relationship interpersonal justice has with everyday job satisfaction is stronger when there is less distributive justice and weaker when there is more distributive justice. Since distributions of resources and respectful treatment can both be considered as outcomes, when people feel that the distribution of resources is unfair, they will look more to the treatment they are receiving from their supervisors and organization to supplement the lack of material outcomes.

Also, the positive relationship informational justice has with everyday job satisfaction is stronger when there is less procedural justice and weaker when there is more procedural justice. The reason this occurs is if people perceive procedures to be unfair, they will be looking for explanations and information from supervisors to continually assess the situation.

Practical Implications

In today’s competitive marketplace, it is important for employers to provide employees with organizational justice in order reap the positive outcomes of highly satisfied employees.

Managers and supervisors should always strive for fairness in the distribution of resources and the procedures to allocate them. They should also strive to treat employees with respect and dignity and provide timely and sufficient communication.

Being aware of how the different forms of justice interact to influence daily job satisfaction will help managers and supervisors keep employees satisfied, even in situations where some injustice may be perceived.

If employees perceive unfairness in the distribution of resources, managers and supervisors should strive to provide even better treatment to their employees. If employees perceive unfairness in the procedures used to allocate resources, managers should strive for even more two-way communication with the employees.

Interpretation by:

Lexy Adkins

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Lavelle, J. J., Brockner, J., Konovsky, M. A., Price, K. H., Henley, A. B., Taneja, A., & Vinekar, V. (2009). Commitment, procedural fairness, and organizational citizenship behavior: A multifoci analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30, 337-357.

Organizational citizenship behaviors, or OCBs, play a significant role in the success of many organizations. OCBs are those behaviors which go beyond what is required of employees. Because of this, OCBs are sometimes called extra-role behaviors. Employees are not formally rewarded for such behaviors, but are generally motivated to perform for the sake of the recipient.

There are two broad directions toward which OCBs are targeted: OCB toward the organization (OCB-O) and OCB toward individuals (OCB-I).

Examples of OCB-O include:

• Promoting one’s organization to outside individuals and organizations
• Avoiding unnecessary absences from work
• Participating in voluntary meetings

Examples of OCB-I include:

• Bringing treats to work to share with coworkers
• Voluntarily helping a coworker with an assignment
• Avoiding conflict with others

Because OCBs are important to work climate and functioning, it is important to understand what factors influence them. Two such factors are  procedural justice and commitment.

Procedural Justice

Procedural justice involves the extent to which decisions are perceived to be made in a fair and consistent manner. Perceptions of procedural justice are often important in managing employee relations, especially when making difficult decisions such as layoffs.

Commitment

Procedural justice can enhance or hinder employee commitment, either to an organization or to a specific individual or group. Commitment is an important antecedent to OCBs, as being committed to an organization or person(s) often motivates an employee to engage in extra-role behavior.

OCB – Target Similarity

Target similarity refers to examining procedural justice, commitment, and OCBs that are either organization-focused or individual(s)-focused. That is, it is most effective to understand OCB-Os by examining how procedural justice conducted by the organization affects employee commitment to their organization, and OCB-Is by examining how procedural justice conducted by individuals influence employee commitment to those individuals.

When these distinctions are made, research has shown that organizations perceived to be fair when dealing with layoffs had more employee commitment, which resulted in greater OCB-O.

To predict OCB-Is in the context of teamwork, though, fairness in decisions made by teams resulted in greater commitment to one’s teammates, which lead to greater OCB-I.

Implications for Practice

Based on these findings, we at the DeGarmo Group offer the following recommendations.

