IO Exam 3

Chapter 5 Role of I/O

-          Help develop and implement performance management systems

-          Performance management: a system of individual performance improvement that typically includes (1) objective goal setting, 2 continuous coaching and feedback, 3 performance appraisal, and 4 development planning

o   Motivational system of individual improvement (DeNisis & Pritchard, 2006)

-          Keypoints: 4 components are linked to companies goals and objectives and the system is implemented on a continuous cycle

-          Den Hartog et al. 2004 – profitable business is more likely to reinvest in HR

-          Coaching: one-on-one collaborative relationship in which an individual provides performance-related guidance to an employee

Uses of Performance Appraisal

-          Performance appraisal: systematic review and evaluation of job performance

o   Provision of performance feedback

o   Most important processes in orgs

o   Purposes:

§  Personnel decisions

·       Firing, hiring, raises

§  Developmental purposes

·       Strengths and weaknesses

§  Documentation

·       Prevent lawsuits

-          Badly designed appraisals can get the wrong person fired or could cause feelings of inequity

o   Could lead to lawsuits

-          A good appraisal:

o   Well received by ratees

o   Based on documented behavior

o   Important performance criteria

o   Inclusive of perspectives

o   Forward-looking

-          Research Questions pursued by experts

o   1 – What si the best format or rating scale for performance appraisals?

o   2 – To what extent do rater error and biases affect the appraisal process?

o   3 – How should raters be trained so they can avoid errors and biases?

o   4 – What major contextual variables affect appraisal process?

o   5 – How important is the organizational context or culture in the appraisal process?

o   6 – What factors affect how ratees and raters react to performance appraisal?

Sources of Performance Ratings

-          Traditionally – supervisors conducted performance appraisals

o   Top-down approach

-          Multisource feedback (360)

o   A method of performance appraisal in which multiple raters at various levels of the organization evaluate a target employee and the employee is provided w feedback from the sources

§  Involved multiple raters at various levels within the org

o   Hoffman et al., 2010 says these systems are increasingly important

§  Big companies use them

-          Basic Assumptions

o   Participants are happier bc they are involved

o   Multiple raters from different levels in the org rating the same employee, overcomes bias

o   Multiple raters bring with them for more additional ratings

-          Upward appraisal ratings: ratings provided by individuals whose status, in an organizational hierarchy sense, is below the ratee’s

-          Semeijn et al. 2014

o   Showed different ratings and how their perspective differ and how they differ in predicting managerial effectiveness

o   Levy & Willaims. 2004 – extent of agreement among rating sources

-          Influx of educators and health professionals

o   Stevens et al., 2018

o   Nurudeen et al., 2015

§  High percentages of surgeons report that feedback was accurate and they changed behavior

·       Self rating, department heads, trainees

§  75% of participants found the process valuable

o   App called Healthcare Supervision Logbook

§  Gray et al., 2015

§  Provide feedback for being a doctor by doctors

-          Goldring et al., 2015 – principals and feedback

§  Cognitive dissonance when teacher ratings were low

§  Principals are motivated to correct this

-          Recommendations for Implementing

o   1 – be honest about how ratings will be used

o   2 – help employees deal with ratings

o   3 – avoid presenting too much information (DeNisi & Kluger, 2000)

Changes in Telework

-          Golden et al., 2009 – telework ahs grown rapidly

-          Supervisors must rely on indirect sources of performance information.

-          Golden et al., 2009 – Supervisors rely more on direct performance invitations

-          Telework: working arrangements in which employees enjoy flexibility in work hours/ location

