Employee Performance and Well-being

Leadership, Justice, Support, and Workplace Spirituality

Badrinarayan Shankar Pawar

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429534409
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides recent inputs from the field of organizational behavior (OB) for enhancing employee performance and well-being, a key concern for managers today. It focuses on transformational leadership, organizational justice, organizational support, and workplace spirituality. The author outlines multiple dimensions of employee performance and five forms of employee well-being – physical, emotional, psychological, social and spiritual. The book also presents an overview of the traditional approaches, and draws on relevant literature and empirical findings. It offers exercises from a practitioner's point of view to facilitate managerial actions and will serve as a practical application guide for managers.

This book will be of interest and use to students and researchers of human resource management, organizational behavior, management education, industrial and organizational psychology, corporate social responsibility and business ethics, as well as practicing HR managers and training managers.

Chapter 1

Employee performance

An organization’s requirement from employees

Exercise 1: Assessment of employee performance in a work unit

This exercise is to be completed before reading the chapter. It can facilitate application of the “performance” aspect to the actual work units.

Directions

Before you read this chapter, do the following exercise for your organization. Using a separate sheet, write down your responses to each of the following questions.

1. Describe what is meant by “employee performance” in your organization.
2. List five different jobs/roles in your organization.
3. From the above list, for any one job:
   1. Describe the job briefly.
   2. Describe the employee behaviors that are regarded as positive performance in that job.
   3. Describe how adequately the employee behaviors described above completely reflect positive performance in that job.
   4. List what other employee behaviors need to be included to completely assess employee performance in that job.
   5. Explain why these additional employee behaviors need to be included to completely describe employee performance in that job.
   6. Describe how a more complete view of employee performance in this job may affect (hurt/benefit) your organization.

After you read the chapter, reflect on how adequately your responses to the above items described employee performance.

Exercise 2: Appreciate employee performance through example scenarios

In the following hypothetical examples, two work units A and B are described. A work unit could be a department in a hospital where employees are doctors, nurses, ward staff, and other support staff; a library in an academic institute; or a bank branch where employees could be a branch manager, officers, clerical staff, and support staff. Now consider a bank branch as a work unit in the following examples.

Organizational unit A

Consider the following organizational unit A.

In unit A, which is a bank branch, employees mostly provide advance notice if they need to take a leave. In the bank branch, employees come on time. Employees help those coworkers who are new or have some family-related difficulties. This help could be through sharing the coworkers’ workload or by listening to their problems and providing empathy or advice to them. Employees exert a high level of effort on their jobs and persist when they face difficulties. For example, if an employee does not know the procedures to complete a transaction requested by a customer, rather than turn the customer away to a higher-level officer, the employee could quickly ask someone about the correct procedures and use them to complete the transaction. Employees avoid creating problems for other coworkers. For example, an employee working at one of the counters would avoid making long personal phone calls during working hours, because that would slow down his/her work and increase the work for the employees at other counters rendering similar service. Employees read circulars and notices that might affect their work in the branch. Employees usually tolerate small inconveniences such as overhead cooling fans or air conditioners not functioning properly.

Organizational unit B

Consider the following organizational unit B.

In unit B, which is a bank branch, employees remain absent without providing advance notice and fill in the leave application form only when they return to work after the absence days. In the bank branch, quite a few employees frequently come late. Employees do not help those coworkers who are new or have some family-related difficulties. Thus, for example, employees will not share the heavy workload of an employee and thus the employee with heavy workload would not receive help or employees will not listen to a coworker’s personal difficulties or provide him/her empathy or advice. Employees do not exert a high level of effort on their jobs and do not persist when they face difficulties. For example, if an employee does not know the procedures to complete a transaction requested by a customer, rather than quickly asking someone about the correct procedures and using them to complete the transaction, he/she will turn the customer away to a higher-level officer. Employees do not take care to avoid creating problems for other coworkers. For example, an employee working at one of the counters would make long personal phone calls during working hours while not considering that this would slow down his/her work and increase the work for the employees at other counters rendering similar service. Employees do not read circulars and notices that might affect their work in the branch. Employees usually make noise about small inconveniences such as overhead cooling fans or air conditioners not functioning properly.