• Raise or maintain perceptions of procedural justice in your organization. This includes perceptions of the organization as well as perceptions regarding supervisors/ coworkers. Implement policies and procedures that establish ground rules for behavior and expectations and ensure employees at all levels of the organization are aware of them.
• Take special care to insure policies are perceived as fair when dealing with sensitive issues such as layoffs.
• Monitor feedback from employees to discover whether they feel procedures are fair and consistently followed. Employee
  surveys, focus groups, or even anonymous suggestion boxes can be used to gauge employee perceptions.
• Investigate perceptions of procedural injustice to determine their root causes. Are such perceptions based on rumors, ignorance of company policy, or actual transgressions by the organization or employees? Consider education, discipline, or procedural revisions as ways to improve justice perceptions.
• Incorporate OCB-O and OCB-I in evaluations of performance when such behaviors are important to the functioning of the workplace, such as not being chronically absent or tardy and cooperating with coworkers on team-based assignments.
• Take steps to monitor and improve employee commitment to organizations and coworkers, supervisors, and subordinates.

Interpretation by:

Donnie Johnson

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Parish, J.T., Cadwallader, S., & Busch, P. (2008). Want to, need to, ought to: Employee commitment to organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 21(1), 32-52.

Organizations are under constant pressure to change. Employee commitment to necessary changes is of paramount importance for such changes to be effective.

Understanding commitment to change (C2C)

Commitment to change (C2C), an essential component of a successful change implementation, is best described as a state of mind that ties a person to a particular course of action.

C2C is influenced by organizational commitment, and can be thought of as being comprised of three components:

• Affective commitment (AC2C): feelings of attachment to the organization, and desire to support change initiatives.
• Normative commitment (NC2C): sense of obligation to be supportive of the organization’s plans for change.
• Continuance commitment (CC2C): fear of costs of leaving or resisting organizational changes.

These three components interact with other important antecedents that can affect employees C2C.

The quality of an employee’s relationship with his/her manager, level of job motivation, fit with the organization’s vision, and the level of role autonomy experienced can influence how committed an employee is to change initiatives.

How components of C2C influence success

Each of the components of C2C relate to the antecedents and outcomes of change initiatives.

The three components of commitment to change have real and robust relationships with important organizational outcomes such as improved performance, learning, and implementation success, which are all important for presenting a positive view of the particular change to customers.

Overall recommendations for improving C2C

Understanding and managing C2C is crucial to successful change implementation. Some of the most important steps an organization can take to improve commitment to change include:

• Illustrating to employees how change implementations relate to the “big picture” or overall vision and direction for the organization
• Making efforts to help employees understand the relationship of the change initiatives to the overall success of the organization
• Maintaining strong relationships between employees and management helps employees feel more attached, which makes them feel more obligated to support change initiatives
• Motivating employees in anticipation of change initiatives should be included as part of an implementation plan

Interpretation by:

Kathleen Melcher

DeGarmo Group

The following article is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Yang, J. & Diefendorf, J.M. (2009). The relations of daily counterproductive workplace behaviors with emotions, situational antecedents, and personality moderators: A diary study in Hong Kong. Personnel Psychology, 62 (2), 259-295.

Counterproductive Workplace Behavior (CWB) - volitional acts that harm or are intended to harm organizations or people within organizations – is a pervasive problem throughout almost all organizations.  CWB can be directed at the organization (CWB-O; can include tardiness or sabotaging the organization) or at individuals (CWB-I; can include spreading rumors or harming another’s possessions)- a distinction that helps to understand precipitating factors that lead to negative emotions.

CWB and Negative Emotion

CWB is thought to be participated in as a means to reduce negative emotions caused by environmental stressors.

Negative emotions elicit individuals to identify an event as incongruent with their personal goals. Therefore, individuals may have difficulty thinking about their work and performing at satisfactory levels, which in turn, lead to negative affect (emotion) and  CWB.

The “What”

Understanding the factors that precipitate negative emotions may be important in understanding the “what” behind underlying relationships of CWB and its fundamental causes (e.g., supervisor injustice).

It is thought that ambiguous tasks (i.e., uncertainty of project/work descriptions) are an antecedent to CWB-O.  Another underlying cause to CWB-O is dealing with rude customers.  On the other hand, CWB-I is related to supervisor injustice.

Who is More Susceptible?