-          Golden & Gajendran, 2014

o   Telecommuting has positive effect on performance

o   Small strength effect, never negative

-          Gajendran et al., 2015

o   323 supervisor-subordinate pairs

o   Telecommuting -  positively related with task performance and contextual

o   Effect strengthened when relationship between subordinate and supervisor was good

o   Giovanis, 2018 – Increased telework = more productivity

Rating Formats

-          Graphic Rating Scales

o   Oldest format used

o   Scales consisting of a number of traits or behaviors

o   Provide ease in development and use

-          Behaviorally Enriched rating Scale

o    BARS (Smith & Kendall, 1963)

o   Best known for: painstaking process of development

o   Bernardin & Beatty, 1984 -> 5 Step Plan

§  1 – group of participants identify dimensions required for a job

§  2 – participants generate a series of behavioral examples

§  3 – retranslation: make sure that the examples generated are unambiguously associated with that dimension

§  4 – rates remaining behavioral example on effectiveness

§  5 – items that represent performance levels on each dimension are chosen from acceptable items

o   Critical indecent: example of job performance used in behaviorally anchored rating scales or job-analytic approaches

§  Rate high, medium, or low effectiveness

-          Checklists

o   Popular

o   Raters are asked to read behavioral statements and check off each behavior an employee exhibits

o   Weighted checklist

§  Series of items that have been weighted as to importance or effectiveness

o   Items should be scrambled not numerical

o   Raters can't see the scale score column

o   Forced-choice checklists

§  Not as frequent as weighted

§  Raters asked to choose two items from a group of four that best describe the employee

§  All appear good but two are the best

§  Purpose: reduce bias or distortion from raters

o   Borman created CARS to make raters feel better

§  Computerized adaptive rating scale

§  Provides discriminability

§  Two forced choices, one slightly more desirable

-          Employee Comparison

o   Involves evaluation of ratees with respect to how they compare to toher employees

o   Rank-ordering

§  Employees ranked from best to worst

§  Good for promotions and raises

o   Paired comparisons

§  Comparison of each employee to another (in pairs)

§  Hard when big company with lots of employees

§  N(N-1)/2 calculate total number of comparisons

o   Forced-distribution

§  Raters are instructed to “force” a designated proportions of employees into 5-7 categories

§  Like grading on a curve

§  Often into thirds

§  Good for determining raises, not popular amongst employees

§  Super popular in the 2000s

o   Adverse Impact

§  Public lawsuits about forced distribution created controversy regarding the extent to which underrepresented groups where ranked in the low category resulting in adverse impact

·       Giumetti et al. 2015

-          Contemporary trends in rating formats

o   Most testing is quantitative but performance appraisal often includes narrative comments

o   Gillespie et al. 2006

§  Proposes framework for the use of narrative comments in the performance appraisal process

§  Identifies characteristics like the specificity of comments

o   Speer 2018

§  Used text mining to derive meaning from narrative comments

§  Explain unique variance in performance rating

§  Predict the likelihood that employees would turn over in the next year

o   Feedforward Interviews (FFI)

§  Kluger & Nir, 2010

·       Proposed to replace the traditional performance appraisal interview and to facilitate positive change by focusing on employees strengths rather than weaknesses

·       Very little empirical research

-          Evaluation of various alternative methods

o   Personality and format may impact performance ratings

§  Yun et al. 2005

o   How providing ratings via email impacts the process

§  Kurtzberg et al. 2005

o   Effectiveness of BARS in team adaptation

§  Georganta & Brodbeck, 2018

o   No single format is superior

Rating Errors

-          Cognitive processes

o   Two examples of potential error or bias

§  Step 1: observation of employee behavior

·       Often done well

·       Some bosses do not see subordinates often making this hard

§  Step 2: Encoding

·       Behavior must be cognitively packaged so rater can store it

§  Step 3: Storing

·       Behavior must be stored in long-term memory

§  Step 4: Retrieval

·       During appraisal review, stored info must be retrieved from memory

·       Often, raters cannot retrieve important information

§  Step 5: Integration

·       Rater must integrate all information to reach a final rating

o   Halo

§  Halo results from a raters tendency to use their global evaluation of a ratee in making dimension-specific ratings or a raters unwillingness to discriminate between independent dimensions of a ratee’s performance

§  Saal et al. 1980

§  Positive or negative

§  Old research assumed all halos were errors, but some people can be competent across all dimensions

