Staffing decisions

The decisions that determine and define the staff or workforce in the organization (associated with recruiting, selecting, promoting, and separating employees).

• Organizations want to use data-based approaches to predict performance of potential staffers
• Staffing practices have positive associations with firm performance
• Most companies have Human Resources

Impact of Staffing Practices on Firm Performance

• High performance work practices
  50. Include use of formal job analyses, selection from within for key positions, & use of formal assessment devices for selection
      • • Staffing practices have positive associations with firm performance

1. False positive = Applicant was accepted but turned out to be a poor performer
2. False negative = Applicant was rejected but would have performed well
3. True positive = Applicant was accepted and performed well
4. True negative = Applicant was rejected and would have performed poorly

Cut score or cutoff score

• Specified point in distribution of scores below which candidates are rejected
  • • • Raising cut score will result in fewer false positives but more false negatives
      • Strategy for determining cut score depends on situation

Establishing Cut Scores

• Criterion-referenced cut score
  • • Consider desired level of performance & find test score corresponding to that level
• Norm-referenced cut score
  • • Based on some index of all test-takers’ scores rather than any notion of job performance (e.g., cut score to pass any course: 6)

Hurdle System of combined scores

• Constructed from multiple criteria, so candidates who don’t exceed each of several minimum scores are excluded from further consideration
• Often set up sequentially
• Used to narrow a large

applicant pool

• Weakness: Non-compensation strategy

The other side of staffing decisions: Deselection

• 2 typical situations
  50. Termination for cause
      • Individual is fired for a particular reason
      • Generally not unexpected
  50. Layoff
      • Job loss due to employer downsizing or reductions in force
      • Often occurs with little or no warning

Social Networking Sites and Deselection

• Employees (or applicants) posting information on a social networking site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) that is accessed by an employer have been increasingly getting in trouble.
• Job candidates with posts on SNS that they like to “shoot people” or “blow things up” have been removed from hiring consideration.
• Legal uncertainty whether employment decisions can be based on SNS

Staffing practices are common sources of feelings of injustice among workers.

Organizational justice

What is it?

• Degree to which workers believe they are being treated fairly.
  • Could be related to selection, performance appraisal, promotion, raises, benefits, etc.

Read either that fairness was improving in Canada or that an endangered species was recovering (both optimistic messages)

Either ethnic majority (white) or minority (non-white).

Measured willingness to invest resources in the goal of achieving a desirable, well-regarded profession.

• A Justice “motive” may be inherent.
• However, it may not always be functional
  
  • It can motivate willingness to perceive organizations as fair, even when they aren’t
  • It can motivate defending status quo or acting against one’s own interests
    
    • Just World Theory
    • Compensatory Control

People risk personal harm or death for it.

Children recognize fairness early on in development.

Unique to human beings?

"Capuchins who witnessed unfair treatment and failed to benefit from it often refused to conduct future exchanges with human researchers, would not eat the cucumbers they received for their labours, and in some cases, hurled food rewards at human researchers.“

Just World Theory

• Human beings are motivated to believe that the world is fair
• When faced with injustice, people seek psychological justice – changing their perception of the situation so that it appears fair.
  
  50. Victim blaming when justice is impossible
  50. Rationalizing unfairness to oneself

Compensatory control

Organizational justice (Chapter 11)

Three types of organizational justice:

1. Distributive justice: Perceived fairness of the allocation of outcomes or rewards to organizational members
   • e.g. comparable worth
2. Procedural justice: Perceived fairness of the process (or procedure) by which ratings are assigned or rewards are distributed.
   
   • e.g. The opportunity to provide input and to express an objection
3. Interactional justice: Concerned with the sensitivity with which employees are treated and linked to the extent that an employee feels respected by the employer.
   
   • e. g. Clear explanation of procedures and outcomes

Distributive Justice

Fairness of outcomes or results (content driven)

Three rules of distributive justice:

1. Need norm: the employees who need an outcome the most are given more

 e.g. Scholarship for students with low socio-economic status

1. Equality norm: all employees are given the same outcome regardless of their input

 e.g. Everyone with the same job title gets the same pay

1. Equity or merit norm: the more you contribute, the more you receive

e.g. Salesperson who brings in the most profit, gets the largest bonus

Motivation theories (US based) generally suggest that pay (and other outcomes) should be distributed to employees contingent on their performance.

Equity theory

• Answers the question: Are outcomes perceived as being at an appropriate level in comparison to inputs?
• Basic premise: individuals seek balance (equity) between the ratio of their inputs to outcomes as compared to those of others.
• Equity or fairness in the relationship between what you put into the job and what you get out of it, in comparison with other people:

Comparisons are typically made to:

Other people in the company: “ Equal pay for equal work”

People in other companies but in similar professions: “We want the industry average.”

Ways to restore equity

• Employees can change their own inputs or outcomes.
• Employees can try to change their referents’ inputs or outcomes.
• Employees can change their perceptions of inputs and outcomes (either their own or the referents’).
• Employees can change the referent.
• Employees can leave the job or organization or force the referent to leave.

Procedural justice

Perceived fairness of method used to reach an outcome or decision (process driven)

Types of methods:

1. 1.  Method for hiring new employees
   2.  Method for getting promoted
   3.  Employee’s ability to provide input into decisions that will affect him or her

The following items refer to the procedures used to arrive at your (outcome). To what extent:

1. Have you been able to express your views and feelings during those procedures?
2. Have you had influence over the (outcome) arrived at by those procedures?
3. Have those procedures been applied consistently?
4. Have those procedures been free of bias?
5. Have those procedures been based on accurate information?
6. Have you been able to appeal the (outcome) arrived at by those procedures?
7. Have those procedures upheld ethical and moral standards?

Factors positively associated with procedural justice perceptions in performance measurement:

• • • Appraisal frequency
    • Joint planning with supervisor to eliminate weaknesses
    • Supervisor’s knowledge of duties of person being rated
    • Supervisor’s knowledge of the actual performance of the person being rated
    • Multiple raters

360°feedback:

• • • Multi-source feedback, including supervisors, peers, subordinates, and customers.
    • May reveal more credible information
    • Is more likely to be accepted ("procedurally fair“), and therefore, more effective

Interactional Justice

Perceived fairness of interpersonal interactions at work.

• Interpersonal treatment
  50. Treating people respectfully and politely
  50. Avoiding improper comments
• Providing information and explanations
  
  50. Providing adequate justifications
  50. Being candid

Measures

Interpersonal justice:

The following items refer to the authority figure who enacted the procedure. To what extent:

1. Has he/she treated you with dignity?
2. Has he/she treated you with respect?

Informational justice:

The following items refer to the authority figure who enacted the procedure. To what extent:

1. Has he/she been candid in his/her communications to you?
2. Has he/she explained the procedures thoroughly?

Take home messages

• Organizational justice is important in organizations, especially when it comes to staffing decisions.
• If you cannot have outcome favorability (i.e. high outcomes in terms of distributive justice), procedural and interactional justice can help buffer some of the associated negative consequences.
• A combination of distributive, procedural and interactional justice is desirable, especially in staffing decisions.