Identifying employee’s personality traits may enhance understanding just “Who” copes with stressors at work, performs organizational citizenship behaviors, and refrains from CWB. Agreeableness (tendency to be compassionate, cooperative towards others), Conscientiousness (tendency to be disciplined, organized), and Negative Affectivity (pervasive disposition to experience situations/objects in a negative manner) are related to CWB.

Those high in agreeableness and conscientiousness may be predisposed to be good citizens and deal with stressors that lead to negative feelings.  Those high in negative affectivity may experience more negative emotions and engage in more CWB.

Implications for Practice

By understanding the “what” and the “who” of CWB it is possible to identify those factors that contribute to counterproductive work behaviors.

This can be accomplished through:

• Decreasing stress associated with ambiguous situations – clearly communicate the tasks given to employees.
• Decreasing the likelihood of customer aggression – ensure that service is consistently satisfactory and that the service environment (e.g., waiting room, temperature) is sufficiently comfortable.
• Decreasing supervisor injustice – develop interpersonal relations training for managers/supervisors, assure better communication, or have employees provide feedback about supervisor performance/behavior.
• Developing training programs that focus on dealing with negative emotions (i.e., stress management or anger management) – this should lead to higher employee capabilities to manage stressors and ultimately, negative emotions.
• Implementing pre-employment screening to identify personality factors associated with lower CWB – those high in agreeableness and conscientiousness, while low in negative affectivity hold traits that lead to decreased CWB.

Interpretation by:

Adam Bradshaw

The DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Christian, M.S., Bradley, J.C., Wallace, J.C., Burke, M. J. (2009). Workplace safety: A meta-analysis of the roles of person and situation factors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1103-1127.

Occupational accidents account for several thousand fatalities and several million injuries and illnesses each year. Ensuring that employees are performing safety behaviors on the job is one way that employers can help create a safe working environment. The more employees engage in safe working behaviors, the fewer accidents occur on the job. There are two broad factors that directly relate to employees’ safety performance:

• Safety Knowledge – An employee’s knowledge about how to perform proper safety behaviors on the job.
• Safety Motivation – An employee’s motivation to act in accordance with safety precautions.

Each employee’s safety knowledge and motivation are influenced by a number of personality traits and situational factors that help determine his or her propensity to perform safety behaviors.

Personality Traits

The personality traits that relate to safety behaviors are inherent to individual employees and vary from person to person.

• Conscientiousness – Includes responsibility, dependability, and the proclivity to set and achieve personal goals. Highly conscientious employees are more likely to have high safety motivation.
• Locus of control – Individuals with an internal locus of control tend to see themselves as being in control of their environment. These employees will likely be higher in safety motivation because they feel that they have the ability to take control of their own safety in the workplace by increasing their safety knowledge. Employees with an external locus of control do not view themselves as being in control of events in their lives, and may have lower motivation to learn about ways to stay safe at work.
• Risk-taking – An individual’s desire to take risks and act impulsively. Employees with higher tendencies towards risk-taking may be more likely to behave in unsafe ways. Employees with less desire to take risks will likely be less likely to behave in an unsafe way at work.

Situational Factors

Situational factors are environmental influences occurring in the workplace. These can come from the organization itself or from others within the organization, like supervisors or peers.

• Safety Climate – Employees’ perceptions of their organization’s safety policies and procedures. The perceived emphasis that the organization places on safety can have a great impact on how individual employees view the importance of safety in the workplace. A positive safety climate will increase employee safety knowledge through training and supportive policies and will increase safety by offering implicit or explicit rewards for behaving in a safe way.
• Leadership – Perceptions of organizational leaders’ behavior; employees who have positive relationships with their supervisor are more likely to engage in safety behaviors. Employees who view their supervisor in a positive way will be more inclined to reciprocate with positive behaviors, including engaging in safety behaviors.