·       True halo: halo that results from accurate intercorrelations among performance dimensions rather than from rating error

§  Thomas et al. 2009

·       Curvilinear relationship between halo and accuracy

o   Performance is distributed normally

o   Rating errors can be leniency, central tendency, severity

§  Distributional errors: rating errors that result from a mismatch between actual and rating distributions and expected rating distributions

-          Leniency

o   The rating error that results when 1 the means of ones ratings across ratees is higher than the mean of all ratees across all raters or 2 the mean of one’s ratings is higher than the midpoint of the scale

o   Bernardin et al 2009

§  If categorized as “agreeable” – found more lenient than if “conscientious”

-          Central Tendency

o   The tendency to use only the midpoint of the scale in rating one’s employees

o   Comes from lazy raters or uninformed

-          Severity

o   The tendency to use only the low end of the scale, give consistently lower ratings to one’s employees than other raters

o   Less frequent than leniency and central tendency

-          Other Errors

o   Recency error: raters heavily weight their most recent interactions ith or observations of the ratee

§  Disregard past performance and focus on the last month or however long

o   First impression error: opposite of recency; raters pay an inordinate amount of attention to initial experiences with a ratee

§  How hard working an employee was when first hired

§  How likeable when hired

o   Similar-to-me error: raters tend to give more favorable ratings to ratees who are like themselves

Rater considerations

-          Rater training

o   Rater Error Training: a type of training developed to reduce rater errors by focusing on describing errors like halo to raters and showing raters how to avoid making such errors

o   Spool, 1978

o   Accuracy sometimes decreases too

-          Frame-of-Reference training: a type of training designed to enhance raters observational and categorization skills so that all raters share a common view and understanding of performance levels to improve rater accuracy

o   Bernardin, 1981

o   Goal is to calibrate raters

o   Raters provided with description of the dimensions and rating scales

-          Sulsky & Day, 1994 shows FOR training improves appraisal accuracy and is recognized as the most effective approach

-          Behavioral Observation Training (BOT)

o   Teaches raters how to watch for certain behaviors and avoid behavioral observation errors

-          Rater Goals and Accountability

o   Mero & Motowidlo 1995 demonstrated that raters who were held accountable to various goals or objectives provided ratings consistent with those goals

o   Wong & Kwong 2007 found a clear relationship between rater goals and rating patterns

Social-Psych Context

-          Context-related topics: accuracy, sub-sup relationship, org politics, trust, multiple feedback (Levy, 2018)

-          Qualitative Criteria – Bernardin & Beatty, 1984

-          Reaction Criteria – Cawley et al, 1998

-          Research focused on how ratees respond to appraisal system, it can influence their scores

o   Murphy & Cleveland; Hedge & Borman

-          Sub-sup relationship influencing how ratees respond to system

o   Dobbins et al. 1990

o   Bank tellers with good relationship were more satisfied w the system

o   Tata 2002

o   Less anger and more justice when good relationship

-          Goals-feedback-reaction-subsequent-goals path

o   Ilies et al 2010

o   Emotional reactions to feedback play a role

-          Kruger & Dunning 1999

o   Unskilled people so unskilled they don’t know how unskilled they are

§  False confidence

o   Plays into not being receptive to feedback

o   Overestimate emotional intelligence

-          Recommendations to Improve Feedback

o   Levy et al. 2018

o   Regular feedback sessions, invest in sub-sup relationships, rethink ratings, promote fairness

-          Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory- emphasizes the idea that supervisors have different types of relationships with different subordinates

o   Engle & Lord 1997

o   .34 correlation from Martin et al. 2016

o   Trust and empowerment mediate the relationship

o   Frequency of communication interacts

o   Park 2017

§  LMX quality is proposed to result in more rater accountability due to high levels of interaction, feedback discussions, and info-sharing

-          Org Politics are “deliberate attempts by individuals to enhance or protect their self-interest when conflicting courses of action are possible”

o   Longenecker (multiple studies)

o   Impression management strategies to bring about favorable appraisals

o   Control behavior

-          Rosen Studies

o   Ruminators – individuals who persist in negative thinking and feelings related to stressors that they experience

