violence in the workplace

Final topic for I/O psychology class is violence in the workplace.

• two categories of workplace violence
• non-employee against employee
• employee against fellow employees
• level one violence (described below)
• level two violence
• argues increasingly with customers, vendors, co-workers, and management
• refuses to obey company policies and procedures
• sabotages or destroys equipment or property of employer or co-worker
• verbalizes wishes to hurt co-workers/management
• sends sexual or violent notes to co-workers or management
• sees self as victimized by management ("me vs. them")
• level three violence
• recurrent physical fights
• destruction of property
• recurrent suicidal threats
• utilization of weapons to harm others
• murder, rape, or arson
• "typical violent workers"
• does not participate in organizational events
• has few outside interests
• has worked for the company for some time
• has a history of violence
• is a white male between 25-50 years of age
• has lost or is worried about losing his/her job
• has a history of conflicts with co-workers, supervisors, or both
• has difficulty accepting authority
• commonly violates company policies and rules
• works in a company or work group with an authoritarian management style
• abuses alcohol
• justice hypothesis of workplace violence
• procedural justice
• distributive justice
• interpersonal justice
• bullying
• article
• predicting workplace aggression and violence

frustration-aggression hypothesis- argues that frustration leads to aggression; ultimately found to be too broad - aggression was only one possible response to frustration with aggression

• not all frustrated individuals act aggressively, and not all aggressive acts are a result of frustration

bullying- harassing, offending, socially excluding, or assigning humiliating tasks to a person of subordinate status repeatedly and over a long period of time

REACTION

The newest topics we covered have built off of the information we learned at the beginning of the semester. An example is the perceived justice in the workplace- this is something that is taken into consideration when determining or attempting to predict violence in the workplace. I find it so cool when all of the concepts start to intertwine. This information was interesting to learn. To the average person, most of it seems like common sense- treat someone well and they are less likely to be aggressive/violent towards you (except bullying). The article we read dispelled some myths regarding the "typical violent worker."

ANALYSIS

I have worked with aggressive individuals. A job I held a few years ago had me in a leadership role- I oversaw a staff and that did include people who were older than myself. There was one male staffer who did not take kindly to "receiving orders" from a younger female. He went out of his way to avoid my requests of him. He was disrespectful and only listened to my superior who was a male. It was so stupid because I had done nothing to cause this guy to dislike me so much. This could be seen as psychological aggression and some characteristics of level one violence.

aggression- behavior by an individual or individuals within or outside an organization that is intended to physically or psychologically harm a worker or workers and occurs in a work-related context (Schat & Kelloway, 2005)

level one violence

• refuses to cooperate with immediate supervisor
• spreads rumors and gossip to harm others
• consistently argues with co-workers
• belligerent toward customers/clients
• constantly swears at others
• makes inappropriate sexual comments 

My superior and I discussed the issue with our director and we all agreed that we wouldn't be able to change his behaviors towards me. For the rest of his time with our organization, my superior was the one who had direct contact with this individual. It was frustrating and disappointing. This guy had an "old boys club" mentality and it is more sad than anything else. I learned to not take his actions personally and do my best to lead the rest of the people who weren't sexist.

REFLECTION
After having experienced aggression in the workplace and bullying outside of the workplace that affected my ability to perform my job tasks well, I can see how devastating this can be to an organization. Organizations need to be aware of what to look out for in order to prevent these things from happening. If they do occur, they need to be on top of the situation and know how to respond accordingly in order to have a decent outcome.

job satisfaction & human factors

This week we had two topics- job satisfaction and human factors engineering.

