Lecture 1: Introduction
Work
goal-directed, coordinated activity in exchange for something
Importance of work
- time structure
- opportunities for social contact
- sharing common purpose
- social identity or status
- regular activity
Early work psychology
1850 - 1930
- just after industrial revolution
- mainly factory work
- poor conditions: long hours, low wages, minimal protection
- simple, boring, repetitive work
Key question: how can we increase productivity?
Scientific Management (Taylorism)
- goal: maximize efficiency
- two assumptions: employees are lazy and stupid
To tackle stupidity
- simplify and standardize duties
- divide complex tasks into simple subtasks
- determine best way to carry out these subtasks
- train employee according to this ‘one best way’
- select best employees for each subtask
To tackle laziness
- managers supervise and control employees extensively
- pay-for-performance systems
Impact of Taylorism
- short term: increase in productivity
- long term: disengaged employees, high sickness, absence, angry unions, strikes
1930 - present day
- human relations movement: work should be adapted to people → attention for:
- human needs and limitations
- working conditions
- well-being, motivation and satisfaction
- modern work psychology
- focuses on maximizing work performance while safeguarding employee well-being / health
- objective = sustainable performance
- by design of job, working conditions, task and work organization
Work psychology framework
Box 1: Work characteristics
- work content = role, responsibilities, tasks, workload, variety, autonomy, role ambiguity, complexity
- physical working conditions = ergonomics, vibrations, lifting, physical strain, hygiene, radiation,
hazardous substances, safety
- working relationships = social support, leadership, decision making, feedback, communication
- terms of employment = pay, working time, days of leave, training opportunities, benefits, working from
home, agreements on flexibility in hours, job security, career prospects
,Box 2: Personal characteristics
- personality
- experience
- physical capacities
- information processing capacity
- habitual processing capacity / TRAIT
- inter-individual differences
- current processing capacity / STATE
- intra-individual differences
- fatigue (energy to exert effort)
- motivation (willingness to exert effort)
Box 3: Work behavior
- execution of work
- according to Action Regulation Theory = people are alway rationally observing and regulating their
actions based on feedback from results
- goal setting → planning → action → control with feedback → goal setting
- process in which individual deliberately transforms their environment through use of certain
psychological processing mechanisms
- examples of psychological processing mechanisms: cognitive control, attention, inhibition, info
processing, fatigue, motivation
Boxes 4 & 5: Outcomes of work behavior
- work outcomes = quality of products and services, environmental changes, financial results
- personal outcomes = satisfaction, stress, health, well-being
- outcomes for organization and person may be positive and negative (costs & benefits)
- work outcomes and personal outcomes may also clash
- sustainable employability
- feedback loops
- good performance (4) → responsible for more difficult tasks (1)
- poor performance (4) → heavier workload (1)
- suffers from wrist pain (5) → less resilient (2)
- tired (5) → different experience of work situation (1)
Study
Different task interpretations → two different group of truck drivers?
- +/- 50% are primarily time-driven
- +/- 33% are not worried about being late → safety first
Relationship between task interpretation and health (boxes 1 & 5)
- primarily time-driven drivers have more health problems and are more frequently ill
Therefore:
- task interpretation ‘drive safely’ is healthier attitude
- but not causality; cross-sectional research
Conclusion:
- objective task assignment & subjective task interpretation → well-being
- psychology (interpretation of task) matters
From ‘looking for problems’ to ‘amplition’
Problem focused work psychology Solution focused work psychology
- barriers for performance - performance amplifiers
- demands - resources
- poor conditions - motivators
- risks - boosters
- sickness - happiness
,Developments relevant for organizations
1. Internationalisation / globalization (slowing down?)
2. Introduction to new technologies
3. Changing composition of working population
4. Pandemic(s)
How organizations respond
More emphasis on high performance and low costs
- higher productivity
- optimal cost-benefit ratio
- partially: outsourcing to low-wage countries
More emphasis on flexibility
- flexibility for benefit of organization
- agile ways of working, fluid structure
Quantitative flexibility
flexibility with respect to number of working hours and number of employees
- overtime, part-time contracts, shift work, on-call shifts, temporary contracts, working from home
Qualitative flexibility
flexibility with respect to employability and work content
- job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment, multi-skilling of employees
Consequences of internationalization and competition
- reducing staff to stay cost-effective and competitive
- restructuring of organizations
- downsizing / outsourcing
- heavier workload (30-73%)
- less job security
- in some cases: less autonomy (15-28%)
- higher risk of stress and sickness absence
Consequences of new technologies
Positive Negative
- faster spread of info - ICT: lack of movement, RSI
- more comfort - 72% work with computers
- more skill discretion - 24% work > 6 hours a day
- efficient performance - cognitive requirements (mental effort)
- more flexibility and choice how to spend free - demand to always be available
time - less social interaction
- lower quality of communication
- overtime
Work-home interference
- with more two-income families, combination of work life and private life has become an issue
- even more by fading boundary between work life and private life
- risk = negative work-home interference (40%)
- improve combination of work life and private life →
- flexibility for employee
- family friendly arrangement
, Aging workforce
Aging working population
- employees must continue working until they reach age of 67, 70, 72 …
Sustainability at work is becoming more important
- important: high quality of work so that employees stay healthy and remain employable until they reach
old age
- but: not every job is suitable for those who reach old age (eg. physically demanding jobs)
- what is solution? → basing retirement age on life expectancy in good health?
Selection bias in work psychology
- work psychology research is mainly done in highly developed economies (US, Europe, Japan,
Australia)
- focus is on white-collar, professional and middle to highly educated employees working in large
organization
Quality of work in Netherlands
- relatively high quality of work, low stress levels, high engagement
- in absolute terms, improvement is still desirable
- eg. quality of work
- high job demands (38%)
- low autonomy (44%)
- info overload (28%)
- undesirable behavior of customers or clients (23%)
- stress and workload as reason for sickness absence (35%)
Work engagement in Europe
Higher when …
- in countries with lower work centrality that value leisure over work
- in well-governed countries with strong democracy, which are high in integrity and low in corruption and
gender inequality
- in individualistic countries with less power distance and uncertainty avoidance where gratification of
human needs is valued
Call for future work psychologist
- closely monitor trends and changes at work
- determine consequences of trends and changes for performance, health and well-being
- come up with recommendations and solutions (interventions) to improve quality of work and ensure
sustainable performance
- expand research and spread knowledge to economically less developed places on earth
Lecture 2: Methods in Work Psychology
3-Horned Dilemma
three ‘horns’ when designing study; can only choose one to maximize in expense of other two
1. Precision = amount of control over variables and other aspects of study
2. Generalizability = extent to which results can be generalized to population
3. Existential realism = extent to which experiment uses real life tasks or takes places in real life
