Personnel psychology – Notes lectures
Lecture 1 – Overview & Introduction, current topics in personnel psychology and evidence-
based personnel psychology
Overview & introduction
Personnel psychology integrates topics from industrial and organizational psychology.
Industrial psychology covers topics that are more relevant to the industry/company in a
broader perspective (e.g., performance assessment, training employees etc.). Organizational
psychology covers topics that are more related to the individual worker (e.g., worker
motivation, leadership related topics, emotions etc.). All this knowledge is relevant for
personnel psychology and applying personnel psychology in the human resource
management (HR) context.
The knowledge from personnel psychology is applied to all the steps that are necessary in
HR. Employee relations means that the company needs to have a certain strategy to better
retain their workers/have a better relationship with their employees.
• Human resource management (HR) should be (at best) strategic: All activities, under
the responsibility of HR, are aligned to the goals of the organization; activities used to
align the HRM process (recruitment, selection, development, retention,
performance, appraisal etc.) with the goals of the organization.
If you look into HR departments you see that there are employees with many different
backgrounds (business, law, psychology etc.). The benefits of psychologists working in HR
are: psychological knowledge (e.g., individual differences; social interaction; cognitions,
emotions); “people focus” (costs for wrong personnel decisions for company and for person;
employer needs to invest in and protect employees; importance of well-being and employee
health, personnel development (e.g., training, coaching) – Human Capital Management);
statistical knowledge (e.g., effect sizes, valid measures) and methodological knowledge (e.g.,
design interventions.
Current and Future Challenges in Personnel Psychology
These challenges are mostly related to societal and economical transformations that we all
experience (aging workforce, shortage/lack of skills, gig economy, new technology and
COVID-19 crisis):
• There is a rapid growth and dynamic change in the use and development of new
technology. We live in a globalized world and even small organizations have to adapt
to this global context that changes in a very dynamic way. Innovation and change are
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, more and more important. There is also a change in the way work is done; gig
work/employment means that more and more employees are no longer employed,
but work as freelancers/microentrepreneurs and have contracts with organizations
with a specific period of time;
• There is more and more diversity/aging in the workforce (especially in the western
countries.
• Right now, especially HR, faces the difficulties of the COVID-19 Crisis.
For employees this means they are expected to cope with a dynamic, uncertain
environment and there is a certain need for constant upskilling with regard to different
skills, like creativity, proactivity, critical thinking, constant (digital) upskilling.
For organizations this means they need to create humane job conditions and possibilities
for all (age) groups; support them throughout their entire working life (lifelong learning).
And to create an environment free from harassment, discrimination; empower
“minority” groups at work. There is also the strong need for organizations the strong
need to stay on top/updated when it comes about new technology (technology focus).
The aging workforce is a societal issue in western countries.
This figure shows that within the next ten years (2030), more
than 20% of the workforce in the EU, will consist of workers
that are aged 55 or even older. The workforce is structured
that, in a way, people often have three or four different
generations working together in a team/organization. This is
sometimes very challenging and a responsibility for HR to
provide opportunities for all these different age groups. This
means that HR needs to think about how they can train older
workers to stay on top of new developments and help in the
transition process to retirement.
There is also a shortage/lack of skills especially in some jobs and some industries.
• Examples Netherlands & Germany: There is a lack of people working in the health
care sector (nursing, midwifery), but also a lack of installers, repairers, craftspeople,
medical doctors, other health professionals, ICT developers, engineers, teachers &
educators.
o Briges et al, 2018 – What happens, to the quality of the healthcare,
when you have a skill shortage/understaffing?: This was a field
study with a sample of nurses and patients in hospitals (239 hours
of care; 270 patients). They show an association between lower
nurse-patient ratios and (result) in poorer health-care interactions
and lower quality of care.
• For HR the importance is, that the skills gap makes it especially difficult to
manage talent or have/find people that are very talented in special fields.
This means that they need to think (more) about their recruitment
strategy, but also is relevant for retention (certain strategies to retain
people).
Gig economy: Gig workers are usually independent freelance workers who contract with
organizations or sell directly to the market (e.g., delivery drivers, yoga instructors, writer) or
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,they contract with organizations (solo-entrepreneurs and micro-entrepreneurs). Gig working
is not specifically related with a certain type of education (can be low AND high) and is often
done for a specific period of time.
• Benefits organizations: Less time and financial costs of hiring, onboarding, training,
employee relations don’t become so important for these workers because they work
there for a short-term and flexibility (contracts).
• Benefits & disadvantages for employees: Flexibility, autonomy, work-life balance,
often uncertain career path (financial instability), job insecurity and lack of social
benefits (e.g., healthcare, retirement).