Now answer the following questions based on the previously outlined descriptions of work unit A and work unit B.

1. Suppose you have a choice to be in charge of either unit A or unit B. Which of the two work units would you choose to be in charge of?
2. Provide justification for your choice of work unit to be in charge of.
3. Which of the two work units would be more productive?
4. For the work unit mentioned by you in response to question 3, provide an explanation of why you think it would be more productive.
5. Explain how the employee behaviors and contributions in work unit A are in addition to employee performance of their producing the work of adequate quantity and quality.

Employee performance: An important objective of organizations

The origins of industrial organizations can be traced to the industrial revolution. One of the prescriptions emerging from the industrial revolution period was to adopt the division of labor. The division of labor principle suggests that a job needs to be divided into a number of tasks, and one or more tasks need to be assigned to each employee in such a way that each employee does a particular fragment of the overall job and hence becomes a specialist in it. Considerable gain in employee performance was one of the claimed benefits of the application of the division of labor principle.

The performance gains associated with the division of labor principle can be seen from the example of comparing two approaches to doing the job of paper pin manufacturing. In one approach to the job, each employee did all the tasks associated with the job, such as straightening the wire, cutting the wire, and sharpening the wire piece. In the alternative approach, the tasks associated with the pin manufacturing job were divided among employees such that one employee straightened the wire, another one cut the wire, another one sharpened the wire piece end, and so on. It was observed that employee performance measured as the number of pins produced per employee was considerably higher in the latter approach than in the former approach. Specifically, Wren (1987, p. 30) notes that “Adam Smith … cited the example of the pin-makers who, when each performed a limited operation, could produce 48,000 pins per day, whereas one unspecialized worker could do no more than twenty pins per day.” Thus, the division of labor principle can be seen as a suggestion for employee performance enhancement by arranging the job performance tasks in a particular way.

In the early period of modern industrial organizations around the beginning of the 20th century, the scientific management approach proposed by F. W. Taylor and his associates contained various techniques. These included time and motion study, standardization of work methods, specialization, assignment of task to individual employees, specification of a production target or goal to each employee, provision of bonus or monetary incentive for high performance, scientific selection of employees, and provision of training to employees (Locke, 1982; Taylor, 1911/2007). Of these techniques, the specialization technique reflects division of labor, because this technique involves making each employee do a specialized part of the overall job. The scientific management approach to doing jobs also demonstrated considerable improvement in productivity (e.g., Taylor, 1911/2007).

In contemporary industrial organizations, employee performance remains one of the main concerns. An example of this concern is the view of Fry and Slocum (2008) that performance or profit is one of the greatest challenges faced by contemporary leaders.

Thus, employee performance has been an objective of organizations in the period of industrial revolution, of scientific management that emerged around the early part of the 20th century, and of contemporary modern organizations. In light of the importance of employee performance for organizations, it is relevant to consider what employee performance is. Thus, the concept of employee performance is described below.

Employee performance: What is it?

Employee performance may be generally viewed as the level of relevant output produced by an employee. For example, performance of a teacher could be assessed in terms of the number of hours taught by the teacher and in terms of feedback from students. In this example, the number of hours taught by a teacher reflects the quantity of work produced, and the nature of teaching feedback received from students reflects the quality of work produced. As another example, performance of a bank cashier could be assessed by considering the combination of the number of cash-dispensing transactions and the number of cash receipt transactions completed over a certain period, the average time taken to serve a customer, and the quality of service provided to the customers during their transactions. This is the traditional view of employee performance.

Two features should be noted concerning this traditional view of employee performance, which focuses on the quantity and quality of outputs produced on a job. First, it focuses on an employee’s performance on the job or task. Therefore, it is actually an employee’s task performance or on-the-job performance rather than an employee’s overall performance. An employee’s overall performance includes, in addition to the employee’s task performance, extra-role performance or contextual performance, such as taking extra responsibility, helping coworkers, and making innovative suggestions.

