Work Psychology: lecture notes

Lecture 1 Introduction to work psychology

Work psychology

- Work psychology: behaviour, motivation of employees doing the work
- Organization psychology: context around the work
- Personnel psychology: person-job fit
- Psychology
 Behaviour
 Motivations
 Thoughts and emotions
- Work
 Goal-directed behaviour
 Coordinated activity
 In exchange for something



The importance of work

- Time structure & regular activity
- Opportunities for social contact
- Sharing of a common purpose
- Social identity or status
- Personal development



Early work psychology

1850-1930

- Just after the industrial revolution
- Mainly factory work
- Poor conditions: long hours, low wages, minimal protection
- Division of labour
- Simple, boring, repetitive work
- Key question: how can we motivate workers and increase productivity?



Scientific Management (Taylorism)

- Goal: to maximise efficiency
- Two assumptions: employees are (1) lazy and (2) stupid

- To tackle stupidity: simplify and standardise the duties
 Divide complex tasks into simple subtasks
 Determine the best way to carry out these subtasks
 Train the employees according to this “one best way”
 Select the 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: low work morale (disengaged employees, high sickness absence, angry unions,
strikes)



Human Relations Movement

1930-present

- Work should be adapted to people, attention for:
 Human needs and limitations
 Working conditions
 Well-being, motivation and satisfaction



Contemporary work psychology

- Focuses on maximising productivity while safeguarding employee well-being/health
- Objective = sustainable performance
- Task requirements – worker characteristics – worker health and well-being



The X-model

Framework to understand the work and the people doing the work. Prevent burn-out, increase
productivity, etc.

,Block 1: Work characteristics

- Work content
 Tasks, workload, autonomy, complexity, variety, role,
responsibilities, role ambiguity
- Working conditions
 Physical demands, safety, technology, ergonomics,
vibrations, lifting, hygiene, radiation, hazardous
substances
- Working relationships
 Social support, social safety, psychological contract, leadership, decision making,
feedback, communication, teamwork
- Terms of employment
 Working times, working from home, agreements in the flexibility of work hours, pay,
days of leave, training opportunities, benefits, job security, career prospects…



Block 2: Personal characteristics

- Personality
- Experience
- Physical capacities
- Information processing capacity
 Habitual processing capacity / TRAIT
 “Trait”
 Inter-individual differences
 Current processing differences
 Intra-individual differences
 Fatigue (energy to exert effort)
 Motivation (willingness to exert effort)



Block 3: Work behaviour

A set of

- Coordinated and goal-directed activities
- That require sustained effort (mental and/or physical)
- Conducted in exchange for something else



Block 4: Work outcomes

- Quality and quantity of products and services
- Environmental changes
- Financial results

, Block 5: Personal outcomes

Such as:

- Health and well-being (stress)
- Job satisfaction



Blocks 4 and 5

- Outcomes for the organisation and person
- Block 4 and Block 5 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/RSI (5)  less resilient (2)
- Tired (5)  different experience of work situation (1)


Developments

Developments relevant for organisations

- Influence on work
 Technologies
 Globalization
 Pandemic
 Ageing



Examples of changes

- The nature of work (block 1)
 Changed from physical demanding jobs to service focused or knowledge focused jobs
 Less people do physical demanding jobs
 People spend more time sitting at work than they used to
- The workforce (block 2)
 More diverse workforce
 Globalization
- Flexibility (block 1)
 Most people still work at location but the amount of people who work (partially)
from home has increased
- Organization (block 1)
 Platform companies e.g. uber, take away.
 Employees have no contact with the employer, but you just work with an app
- Offices (block 1)
 People have less office space nowadays