ILRID 1525 Final

All Notes

Lecture 1: Part II Overview

Pay & Benefits

• Differ between Costco and Sam’s Club, despite being similar companies

  • Sam’s Club has lower wages and less benefits, more employees

• Costco turnover: 17%

• Sam’s Club Turnover: 44%

  • Cost for turnover much higher for Sam’s Club

• Costco has higher annual sales, and 50% market share compared to Sam’s Club’s 40% marke share

• Costco has smaller base, more profit, more efficient

  • Also lowest shrinkage or employee theft in the industry

What theories explain these results?

• Work attitudes

  • Job satisfaction

  • Income and happiness

• Motivation

  • Expectancy theory

  • Equity theory

• Fairness

  • Distributive fairness

Employee Life Cycle

• Selection

• Performance management

• Rewards & Recognition

• Learning & Development

• Engagement and Retention

TRUE or FALSE

• Most managers give employees lower performance appraisals than they objectively deserve.

  • FALSE

  • Most managers give employees more LENIENT performance appraisals than stringent

• Most errors in performance appraisals can be eliminated by providing training that describes the kind of errors managers tend to make and suggesting ways to avoid them.

  • FALSE

  • Performance appraisal errors are extremely resistant to change, many managers are aware of the errors but may continue them for personal or social reasons

• The most important determinant of how much training employees actually use on their jobs is how much they learned during training

  • FALSE

  • The transfer of training is more strongly influenced by individual differences and contextual variables.

• On average, applicants who answer job advertisements are likely to have higher turnover than those referred by other employees.

  • TRUE

  • Applicants hired through referrals generally have higher fit and thus are less likely to turnover.

• Surveys that directly ask employees how important pay is to them are likely to overestimate pay’s true importance in actual decisions.

  • FALSE

  • Probably due to social desirability and/or lack of self-insight, people tend to say pay is less important to them than the weight they actually place on pay in making decisions.

Discussion 1: The Changing Context of Work

• Center for Advanced Human Resources Studies (CAHRS) Future of Work Model

  • Level 1: External Drivers

    • Globalization

    • Economic change

    • Demographic trend

    • Technological change

  • Level 2: Changes at the Organizational Level

    • Changing social contract

      • Gig work

      • Diversity and inclusion

      • Rewards and benefits

    • Implications of technology

      • Automation

      • Reskilling

      • Rethinking capability

    • Redesigning tomorrow’s org

      • Talent mobility

      • Flexible work

      • Workplace redesign

  • Level 3: HR Implications

    • What’s coming next: Key HR Priorities & Skills Needed

Lecture 2: Recruitment & Attraction

Key Elements of Talent Acquisition

• Recruitment

• Assessment

• Selection

Recruitment Goals

• Influence # of applicants

• Influence type of people who apply (high quality)

• Ensure that applicants reflect the diversity of the population

• Ultimate goal: large pool of qualified, diverse applicants

Recruitment Sources

• Sourcing Options

  • Internal (Build)

    • Internal job posting

    • Leadership development programs

    • Talent inventories

    • Succession plans

  • External (Buy)

    • Campus recruitment

    • Employee referrals

    • Advertisements

    • Job boards

    • Social media

Evaluating Sources

• Consider speed, cost, volume, quality and/or fit, employee retention, diversifying applicant pool, match with job level

Trivia 

• What source yields the highest number of total applicants?

  • Indeed

• What source yields the highest number of total hires?

  • Employee referral

Open vs Closed Systems

• Open

  • Fair/transparent

  • Larger pool

  • Hidden talent

  • costly/time-intensive

• Closed

  • Efficient

  • Faster

  • Fewer rejections

  • Bias, less diverse

Talent Attraction

• Barber’s Recruitment Model

  • Phase 1: Attraction - generating candidates

  • Phase 2: Retention - maintaining applicant status

  • Phase 3: Hiring - encouraging acceptances

Key Factors Influencing Recruitment Outcomes

• Brand

  • Depends on:

    • Familiarity - ranges from top-of-mind, recall, recognition, unaware

    • Image - views of employer, job, people

    • Reputation - shaped by views of public, peers, friends and family

• Messaging

  • Realistic Job Preview (RJP)

    • Presenting candidates with both positive and negative aspects of job and organization

    • Have been shown to reduce turnover (via self-selection); improve job satisfaction

    • Most effective for routine, labor-intensive work & jobs where duties are not transparent

• Recruiters

• Timing

• Market

Lecture 3: Psychological Assessments

Recruitment vs Selection

• Recruitment: Build the pool (from planning to sourcing)

• Selection: Narrow the pool (from screening to hiring)

Key Elements of Talent Acquisition

• Recruitment

• Assessment

• Selection

Selection Framework

• Assessments -> KSAOs -> Outcomes

Key Goal of Assessment: Prediction

• Looking for constructs that may predict certain future job behavior

• Ideally, predicted performance perfectly aligns with future performance

• In reality, it is difficult to predict future performance exactly

  • But assessment can help increase the likelihood of selecting candidates who will perform well

• Hiring Outcomes can be graphed on an actual performance vs predicted performance graph

  • False negatives and true positives are accurately predicted

• Assessments help us to increase the number of true positive/negative hiring outcomes and decrease the number of false positive/negative hiring outcomes

Types of Assessments

• Initial

  • Resumes

  • Applications

  • phone screens

  • algorithms

• Formal

  • Cognitive ability

  • Personality tests

  • Job knowledge

  • Simulations

  • Structured interviews

• Contingent

  • Drug testing

  • Medical exam

  • background checks

Assessment Types that are typically performance-based and in-person

• Interviews

• Work samples

• Assessment centers

• Situational exercises/simulations

• Physical ability tests

Assessment Types that are typically online or paper and pencil

• Cognitive ability tests

• Personality inventories

• Biodata inventories

• Situational judgment tests

• Integrity tests

Key Considerations in Choosing Assessments

• Validity

• Cost

• Adverse impact

• Candidate reactions

Validity

• Accuracy or appropriateness in test results

• Cognitive ability tests, structured interviews, work samples, and situational tests have highest validity

Candidate Reaction

• The extent to which candidates react positively versus negatively to the assessment method

• Interviews, work samples, situational exercises, physical ability tests are most favorable for candidates

• Cognitive ability tests are somewhat favorable

• Personality tests, biodata inventories, integrity tests are less favorable

Adverse Impact & Cost

Measures of Skills & Abilities

• Cognitive ability tests

  • Assess GMA (g) or specific facets of intelligence

  • G has been shown to explain as much as 40% of the variance in job performance

  • Ex: Wonderlic Personnel Test, Hogan Business Reasoning Inventory

• Verbal, Quantitative, and Analytical all go towards general cognitive abilities (g)

• General mental ability tests more widely used than specific ability tests

Benefits of Cognitive Ability Tests

• High validity

• High generalizability

• Low cost

Limitations of Cognitive Ability Tests

• Mixed candidate reactions

• High adverse impact

More Measures of Skills & Abilities

• Situational Judgment Tests

  • Presented situation, rank potential options

• Work Samples

  • Perform a representative sample of job tasks

  • Used for technical jobs

• Situational Exercises/Simulation

  • Exercises that mirror part of the job

  • Used for managerial and professional jobs

• Assessment Centers

  • Series of exercises that simulate actual situations

  • Higher-level managerial and supervisory competencies

  • Used for managerial and executive jobs

Benefits of the Situational Judgment Tests, Work Samples, Situational Exercises/Simulations, Assessment Centers

• Moderate to high validity

• Favorable candidate reactions

• Low to moderate adverse impact

Limitations of the Situational Judgment Tests, Work Samples, Situational Exercises/Simulations, Assessment Centers

• High cost

• Low generalizability

• Maximal vs. typical performance

Discussion 2: A.P. Moller-Maersk

General:

• Maersk was a global conglomerate with large shipping and oil & gas businesses

• Talent management techniques: 

  • an increase in employee turnover, internal training and development programs, hiring experienced talent from outside the firm, rehiring former employees ("boomerangs"), and increasing employee diversity

Analysis of Talent Acquisition Strategy

• When choosing between Build vs Buy, consider:

  • Strategy

  • Position characteristics

  • Financial

Boomerangs vs Alumni

• Alumni: Individuals who have left an organization but maintain some form of connection or engagement with it.