§  Politics affect them more negatively than others

o   Org politics lead to stress and anxiety

-          Trust and Justice – the extent to which raters believe that fair and accurate appraisals have been or will be made in their organization

o   Trust in the appraisal Process Survey (TAPS)

§  Measure raters perceptions of the rating behavior of other raters in their department

§  Bernardin

o   Villanova

§  Comfortability of raters

§  Performance Appraisal Discomfort Scale (PADS)

§  Raters can be trained to be more comfortable

o   Implicit person theory (IPT) – extent to which an individual believes that people can chance can impact performance appraisal

o   Justice perceptions can lead to OCB

-          Participation (Cawley 1998)

o   Strong positive relationship between participation and performance appraisal reactions

§  Satisfaction, motivation, belief of fairness, belief of usefulness

Providing Performance Feedback

-          Outcomes are behavior changes, better performance, increased self-awareness, increased confidence

o   Levy, London, Smither, Linderbaum

-          Continuous employee development: cyclical process in which employees are motivated to plan for and engage in actions or behaviors that benefit their future employability on a repetitive or ongoing basis

-          Social support is a key determinant

-          London & Smither 2002 Feedback Loop

o   Attend to feedback, process feedback, use the feedback

-          Feedback intervention theory

o   Feedback is most effective when targeted at task rather than individual

-          Feedback environment – proposed to embody the culture while also specifically representing on orgs climate and attitude toward feedback

o   Linked to satisfaction and motivation to use feedback

-          Feedback orientation – individuals overall receptivity to feedback

o   Individual-difference side

o   Related to learning goal orientation

Legal Issues

-          Illegal to discriminate in performance appraisals based on non-performance related factors

-          Austin et al. 1995

o   1. Documented job analysis

o   2. Communicate standards in writing

o   3. Use dimensions not overall rating

o   4. Objective and subjective criteria based on behavior not personality

o   5. Appeal mechanism

o   6. Multiple raters

o   7. Document everything

o   8. Train raters

-          Case review showed that most court decisions for performance appraisal were about AGE then RACE then GENDER

-          Due process metaphor – adequate notice, fair hearing, and judgments based on evidence

-          Wearable tech -> offer incentives for healthy behaviors (steps competitions)

o   U London and Rackspace

§  Wearables benefit productivity an well-being at work

o   Three kinds of analysis (physiolytics)

§  Quantifications of movements, working with info efficiently, analyzing personal “big data”

Chapter 7 Selection Decisions and Personnel Law

Review

-          Selection battery – set of predictors, tests, used to make employee hiring decisions

-          r – index of the relationship between predictor and a criterion

-          r^2 – provides information about the variance in the criterion accounted for by the predictor

-          want as little correlation among predictors as possible

Recruitment

-          recruitment – the process of encouraging potentially qualified applicants to seek employment with a particular company

-          Ployhart, 2006 – more difficult to recruit than select

o   Person-environment fit – the agreement or match between an individuals KSAOs and values and the demands of a job and characteristics of an organization

-          Internet

o   General job boards – broad appeal

o   Organizations own employment websites – attract recruits for their jobs

o   Cober and Colleagues study what attracts recruits to companies, specifically website design

o   Cybervetting – use of social media as part of background investigation used to make employee selection decisions

§  Companies use social media to stalk employees

§  Legal and ethical debates

§  90% employers seek out pictures of individual when reviewing

o   Informal contact can lead to discrimination

Selection – Test Validation

-          Predictive validation - investigate how effective our predictors are at forecasting on the job performance of applicants (prior to hiring)

o   1. Gather predictor data on all applicants

o   2. Hire some applicants to fill open positions

o   3. Gather performance data to serve as criteria for validation study

o   4. Compute validity coefficient between predictor score and criterion score

o   Difficult to conduct

-          Concurrent validation

o   1. Collect data on predictors and criteria from incumbent employees

o   2. Compute validity coefficient

-          Concurrent differs from predictive in two ways:

o   Incumbents are the individuals not applicants

o   Predictors and criteria at same time instead of before and after

-          Cross-Validation

o   Validity shrinkage – statistical phenomenon reflecting the likelihood that a given selection battery will demonstrate lower validity when employed with a different sample