Implications for Practice

Because worker safety is influenced by person and situation factors, employers can improve worker safety through multiple avenues. The authors of this study make several suggestions about how to do so:

• Conscientiousness, locus of control, and risk-taking influence employees’ performance of safety behaviors. Including assessments for these personality variables in the selection process can help determine which employees will be more likely to engage in proper workplace safety behaviors.
• Use training, both formal (such as classroom training) and informal (information-sharing through supervisors and coworkers), to increase safety knowledge and encourage employees’ safety motivation.
• Improve safety climate to increase employee safety performance behaviors. Do this by establishing organizational safety policies and related practices and communicating the organization’s commitment to employee safety.
• Ensure that managers are properly trained and supported. Remember that when leaders and employees have a positive relationship, employees are more likely to engage in safety behaviors.

Interpretation by:

Michelle Toelle

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Tangirala, S., & Ramanujam, R. (2008). Exploring nonlinearity in employee voice: The effects of personal control and organizational identification. Academy of Management Journal, 51, 1189-1203.

When you think of employee voice, what do you think of? Do you think of a dissatisfied employee voicing his issues to his supervisor? Do you think of an innovative employee voicing her ideas for a new process? Both are valid examples of employee voice. Voice is defined as employee communication on issues of work processes. Two key factors influencing the likelihood of an employee engaging in voice are personal control and organizational identification.

How Does Personal Control Relate to Voice?

Personal control is defined as perceptions of autonomy and impact in the employee’s work environment.  Therefore, when an employee has autonomy in his workplace, meaning he feels a sense of independence and choice in his work, and has a sense of impact or control over the outcomes in the workplace, he can be considered to have high personal control. If an employee feels like he has no control over his work or the organizational outcomes, he can be said to have low personal control.

Employees with high and low personal control both often demonstrate high levels of employee voice. The difference is in the motivations underlying the voicing.

• Low personal control. Employees with low personal control are often motivated to improve their situation or status. This is a dissatisfaction-based motivation, meaning the employee is dissatisfied with the current situation and wants to change it.

• High personal control. Employees with high personal control tend to believe their actions have impact and feel great sense of autonomy to act; therefore, they are motivated to seek the opportunity to improve organizational outcomes by voicing their ideas for change. This is called an expectancy-based motivation, meaning the employee expects to make a difference.

• Neither high nor low personal control? In this case, the employee doesn’t have a strong motivation to voice for change, therefore he or she often engages in low levels of voice.

The Role of Organizational Identification

Organizational identification is the connection and loyalty an employee has toward the organization, such that the employee intensely feels its successes and failures.

Organizational identification affects the motivations behind employee voice differently (i.e., dissatisfaction-based and expectancy-based). Organizational identification dampens the dissatisfaction-based motivation and reinforces the expectancy-based motivation to engage in voice.

Employees with strong organizational identification and low personal control may overlook aspects of their job that are dissatisfying, because they trust that the situation will change on its own. In turn, they will be less likely to voice their concerns for change (motivation dampened).

On the other hand, those with high organizational identification and high personal control will likely be much more motivated to voice their ideas to improve the organizational processes, because they want to see the organization succeed and expect that they can play a role it doing that (motivation reinforced).

Implications for Practice

Due to the complexities of the workplace, managers often rely on employees’ opinions and suggestions for innovations and changes to organizational processes. Therefore, it is important to understand the factors that contribute to motivating and empowering employees to voice their ideas. Below are some ways that personal control and organizational identification can be modified to influence voice.

• Increasing personal control. Personal control can be increased by job enrichment, meaning giving employees meaningful tasks that challenge them and utilize their skills and abilities. Giving employees the proper training and resources to take ownership of their work, and developing a clear and valued reward system based on their performance, will lead to a sense of personal control and, in turn, an increase in voice.

• Avoiding moderate personal control. Because moderate levels of personal control lead to no motivation for employees to engage in voice, it is important not to implement interventions that provide moderate personal control (e.g., halfway interventions that send mixed messages to employees).

• Increasing organizational identification. Implementing practices that increase organizational identification (e.g., fostering employee pride in what the organization stands for) along with interventions to increase personal control will likely lead to an increase in voice.