• Boomerangs: Former employees who leave an organization but later return to work there. 

  • Boomerangs received higher performance evaluations (+7% of a SD) during their first job spell and were more likely to be promoted and less likely to turnover

  • The performance advantage for boomerangs widens when the job requires greater internal coordination and in contexts characterized by greater internal resistance to external hires

• Different reasons for leaving:

  • Boomerangs are five times more likely to leave due to negative personal shocks (e.g., partner’s transfer, taking care of a sick parent)

  • Boomerangs twice as likely to leave due to alternate job offers

  • Alumni 50% more likely to leave due to dissatisfaction

• Time to leave:

  • A majority of Boomerangs leave within first three years, and slightly earlier than Alumni

• Different destinations:

  • Boomerangs more than twice as likely to move to a similar industry or take a break from work rather than moving to a different industry

Lecture 4: Selection

Measures of Traits & Qualities

• Personality inventories

  • Big Five

Integrity Test

• Overt measures (eg Reid Report) - specifically asking questions that are obvious what the goal is - could be easy to fake

  • Punitive attitudes

  • Admissions of illegal drug use

  • Reliability/diligence

  • Theft admissions

• Personality based measures (eg Employee Reliability Index)

  • Mainly assess conscientiousness, also agreeableness and emotional stability

Benefits of Personality and Integrity Tests

• Low cost

• Low adverse impact

• Offer incremental validity when used in combination with ability measures

Limitations of Personality and Integrity Tests

• Low to moderate validity

• Less favorable candidate reactions

• Faking?

Interviews

• The most common assessment used in organizations

• Can be used to assess almost any KSA, but are often used to assess softer skills (eg interpersonal skills, leadership, adaptability)

• Can range from unstructured (interviewers make judgements and ask different questions to different candidates) to structured (interviewers ask the same questions to all applicant, standardized way of scoring)

  • Unstructured have low validity and potential for adverse impact

  • Structured interviews have high validity and low adverse impact

Improving Interviews

• Develop questions based on a thorough job analysis

• Formalize and structure the interviewing and rating process

• Provide interviewer training

Decision Making Strategies

• Multiple Regression

  • Applicants complete all assessments and their scores are weighted and added together to create an overall evaluation that is used to rank candidates

  • Compensatory approach - a high score on one assessment can compensate for a low score on another

  • Firefighter ex: Applicant A would be ranked highly since their scores on the interview and physical ability are allowed to compensate for their lower cognitive score

• Multiple Cutoffs

  • Applicants complete all assessments and must score above a set level on each assessment. Applicants who pass all assessments are than rank ordered based on their scores

  • Non-compensatory approach - a high score on one assessment cannot compensate for a low score on another assessment

• Multiple Hurdle

  • Similar to multiple cutoffs, but assessments are completed sequentially. Applicants must score above a set level on each assessment to continue in the selection process

  • Non-compensatory approach

Legal Issues

• Major US EEO Laws

  • Civil Rights Act of 1964

    • Race, color, sex, religion, national origin

  • Age Discrimination in Employment Act (1967) - covers those 40+

  • Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) (1990)

    • Make reasonable accommodations without undue hardship

  • Civil Rights Act of 1991

    • Allows jury trials, compensatory damages

Two Theories of Employment Discrimination

1. Adverse treatments (disparate treatment)

   1. Intentionally treat protected class members differently (overt)

   2. Ex: Ruby Tuesday - ad said “females only” because of housing concerns, EEOC brought sex discrimination suit

2. Adverse impact (disparate impact)

   1. Practices or policies that were thought to be unbiased, but result in a disproportionate negative impact on a certain group (unintentional)