• job satisfaction
• Hawthorne effect
• value theory
• overall satisfaction
• facet satisfaction
• job descriptive index
• Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire
• intrinsic satisfaction
• extrinsic satisfaction
• article
• the job satisfaction-job performance relationship: a qualitative and quantitative review

• human factors
• input component
• output component
• human-computer interaction
• user-centered design
• shift work
• fixed shift
• rotating shift
• circadian cycle
• flextime
• compressed workweek
• articles
• wanted by the police: a good interface
• designs for working, why you bosses want to turn your new office into Greeenwich Village

job satisfaction- positive attitude or emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experience; overall evaluation of a job, including emotions, behaviors, and thoughts

Hawthorne effect- a change in behavior or attitudes that was the simple result of  increased attention; attention affects morale and performance

human factors- approach that uses knowledge of human capabilities and limitations to design systems, organizations, jobs, machines, tools, and consumer products for safe, efficient, and comfortable human use; synonymous with human factors engineering/psychology

motivational approach- used in work design and redesign to increase productive efficiency through the modification of tasks or equipment

Reaction

These two concepts work well together. We learned about how a well-designed workplace environment (including the physical space design, tools/software design, and scheduling) can increase job satisfaction. We also discussed how difficult it is to measure job satisfaction, how that should be reconfigured to get an accurate measurement of how someone truly feels about the job. 

Human factors is one of my favorite topics and I'm really, really glad we could fit it into the schedule at the end of the semester. The two articles were excellent to acclimate classmates to the topic. I know I personally struggle with trying to explain what usability is to someone.

Analysis

With job satisfaction we talked a lot about measurement and the correlation to job performance. With my work history, I have experienced shift work and flextime. One of my campus jobs and my internship are pretty flexible with allowing me to rework my schedule (when needed) in order to accommodate class work and group projects. 

flextime- schedule in which individual workers are given discretion over the time they report to work and the time they leave work on a given day

• psychological advantages of perceiving some control over work schedule
• practical advantage of achieving a better balance between work and non-work
• benefits may depend on nature of work

I'm grateful for this because it truly allows me to enjoy the freedom of controlling my work schedule. I know I have to have in x amount of hours each week so I just reschedule accordingly. My supervisors for both understand that things come up and that I'm able to work those positions because I am a student. Personally, when I don't have to stress out about having to miss work and know I can just work at a different time, my job performance improves because I do not have that stress to worry about.

With human factors, I have second-hand experience with shift work. When my boyfriend was hired for his first career job out of college, he was hired on to work the third shift (11 p.m.-7 a.m.) after he finished training on first shift (7 a.m.-3 p.m.). 

shift work- scheduling of work into temporal shifts; common in particular occupational groups such as nurses, blue collar workers, and public safety personnel

Things in our relationship tend to go better when we are both on the same schedule (days). As soon as he switched over to third shift, we barely talked. He was five hours away and was trying to figure out how to deal with switching to a new shift.

circadian cycle- the 24-hour physiological cycle in which humans tend to be active during hours of light and inactive during hours of darkness.

He had completely turned his circadian cycle around for his job and he was not a happy camper. To make it worse, every time his company adds a new machine or program, his boss would tell him on a Friday he would be going from third to first shift Monday morning. This happened quite a bit until he finally told his boss he cannot continue to rotate shifts, especially with such short notice.

rotating shift- workers moved from shift to shift over a certain period of time

• lead to sleep disturbances-> associated with medical (ex. gastrointestinal) and psychological (anxiety and depression)

After four years of working for this company, he has acclimated to being on a different shift every so often. We discussed in class how if people have to work on a rotating shift, supervisors should give them about a month on each shift so they can properly adjust without too many physiological and psychological side effects.

Reflection
To some, human factors seems like common sense. I feel it is something that younger generations feel is inherent to every day life because they generally experience well-designed pieces. However, there are a lot of things that go into developing a quality work experience. Employers have to consider what goes into creating the best experiences for their employees- workplace environment, ergonomics, shift scheduling. All of these factors contribute to how someone feels about their job- job satisfaction. For some, this may contribute to their job performance. The article we read showed us there is conflicting data on that relationship. Also, industrial/organizational psychologists need to find better ways to measure employee job satisfaction. Maybe after we can better measure satisfaction, we can better measure it against job performance.