Second, the traditional view of employee performance focuses on the task results attained by an employee rather than the behaviors of the employee. However, employee performance can also be viewed as an evaluative judgment as to the extent to which an employee’s behaviors have facilitated or impaired the attainment of the organization’s goals (Motowidlo, Borman, and Schmitt, 1997). According to this view of employee performance, an employee’s behaviors such as ignoring quality checks, working slow on the job, and using inappropriate raw materials impair the attainment of an organization’s goals. Hence, the evaluative judgment of such behaviors is that of negative, poor, or low performance. Further, according to this view of employee performance, employee behaviors such as meticulously doing quality checks, working at the required or higher pace on the job, and using appropriate raw materials facilitate the attainment of the organization’s goals. Hence, the evaluative judgment of such behaviors is that of positive, good, or high performance. The employee behaviors forming the negative, poor, or low performance are likely to attain poor results in terms of quantity and quality of work produced, whereas the employee behaviors forming the positive, good, or high performance are likely to attain good results. Thus, the view of performance as an evaluative judgment of employee behaviors in terms of the extent to which the behaviors facilitate or impair the attainment of an organization’s goals indirectly reflects the results attainment and provides a more detailed view of employee performance than does the view provided by focusing only on the results.

The two features outlined above indicate that employee performance needs to be viewed as an evaluative judgment of the extent to which an employee’s behaviors facilitate or impair the attainment of an organization’s goals. Further, not only the employee’s on-the-job or task-related behaviors but also extra-role behaviors need to be included in assessing employee performance (e.g., Motowidlo et al., 1997). In the literature, the task performance part is also referred to as in-role performance or on-the-job performance, while the extra-role performance is referred to as contextual performance (Motowidlo et al., 1997) or organizational citizenship behaviors (e.g., Organ, 1988).

A closer look at employees’ contextual performance

The discussion above indicates that an employee’s performance refers to the judgment about the extent to which the employee’s in-role or on-the-job or task behaviors and extra-role behaviors facilitate the attainment of an organization’s goals. Thus, an employee’s overall performance involves a judgment based on both an employee’s in-role or task behaviors and an employee’s extra-role or non-task behaviors.

The judgment about the extent to which an employee’s non-task or extra-role behaviors facilitate or impede an organization’s goal attainment is referred to as contextual performance. Formally, employee contextual performance is defined as those behaviors of employees that nourish or support the social and psychological context in which the work occurs (Motowidlo et al., 1997). Another label used in the literature to refer to similar behaviors is organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) (e.g., Organ, 1988). OCBs refer to an employee’s behaviors that have certain features. These behaviors are not specified as a part of the employee’s formal role, an employee performing these behaviors does not seek immediate rewards from performing them, and these behaviors benefit the organization (e.g., Organ, 1988). Based on these features of OCBs, OCBs can be referred to as extra-role, non-reward-seeking, and organizationally beneficial employee behaviors (e.g., Organ, 1988).

A review of OCB research (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, and Bacharach, 2000) indicates that there are several perspectives, each containing one list of OCB categories, outlining multiple OCB categories. Similarly, Coleman and Borman (2000, p. 28–29) indicate 14 different works in the literature outlining various OCBs which they labeled as “citizenship performance behaviors.” Examples of employee OCBs include helping new coworkers at work, helping those coworkers who are facing difficulties such as personal illness or family issues, voluntarily taking extra responsibilities, complying with organizational norms and being tolerant of small inconveniences without making a big noise about them (e.g., Coleman and Borman, 2000; Moorman and Blakely, 1995; Smith, Organ, and Near, 1983; Williams and Anderson, 1991). These examples of extra-role behaviors reflect positive contextual performance or the OCB of an employee. Just as OCBs or positive extra-role performance reflect an employee’s positive contributions to organizational goal attainment, there can be negative extra-role performance or negative contextual performance (e.g., Eastman and Pawar, 2005; Rotundo and Sackett, 2002) of an employee, and an employee’s refraining from them can be viewed as positive extra-role performance. In light of this, a brief overview of anti-OCBs is provided below.

Negative contextual performance

Just as employees perform positive extra-role behaviors in the form of OCBs, some employees can potentially perform negative extra-role behaviors. These behaviors may include destroying an organization’s property, spreading foul rumors...