Providing Evidence of Adverse Impact

• Stock statistics: compare “utilization rates”

  • Eg: compare company’s % m/f in clerical jobs vs % in “relevant population”

• Concentration statistics: compare job category distributions

  • Eg: compare % of m/f in clerical vs sales vs management

• Flow statistics: compare “selection rates”

  • Eg: compare using 80% or ⅘ rules

  • Less than 80% means that adverse impact exists

  • Divide selection rates by each other (lowest first), if less than 80%, adverse impact

Employee Defenses to Claims of Discrimination

• Business necessity/job relatedness

  • Show that the process/practice: a) are closely related to job requirements, and/or b) predict job performance

• BFOQ (bona fide occupational qualification)

  • Necessary for safe performance or is essential to role; often difficult to prove

Strategies for Reducing Adverse Impact

• Recommended

  • Recruit more qualified minority candidates

  • Include multiple assessments - look at both technical task performance and contextual job performance

• Not Recommended

  • Use assessments that have low validity

  • Provide test orientation and preparation programs to candidates

  • Identify and remove individual test items on which majority and minority candidates differ

Lecture 5: Employee Engagement

Defining Engagement

• The harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances

• Related concepts: flow, absorption, energy, involvement, satisfaction, commitment

• Defining characteristics of engagement

  • Psychological connection with the performance of work tasks rather than an attitude toward features of the organization or job

  • Self-investment of personal resources (physical, emotional, and cognitive energies) in work

Trends in Employee Engagement

• Highly disengaged = ~20%

• Neutral = ~50%

• Highly engaged = ~30%

What about Star employees?

• 1 in 3 emerging stars report feeling disengaged

• 1 in 3 admits to not putting full effort into job

• 40% say they need to leave their org to advance their career

Consequences of Employee Engagement

• Individual Outcomes

  • Engagement was positively related to both task performance (.43) and contextual performance (.34)

  • 62% of engaged employees believe their work positively affects their physical health

  • Employees with lower engagement are 4 times more likely to leave their jobs than highly engaged employees

• Business Outcomes

  • Positive relationship between employee engagement and shareholder return, safety, productivity, growth, customer loyalty, etc.

Antecedents of Employee Engagement

• Job characteristics

• Leadership

• Learning & development opportunities

• Dispositional characteristics

Job Characteristics Model

• Hackman and Oldham (1976) proposed 5 core dimensions of any job

  • Skill/task variety

  • Task identity - degree to which job requires completion of a whole, identifiable piece of work

  • Task significance

  • Autonomy

  • Task Feedback

• Characteristics influence three important psychological states

  • Experienced meaningfulness

  • Responsibility

  • Knowledge of results

  • ADDS UP TO Motivating Potential Score (MPS)

• The higher the MPS, the more motivating the job, on average

• Task variety is most strongly related to employee engagement

Leadership

• Transformational leadership has .27 correlation with engagement

• Leader-member exchange has 0.31 correlation

Learning and Development

• Effective mentoring

• Challenging development plans

• Management and job skills training

Dispositional characteristics

• Conscientiousness

• Positive affect

• Proactive personality

  • All contribute to engagement

Measuring and Analyzing Employee Engagement

• Employee listening

  • Annual pulse, exit surveys, recruitment surveys, mid-year pulse points, learning plans, 360 feedback, 1:1s

• Engagement surveys

• Recommendations

  • Align survey items with how engagement is defined within the org

  • Differentiate measures of engagement from measures of its antecedents and consequences

Analyzing and Acting on Employee Feedback

• A common mistake is failing to act on their employee’s feedback, or taking too long

• It is critical that employees know they have been heard and that their feedback is taken seriously

• Increasingly companies are utilizing analytics and dashboards to help HR and people leaders make sense of and respond to employee feedback

Lecture 6: Performance Management

Goals of Performance Management

• Strategic - communicating organizational goals and ensuring employees’ goals and actions are aligned

• Administrative - gathering info needed to make and document decisions related to selection, compensation, promotion, termination, etc.