New technology (Davision, Maraist & Bing, 2011): Changes in the manner & methods by
which HRM practices are conducted In the HR process, especially employee selection and
training and learning, new technology is increasingly important. Especially technology that
used any artificial intelligence-based methods, for example virtual reality tools or
gamification.
• Example – virtual reality technology Coolminds VR: Virtual reality is mostly used by
bigger companies, especially in America (e.g., UPS, Walmart, NASA, DB Schenker).
But Coolminds VR Training in Leeuwarden, is a small business that also uses VR. They
are specialized in VR training for employees. These training make especially sense if
you have to train your employees in an environment that is relatively
dangerous/offers situation that are very difficult to relate (e.g., in a plane or
shooting). This makes it easier to prepare your employees for these special
situations. A benefit is of VR training is that is not expensive, this makes it easier to
implement it for smaller companies.
• Example – UPS: They train delivery drivers with VR. VR shows a simulation of the road
and hazards, identifying pedestrians and ongoing traffic to reduce accidents.
• Benefits new technology: Save cost and time (especially for HR); allows adaptive
testing in selection and training (adapted to candidate’s ability level); greater access
to larger and more geographically diverse applicant pools and employees who need
training or you want to select (independent from location) and create a form of
“High-tech image”, organizations can show that they are in a way, up to date when it
comes to new technology.
• Problems and limitations new technology:
o Lack of research, validation and evaluation studies;
o Adverse impact, like employment practices that appear neutral but have
negative effects for members of protected groups (e.g., lead to significantly
different rate of selection). This can lead in the end to a form of a biased
decision. VR can also remote motion sickness (mismatch of visual and
movement data). There is evidence that women are more affected by motion
sickness when using virtual reality. So, this will lead to an adverse impact for
woman;
o Cohort differences in the acceptance of new technology: Especially in selection
and training development/learning, social validity (how much do people that
have to use these tools feel socially accepted by using them?) is also an
important factor. This might influence the type of applicant you get, so this
may in a way create a sort of bias.
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, COVID-19 Crisis challenges for HRM (Carnevale & Hatak, 2020); Rudolph et al., (2020):
• Carnevale and Hatak (2020) introduced some of the issues that HRM is facing. It was
about maintaining employees’ person-environment (P-E fit); strengthen their ability
to adjust to radical changes. Different needs require different HRM practices and
individual assistance (taylor idiosyncratic deals (I-deals) e.g., including negotiating
specific time and work arrangement). The article was strongly related to the white-
collar perspective, the people working from home. This creates special needs and
comes with special challenges. The article didn’t show a perspective on blue collar
workers.
o Challenges of COVID-19 for HRM: Opportunities for virtual socialization, social
events; help relieving stress (e.g., webinars, employee assistance, programs,
virtual counseling); blended-learning activities to increase employees’ skills;
provide communication and leadership training and risk of talent loss due to
the breakdown of the economy (unemployment rates increasing), HRM needs
to find a transparent, fair way of communication about downsizing measures.
• Rudolph et al (2020) covered the blue-collar workers a bit more, the critical jobs that
cannot change into a home-environment. HRM also needs to help them in dealing
with the crisis, for example by reducing social density shifts, more flexible shift
arrangements; separation of employee shifts; better hygiene cultures and increasing
physical distancing behaviors of employees.
Big data is the use of people-related data to improve and
inform all types of management, business, and HR
decisions throughout the company (Bersin et al., 2016. P
87). E.g., task. Monitoring (e.g., through data from
wearables; absence data); regular survey data,
performance evaluations. Big data is usually described by
the five characteristics on the right. A challenge within big
data is that organization decision makers & policymakers
need to professionally, legally, and ethically interpret and
implement Big Data in HRM.
• Big data & workplace analytics – Big data implemented in the organizational context:
It uses information to predict the future; integrating information from the past to
improve the strategy further. For example, performance ratings, tenure, safety
record, sales performance and educational background are used to evaluate, predict
and enhance practices. Examples that are also important are visualization of
individual, team, and organizational performance over time and patterns and trends
of employee turnover. This influences future HRM practices, like invest in talent
management, health management and/or improve selection/retention.
Evidence-based Practice in Personnel Psychology and HRM
At best, HRM, should use an evidence based practice, so that all the strategies that are
implemented in HRM are really based on evidence and the scientific background. The
scientist-practioner model in I-O psychology says that ““Practitioners should look to the
scientific literature for guidance on setting up effective workplace systems, and scientists
should take their cues from practitioners in identifying issues relevant to employee well-being
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