Validity Generalization

-          A statistical approach used to demonstrate that test validities do not vary across situations

-          Situational specificity – the belief that test validities are specific to particular situations

-          Synthetical validity – validity that is inferred based on links between job components and KSAOs

Practical Approaches to Selection

-          Multiple cutoff approach – a noncompensatory model of employee selection in which “passing score” are set on each predictor

o   Noncompensatory aspect is the disadvantage if predictors are not important

-          Multiple hurdle approach – a rendition of multiple cutoff, where predictors are administered in a predetermined order and applicants are measured on the next predictor only if they scored above the cutoff on the previous predictor

-          Multiple regression – statistical technique that allows us to estimate how well a series of predictors forecasts a performance criterion

o   Regression formula: Y – b0 + b1x1 ….

Usefulness

-          Utility – the degree to which a selection battery is useful and cost efficient

-          Decision Accuracy

o   Quadrant 1: hits (true positives) – number of applicants hired on the basis of selection system that succeeded

o   Quadrant 2; correct rejections (trues negs) – number of applicants who were not hired and would have been bad

o   Quadrant 3: false alarms (false pos) – applicants hired but ineffective

o   Quadrant 4: misses (false negs) – applicants not hired who would have succeeded

o   FORMULA – Q1/(Q1 + Q3)

o   OVERALL FORMULA – (Q1+Q2)/(Q1 + Q2 + Q3 + Q4)

-          Validity

-          Base Rate

o   Base rate – the percentage of current employees who are successful on the job

o   Provides baseline against which new selection battery can be compared

-          Selection Ratio

o   Selection ratio – the number of job opening divided by the number of applicants

o   Smaller selection ratio = greater potential of selection battery

-          Cost

o   Cost factors into utility

o   Military invests in selection a lot

-          Taylor-Russel Tables

o   Table developed to allow us to estimate the improvement in the workforce that will result from new selection battery

Legal Issues

-          “white jobs” until 1960s

-          Civil rights Act of 1964 – led to 1978 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

-          “Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures by EEOC

o   Principles for the Validation and Sue of Personnel Selection Procedures (SIOP)

Employment at will

-          Employment at-will – a common law doctrine stating that employers and employees have the right to initiate and terminate the employment relationship at any time, for any reason or for no reason

-          Exceptions are growing and becoming more common

Adverse Impact

-          Adverse impact – most accepted operationalization of discrimination, (80% rule). If selection rate for that group is less than 80% of selection rate for the group with the highest selection rate

-          Arguing In Court

o   Plaintiff (employee) must demonstrate prima facia

§  Show adverse impact using 80% rule or smth else

o   Defendant (company) must argue stats are incomplete or not accurate

§  Unless they do not deny adverse impact

§  If so, they must demonstrate it is job-related selection

§  Business necessity defense

Affirmative Action

-          Affirmative action – a practice employed in many orgs to increase the number of minorities or protected class members in targeted jobs

-          Affirmative action plans (AAPs) are employed, not a quota system

o   Should not result in unqualified minorities hired

o   May result in two equally qualified candidates, but minority gets the job

-          Court Cases

o   Gratz v Bollinger 2003

§  White won, bc race was deciding factor

o   Grutter v Bollinger 2003

§  White lost bc law school diversity is important and race not deciding factor

o   Petit v Chicago 2003

§  Need for diversity in police force

§  Agreed w Grutter

o   Parents v Seattle 2007

§  Split court

§  Agreed w Grutter that diversity was important

§  Agreed w Gratz that basing on race alone is illegal

o   Fisher v UTexas 2011

§  Fisher was rejected

§  The AAP was holistic and not solely based on race

Equal Pay

-          Equal pay act 1963 – made it illegal to provide unequal pay and benefits to men and women holding equal jobs