• Purposefully reducing voice. On the other hand, by implementing practices to increase organizational identification along with inventions that restrict personal control (e.g., delegating little authority to employees or soliciting limited employee input with making decisions) will lead to reduction in employee voice. Reduced voice may be desired at certain times. For example, voice may be disruptive when the implementation of idea is important rather than a generation of new ideas.

Efforts to enhance voice can also lead to other positive organizational outcomes. Organizational identification-enhancing practices can result in greater employee loyalty and commitment.  Also, efforts to increase personal control can also lead to an increase in job satisfaction, reduction of stress, and improved job performance.

Interpretation by:

Lexy Adkins

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Shaw, J. D., & Gupta, N. (2007). Pay system characteristics and quit patterns of good, average, and poor performers. Personnel Psychology, 60, 903-928.

Determining the foundations of a pay system can be a very difficult dilemma. In most cases, the basis of the pay system will boil down to two main options: Seniority-based pay systems and performance-based pay systems. While the decision may seem to have implications solely in the area of compensation management, an inappropriate pay system choice can lead to higher turnover rates, especially for high performers.

Seniority Versus Performance Pay Systems

Seniority-based pay systems are those in which the primary basis for pay increases is the employee’s tenure. It should be noted that seniority-based pay systems can take into account performance, but the main factor is tenure. Some benefits of seniority-based pay include loyalty, retention, and stability of all staff members, regardless of performance levels.

Performance-based pay systems consider performance as the primary basis for pay increases. As with seniority-based pay systems, other factors, like tenure, can be accounted for in a performance-based system, but employee performance, however conceptualized by the organization, is the impetus in determining pay raises.

Performance-based pay systems can actually lead to a climate in which all employees are working hard to achieve maximum performance. While this certainly sounds like an ideal option, there are several downfalls, such as the potential for high turnover rates as average and lower performing employees can get discouraged when they regularly fail to receive merit increases.

A common analogy used to help conceptualize this is the tournament analogy. The ‘winners’ are the high performers who often receive increases, and the ‘losers’ are the average and low performers who are being passed over for increases. As you would expect, those who consistently lose the tournament are likely to stop playing the game, i.e. quitting.

What Factors Can Alter This Process?

• Pay System Communication

The amount of communication about how pay increase decisions are made is crucial to the functioning of all pay systems. Workers should be told not only how the system is designed, but also how their pay increases compare to the averages within their jobs. This can be best accomplished by talking about pay increases as percentages, thus avoiding negative feelings related to salary differences. A final, very important note about pay system communication is that low levels of pay communication have shown links to increased union-organizing activities.

• Pay Dispersion

The extent to which pay differs across employees in the same job is very important to the effectiveness and implications of pay systems based on both seniority and performance. When pay dispersion is high, there are important implications, especially to the quit rates of high performing employees.

In a seniority-based pay system, quit rates of high performing employees are higher when there is a great deal of pay dispersion. The assumed cause of this relationship is that high performing employees begin to perceive that their greater amounts of effort and performance are not appropriately appreciated by the organization. As a result, high performing employees are likely to leave the organization.

Conversely, when pay dispersion is high in a performance-based pay system, high performing employees tend to be the highest earners, as their high performance is being highly rewarded. In this type of structure, high performers tend to stay with the company, as they feel they are well compensated for their hard work. The downside is, once again, that average and low performing employees are more likely to leave.

Practical Implications

When choosing the emphasis for the pay system of any job within your organization, be sure to:

• Determine what kind of balance you would like to find between a pay system that encourages only the high performers to stay, and one that is inviting to the entire workforce.
• Remember that, while it may sound like a good idea to weed out the low and average performers and only retain the high performers, this can lead to an ongoing cycle of high turnover and its associated costs. Mentoring, training, and other forms of coaching should be utilized to try to raise the performance level of the lower performers.
• Ensure that, regardless of pay system, a high level of pay system communication is present to reduce the likelihood of employee discontent and associated union organization.

Interpretation by:

David Daly

DeGarmo Group