• Developmental - providing feedback on strengths and weaknesses accompanied by coaching and training

 Typical Performance Management Process

1. Define performance

2. Evaluate performance

3. Review performance

4. Provide performance consequences 

Views on Performance Management

• Only 3/10 employees believe their performance review system actually improves performance

• A sizeable proportion of HR executives do not believe their performance management process is an effective use of time or leads to desired results

• As a result, companies frequently review and make changes to their process (39%)

Performance Management Challenges

• Doesn’t assess actual performance

• Infrequent feedback

• Non-data-based assessment

• Conflicting objectives

• Errors are common

Rating Errors & Biases

• Central-Tendency Error

• Leniency Error

• Severity Error

Forced Distribution

• Top-grading: A version of forced distribution in which the bottom 10% is dismissed each year, sometimes referred to “rank and yank”

Problems with Forced Distribution

• Cultural implications

  • Hurt employee morale, create competitive culture

• Limited utility over time

• Legal risks

Improving Performance Management

• Training

  • Provide rater training

  • Coach managers on how to navigate challenges

  • Train employees how to write effective, objective self-assessments

• Process

  • Clearly define and communicate key performance indicators (KPIs)

  • Gather additional information

  • Simplify the process

• Timing

  • Increase the frequency of evaluation, feedback, and coaching

  • Decouple compensation decisions and developmental discussions

Lecture 7: Total Rewards

Total Rewards

• Made up of pay and benefits (compensation)

• And experiential rewards

• Total Rewards Continuum - cash to experience

  • Direct compensation, direct benefits, blended benefits, experiential

Objectives of Total Rewards 

• Align employees with organizational goals

• Motivate and reward performance

• Attract talent

• Retain the best employees

• Reinforce or modify organizational culture

Examples of Misalignment (Kerr, 1975)

• Rewarding A -> individual performance, short-term sales and earnings

• While hoping for B -> Teamwork, long-term growth and profit

Decisions about Total Rewards Systems

• Degree of dispersion/differentiation?

  • Across levels

  • Across departments

  • Across individuals within departments and levels

• Measurement (tenure, skills, outcomes, etc.)?

• Basis for allocating rewards (individual, group, enterprise)?

• Use of incentive pay or pay-at-risk?

• How much emphasis to place on pay?

• What’s included in the total rewards package (compensation, benefits, promotion, ownership, etc)?

Pay-for-Performance

• Individual plans

  • Piece work/piece rate- received set payment for each unit produced

  • Merit Bonus/Spot bonus - one time case reward for past performance

  • Merit Pay - increase to base pay for past performance

• Group plans

  • Team incentive/Bonus plan - one time cash reward based on team achieving certain goals

  • Gainsharing - one time cash reward based on increases in productivity and effectiveness of unit

• Enterprise Plans

  • Profit sharing

  • Stock options/grants

  • Employee stock ownership plan (ESOPs)

Categories of Benefits

• Legal Required Benefits

  • Social security

  • Workers’ compensation

• Retirement and Savings Plans

  • Defined benefit plans

  • Flexible and health savings plans

• Medical and other Insurance

  • Medical, dental, health insurance

  • Whole Life and Term Insurance

• Misc. Benefits

  • Paid time off

  • Allowances

  • Dependent care

Discussion 3: Vitality Health

Background

• Performance Issues

  • Strong revenue growth over the years, but the global economic crisis brought relative stagnation and disappointing earnings

  • Company had missed a number of product launches and was struggling to maintain its position as an industry leader in innovation

  • Brought in new CEO who implemented cost-cutting measures and reexamined the performance management system for all non-sales and non-executive employee

• Old system

  • Design: 13 different rating levels (A to E including pluses and minuses), absolute system (people rated independent of one another), performance ratings determine merit-based wages

  • Issues: Uniform ratings/central tendency error, failure to identify and reward/penalize top and bottom performers, dysfunctional turnover

• New system:

  • Design: 5 categories (Top Achiever, Achiever, Low Achiever, Unacceptable, Not Rated), relative system (forced distribution model), system of performance-related short and long-term cash and equity bonuses