-          Ledbetter v Goodyear

o   Court ruled statue of limitations began at first paycheck, therefore even though she didn’t know her pay was unfair they could not do anything

o   Ledbetter Fair Pay Act created to ensure statue of limitations does not run out

§  Each paycheck restarts timeline

Civil Rights Act

-          Griggs v Duke Power 1971

o   Even if company did not mean to discriminate, if adverse impact exists, the company must demonstrate selection battery was job related

o   Lost bc no validation study had ever been done

-          Ricci v DeStefano 2009

o   Just because there is adverse impact, employers cannot remove test results

-          Disparate impact cases – cases involving employment procedures that apparently unintentionally discriminate against or unfairly affect a minority group

-          Disparate treatment cases – cases involving discrimination that results from intentional differential treatment or behavior

-          Bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ)

o   A characteristic, such as gender or religion, that is required or necessary to effectively do the job

o   Needs pleasant environment

Meritor Sabing Banks v Vinson 1986

-          Established hostile work environment as verbal or physical behavior that creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment that interferes with performance

-          Type of sexual harassment

LGBTQ

-          Only protected in 22 states and DC

-          Fortune 500 companies protect them

Age Discrimination

-          EEOC v UTexas 1983

o   Court allowed age as a BFOQ exception

o   Company had age limit of 45 for police officers due to danger

o   Commercial airlines uphold age 60, may have been raised recently

-          Cleverly v Western Electric 1979

o   Fired 6 months before he got pension

o   He proved that (1) he is 40yrs or older, (2) satisfactory worker, (3) discharged despite work, (4) replaced by younger employee

Disabilities

-          Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

o   George Bush 1990 prohibits discrimination against qualified candidates with disabilities in employment decisions

-          Essential functions – tasks that are significant and meaningful aspects of the job

-          Reasonable accommodations – changes or exceptions made by an employer that allow qualified disabled individuals to successfully do a job

-          Undue hardship – an accommodation for the disabled that would result in difficulty or expense given the employers size and financial resources

-          Martin v PGA Tour 1998

o   Martin could not walk

o   Sued PGA after they refused his request for accommodation, using golf cart

o   PGA said it was an advantage

o   Court completely disagreed, Martin won

-          ADA Amendments Act 2009 – clarified eligibility requirements

Family and Medical Leave Act

-          Clinton in 1993

o   Job-protected, unpaid, leave for 12 weeks based on family issues

§  Typically giving birth

o   Employee has the right to return to the same position or equivalent position

-          Cali added 6 weeks FML each year, if needed

-          Unpaid part causes issues

Illegal to discriminate for any of the following:

-          Hiring and firing’

-          Compensation, assignment, classification

-          Transfer, promotion, layoff, recall

-          Job ads

-          Recruitment

-          Testing

-          Use of company facilities

-          Training

-          Fringe benefits

-          Pay, retirement plans, disability leave

Chapter 8 Training and Development

-          90% of Fortune 500 companies invest in formal training

-          Average of 34 hours per year

-          Training – the formal procedures that a company utilizes to facilitate learning so that the resultant behavior contributes to the attainment of the company's goals and objectives

o   McGehee & Thayer, 1961

Assessing Training Needs

-          Competency-based training – identify competencies they want all employees to have and then develop programs around them

-          Virtual reality (Riason et al 2017)

Organizational Analysis

-          Should consider culture of the org

-          Org analysis is done to determine the orgs short and long term goals to the organizations accomplishments

Task Analysis

-          Examines the task requirements for successful conduct of the job specifying what new employees will be doing

-          Human capital – the education, training, and experiences of individual employees that provide value to organizations

Person Analysis

-          Very specific – focuses on employees who actually need training

Demographic Analysis

-          Traditionally – training needs assessment entailed analyses at org, task, and person levels

-          Now – analysis should take into account the demographic of the org

o   Latham, 1998

Learning Context

-          Learning organizations – companies in which there is organization wide concern with and value of knowledge acquisition and continuous learning

-          Continuous learning – direct and long-term effort to learn; stems from an intense desire to acquire knowledge and improve results and from participation in activities that facilitate learning

o   Peter Senge 2006

§  Personal vision, openness to feedback, making adjustments

Instructional Design

-          Instructional design – a set of events that facilitate training through their impact on trainees

o   1) determine what is to be learned

o   2) scheme

o   3) planned evaluation

Principles of Learning

-          Learning- the relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience or practice

-          Active learning – resources and activities, practice, problem solving, communication, and verbal interactions, intended to improve analysis and synthesis of information

-          Learning theory – built on the principle that learning is facilitated if the learner is active during the learning period

-          Size of the unit to be learned

o   Whole versus part learning = whether training should be structured ina  way to present the whole task or only part of the task in a given training session

o   Goldstein & Ford, 2002

o   Using learning theory, more effective for whole task when highly organized

o   Distributed practice – training in which the practice is divided into segments, usually with rest periods

o   Massed practice – training in which all practice takes place at one time, no breaks

-          Meaningfulness of material

o   1) trainer should present overview of training material

o   2) material should be presented so trainees can understand

o   3) sequencing of material is important

-          Practice and Overwhelming

o   Overlearning – the process of giving trainees continued t  practice even after they master the behavior, resulting in higher levels of learning

-          Feedback

o   Knowledge of results (KOR) – feedback

§  1 – provides info that allows trainees to make adjustments to their behvaior

§  2 – makes learning process more interesting and increases motivation

§  3 – leads to goal setting for improved performance

§  Wexley & Latham, 2002

o   Principles on how feedback should be delivered

§  1 – given immediately after behavior

§  2 – frequent feedbacks tends to result in best performance

§  3 – positive and negative feedback have value when delivered sensitively

Individual Differences

-          Readiness – possessing background characteristic and level of interest necessary to make elarning possible

-          Self-efficacy – indviduals belief in their ability to be successful in training

-          Motivation to learn

Characteristics of Trainer

-          Wexley and Latham suggest that

o   effective trainers establish specific objectives and communicate them clearly to trainees

o   trainers should have a solid understanding of how people learn

o   communication skills are extremelt important

o   trainers must realize different trainees mean different treatments and styles

Transfer of training

-          transfer of training – the extent to which the material, skills, or procedures learned in training are taken back to the job and used by the employee daily

-          positive transfer – organization’s goal, what is learned in training is applied to the job

-          Goldstein & Ford, 2002

o   Summary of literature in training area and guidelines on how to increase likelihood of positive transfer

o   Identical elements theory - training environment should resemble real-life environment as closely as possible

o   Provide employees with adequate active practice

o   Trainers provide otj training focused on helping employees continue learned behaviors

-          Baldwin & Ford, 1988

o   Transfer of training proposed a model of transfer process emphasizing the importance of social support

o   Transfer climate – consists of peer and supervisory support for transfer

Training Delivery

General Approaches

-          Pretraining interventions are aimed at preparing employees for training

-          Lecturing

o   Oldest and most established method

o   Economical, fast

o   Effectiveness varies greatly, not good for interpersonal skills or problem-solving

-          OTJ training

o   Most widely used technique in organizations

o   New employee learns by watching old employee

-          Self Directed Techniques

o   Allow trainees to work at their own pace and remedy identified weaknesses

o   Programmed instruction (PI) –  presents information to the learned while using learning principles to reward and motivate

§  most established

o   Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) – trainees interact with a computer, otherwise same as PI

§  Fast learners can go quick and slow can take their time

-          Virtual Training

o   Physical fidelity – the extent to which the operation of equipment in training mimics that in the real world

o   Psychological fidelity – the extent to which the essential behavioral processes needed for success otj are also necessary for success in training sim

o   Bruppacher 2010

§  Sim training

§