  • Pros: Greater variability in ratings, greater pay differentiation, may address dysfunctional turnover issue

  • Cons: forced distribution may not accurately represent true distribution, competition vs collaboration, management gaming, performance discussions

Lecture 8: Training and Development

Learning vs. Training

• Learning - the relatively permanent acquisition of knowledge and skills

• Training - the systematic acquisition of skills, rules, concepts, or attitudes that result in improved performance in another environment

Factors that Impact Training Effectiveness

• Alignment of training with individual and organizational needs

• Learners’ motivations and abilities

• Program design and implementation

• Organizational learning climate

• Rigorous evaluation and continuous improvement

The ADDIE Model

• Analyze, design, develop, implement, evaluate

The Human Performance Improvement (HPI) Model

• Similar to ADDIE model but includes cause analysis and solution selection

• Broader, covers more than just training

Training Needs Assessment

• Organization Analysis

  • Is there a clear need that aligns with business strategy?

  • Why are we doing this training?

  • Do we need to be doing this training?

  • Is training the best approach to addressing the need?

  • Is the training feasible and likely to be successful?

• Task Analysis

  • What are the tasks performed on the job?

  • What are the competencies (KSAOs) required to effectively perform the tasks?

  • Which tasks and competencies should receive highest priority in training?

• Person Analysis

  • Who should be trained?

  • Are trainees able and willing to learn?

  • How can we design more personalized learning experiences that match the needs, characteristics, and preferences of trainees?

Personalized Learning (IBM)

• IBM Your Career & Your Learning Platforms

  • Provides statistics on job movement and forecasts demand for future roles

  • Alerts when good fit opportunities become available

  • Personalized learning that support the selected career path as well as employee’s current role

  • Average IBM employee engaged in 77 hours of training (very high)

    • More likely to perform at higher level and be promoted

Training Methods (can be Traditional or Virtual)

• Instructor-Led Training (ILT)

• Simulation & Roleplays

• Observation and Modeling

• On-the-job Training (OJT)

• Self-Directed Learning

Shifting Delivery Trends

• Because of pandemic, online/technology training has become much more dominant

  • Continues to be more used than in person

Is Virtual Training effective?

• Over a thousand studies have compared traditional and virtual training

• All else equal, learning outcomes are equivalent for virtual and traditional training

• Virtual training is not inherently worse than traditional, what matter is when and how it is used

Transfer of Training

• According to various estimates, how much of what trainees learn is transferred back to the job?

  • 30%

• Transfer barriers

  • Organizational resistance

  • Technology/infrastructure

  • Lack of incentives

  • Lack of support

  • Temporary productivity implications

  • Lack of knowledge or ability

• Improving Transfer

  • Improve needs analysis

  • Build learner motivation

  • Enable manager support

Lecture 9: Leadership Development

Training Evaluation

• Amex 

  • leadership program called Situational Leadership II (SLII) and delivered it to its 20,000+ population of People Leaders

  • the ultimate goal was to equip leaders to be able to better motivate and engage their direct reports.

  • SLII program focuses on three core leadership competencies: drives results, builds diverse talent, and communicates effectively

  • How could Amex evaluate the program? Kirkpatrick’s Model!!

Kirkpatrick’s Model

• Level 1: Reactions

  • Trainees’ thoughts regarding the training program

  • Two dimensions

    • Affective - did participants enjoy the program?

      • Satisfaction

    • Utility - will the training be useful back on the job?

  • Sample Qs: This course was a good use of my time. The training was appropriate in length. 

• Level 2: Learning

  • Did participants acquire desired competencies?

  • Typically assessed during or at the end of training

  • Three types of measures

    • Immediate knowledge

    • Knowledge retention

    • Behavior/skill demonstration

• Level 3: Behavior

  • Assess transfer of trained knowledge and skills to the job - are trainees using what they learned on the job?

  • Methods

    • Performance appraisal

    • Behavioral observation

    • Interviews with trained employees and/or managers

  • Beware of Contamination

    • Overall performance ratings can obscure real behavior change

    • Try to tailor ratings to focus on specific elements of job performance covered by the training

• Level 4: Results

  • Does the training produce “bottom line” results?

  • How does training contribute to org’s objectives?

  • Relevant results should be identified by referring back to organizational analysis

  • Examples of results measures:

    • Employee performance

    • Employee turnover

    • Costs and waste

    • Safety

Leadership Development Trends

• Despite a slightly higher investment in training overall, the proportion of training budget allocated to leadership development decreased

• Coaching, communication, and team leadership skills remain top priorities; performance management and providing feedback increased in priority

• Only 7% of organizations are actively using genAI in their leadership development, although many expect to use it within the next one to two years

• Some of the most highly effective leadership development methods (e.g., stretch/challenge assignments) are underutilized by organizations

• In high performing organizations, executives and managers are much more involved in all aspects of leadership development

Leadership Development Methods

Development of Top Talent (from most to least valuable)

1. Challenging jobs/assignments (projects, task forces, turnarounds, startups)

2. Other people (boss, role models, mentors)

3. Other events (training programs)

4. Hardships (business failures, performance problems)

70-20-10 Model of Development

• 70% on the job experience

• 20% coaching/mentoring, developmental relationships

• 10% coursework and training, formal learning

Development Across Levels

• How the 70-20-10 model is implemented within organizations often varies across levels.

• Formal training tends to be used more at lower levels (eg., early career leaders), whereas experiential learning is used more at higher levels (e.g., executives).

Leadership Development Delivery Methods

• 74% instructor-led training

• Even though organizations tout the value of experiential learning for developing top talent, in reality many organizations remain highly reliant on more formal training methods, such as instructor-led training, e-learning, and external seminars.

Meaningful Developmental Experiences

• Characteristics that enhance value of developmental experiences

  • Unfamiliar responsibilities

  • Developing new directions

  • High stakes and responsibility

  • Managing business diversity

• Characteristics that detract from value of developmental experiences

  • Lack of top management support

  • Lack of personal support

  • Difficult boss

Types of Opportunities Top Talent Want

• Taking on responsibility

• Working on challenging tasks

• Developing diverse competencies

• Expanding professional network

Lecture 10: High-Performing Teams

Overview and Trends

• Increasing collaboration

• Teams can accomplish great things but…

  • Research says an equal amount of individuals often outperform the teams

  • Team errors and failures are common (adverse medical events, aviation incidents)

Common Causes of Team Failure

• Underutilization of information and expertise

• Corrosive dynamics

• Team stagnation

What is a work team?

• Composed of 2 or more individuals who exist to perform organizationally relevant tasks

• Share one or more common goals

• Exhibit task interdependencies

Enabling Conditions of High Performing Team

• Compelling direction

• Strong structure

• Supportive context

• Shared mindset

Google’s Project Aristotle

• Studied 180 teams over years and found 5 factors with biggest impact on team success: 

1. Psychological Safety – team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of one another

2. Dependability – team members get things done on time and meet Google’s high bar for excellence

3. Structure & Clarity – team members have clear roles, plans, and goals

4. Meaning – work is personally important to team members

5. Impact – team members think their work matters and creates change

Hospital Teams

• Edmondson study, hypothesized that adverse drug events (ADEs) would be lower in teams with better nurse managers, greater perceived performance, higher quality interpersonal processes

• In reality, those “successful” teams had MUCH higher reported ADEs

  • KEY WORD REPORTED!!! The worse teams did not report the actual amount of ADEs

Psychological Safety

• A team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect where people feel comfortable speaking up and being themselves

• How to foster?

  • Demonstrate engagement, be inclusive in decision making, show confidence without appearing inflexible

Team Development: Tuckman’s Stage Model

• Forming -> Storming -> Norming -> Performing -> Adjoining

Team Training Approaches

• Range from Task Specific to Generic, Team Specific to Generic

• Task Simulations

• Team Building

• Team Coordination Training (Crew Resource Management)

• Transportable Teamwork Skills Training

Discussion 4: Teams Exercise

Beer’s Typology

• Goal setting

• Interpersonal relations

• Role clarification

• Problem solving

Effectiveness of Team Building

• Lots of anecdotal evidence, but evaluation data is limited

• Team building has a moderate positive effect on team outcomes

  • Greatest effect on affective outcomes (trust, potency) and smallest effect on cognitive outcomes

  • Goals setting and role clarification approaches are the most effective

  • Effect was greatest in large teams (10+ members)

Lecture 11: DEI

Business Case for Diversity

• Legislation

• Changing labor market demographics

• Stakeholder demands

• Drives employee productivity and retention

• Diverse companies outperform the market in the long-term

Recruitment & Selection

• College recruitment targeting minorities increases black men and women

• College recruitment targeting women also helps black and asian men

• Testing hurts women and minorities - because hiring managers do not always test everyone and don’t interpret results consistently

Training & Development

• Mandatory diversity training led to decreases for asian and black women

• Voluntary training increases for several groups

• Cross-training increases gains for other groups at a cost to Hispanic men

• Mentoring has significant gains for women and minorities

Diversity Training

• Awareness

• Skill-Building (Behavioral)

• Has positive significant effect on training outcomes

  • Stronger when integrated with other diversity-related initiatives, was longer, and focused on behavior or mix of both

  • Did not differ based on gender/race of trainees, or whether multiple instructional methods were used

Accountability Structures

• Grievance systems reduced diversity across the board, lead to retaliation from managers

• Diversity task forces promote significant social accountability

• Diversity managers have positive impact overall but can sometimes enforce ineffective programs

Climate for Inclusion

• Foundation of equitable employment practices

• Integration of differences

• Inclusion in decision making

Roadmap to Inclusion 

• Define -> measure -> communicate -> embed

DEI Metrics & Reporting

• HRIS Data, Applicant Tracking, Hiring Outcomes, Promotion Rates, etc.

• ​​Which of the following DEI metrics is most prevalent in executive incentive plans?

  • Representation of diverse talent at managerial level and above

Lecture 12: Turnover and Retention

Turnover

• Definition: Individual movements across the membership boundary of a social system

  • The number or percentage of workers who leave an organization and are replaced by new employees

  • People leaving organizations

• Types:

  • Voluntary: employee-initiated, quitting

  • Involuntary: Organization-initiated, discharges/terminations/firings

  • Functional: some organizational benefit, non-regrettable

  • Dysfunctional: negative organizational consequences, regrettable

  • Avoidable: preventable by organization, controllable

  • Unavoidable: little org could do, non-controllable

• Trends:

  • Voluntary is much higher than involuntary

  • Which of the following industries has the highest voluntary turnover rate:

    • Accommodation & Food Services, Leisure & Hospitality

• Consequences:

  • Increased costs

  • Loss of human and social capital

  • Operational disruption

  • Negative effects on customer outcomes, productivity, safety, sales/profits

• Costs of turnover:

  • Separation costs

  • Replacement costs

  • Training costs

  • Other costs

Approaches to Understanding & Predicting Turnover

• Turnover antecedents

  • Which of the following antecedents has been found to exhibit the strongest relationship with employee turnover (in order of importance):

    • Leader relationship

    • Role clarity

    • Job satisfaction

• Unfolding model of turnover

  • Shocks (jarring events that prompt leaving thoughts), scripts (pre existing plans for leaving), image violations (violations of employees’ values, goals, etc.)

  • Job satisfaction, search and/or evaluation of alternatives, likelihood of external offer

• Job embeddedness

  • Links: connections to institutions and other people

  • Fit: compatibility or comfort with organization and environment

  • Sacrifice: cost of material or psychological benefits that may be lost by leaving a job

Layoffs

• Companies that conduct large-scale layoffs perform worse than those with small or none

• Factors that shape layoff effects:

  • Time frame: jobs must remain unfilled for at least 6-12 months to realize any benefit

  • Goal: layoffs conducted for strategic or M&A reasons have better effects than those for cost-cutting