SIOP Members in the News

Clif Boutelle

The news media have found SIOP members to be rich sources of information for their stories about workplace-related topics. And no wonder! SIOP members have a diverse range of expertise as evidenced by the listings in Media Resources on the SIOP Web site (www.siop.org). There are more than 100 different workplace topics with more than 1,500 SIOP members who can serve as resources to the news media. 

SIOP members who are willing to talk with reporters about their research interests are encouraged to list themselves in Media Resources. It can easily be done online. It is important, though, that in listing themselves, members include a brief description of their expertise. That is what reporters look at, and a well-worded description can often lead the reporter to call.

It is suggested that listed SIOP members periodically check and update their information, if needed.

Every mention in the media is helpful to our mission to gain greater visibility for the field of I-O psychology. It is often a slow process, but more and more reporters are learning about I-O and how SIOP members can contribute to their stories.
Following are some of the press mentions that have occurred in the past several months:

Tattoos and body piercings are not recommended attire in the workplace, according to research conducted by Brian Miller at Texas State University and Jack Eure and Kay Nichols. Their findings appeared in a February 7 Washington Times story and Reuters news service. “Body art can lead to stereotyping, stigmatization and prejudices in the workplace.” They surveyed 150 people, some with body art, some not, and the vast majority was put off by body art. Miller’s suggestion? “It’s wise to conceal body art when at work.”

A January 27 Crain’s Cleveland Business story on assessments designed for candidates for senior leadership roles quoted both Jim Thomas of Development Dimensions International and Seymour Adler of Aon Consulting. The use of such assessments is exploding, and as it becomes harder to find good employees, companies are spending more time training the ones they have and testing the people they are thinking of hiring. Thomas said that someone who does well in an assessment has about an 80% chance of doing well in similar settings in the business world. Adler noted that a growing number of businesses want leaders who are coaches and can nurture their employees, and assessments are a reliable way of determining those characteristics.

A survey about job interview questions conducted by Development Dimensions International and Monster.com was featured in a January 27 MarketWatch story and included comments by Scott Erker of DDI. The survey found that asking inappropriate questions during job interviews is “more prevalent than we think,” Erker said. He added interviewers need to be prepared to ask appropriate questions and not “fall into the trap of trying to be familiar and build rapport when in fact they need to be a little more professional” when talking with prospective employees. Erker also discussed this topic on the November 5th edition of Fox Business Network’s Money for Breakfast.

PowerPoint presentations are a popular presentation tool, but the information they offer is not always remembered, says a January 25 Newsday story. Ben Dattner of Dattner Communications in New York City agreed. He said that it is often the presenters or teachers with real-world experiences who make the greatest impression on the audience. He also teaches at New York University and says that students recall very little PowerPoint content—about 5%—but “students generally remember about half of the stories or anecdotes in a presentation.”

Scott Highhouse of Bowling Green State University contributed to a January 21 Washington Post story on how voters make the choice for one political candidate from a field of several. It’s called the “attraction effect” and explains how candidates’ views on certain issues can shift the balance toward one candidate.

The January issue of HR Executive included an article about the use of online surveys to measure employee satisfaction and enhance employee engagement. Allen Kraut of Baruch College was one of the contributors. “The advantages of electronic surveys are enormous, in terms of time and cost savings,” he said. They can also be tailored to a specific department and benchmarked both within and outside the company.

Ryan Zimmerman of Texas A&M University conducted a meta-analytic study on employee turnover that was featured in a December 31 Copley News Service story that appeared in several newspapers across the country. By closely looking at individual characteristics of prospective employees, “there is proven research that shows certain people are more likely to be habitual quitters, where others will tend to stay at a job no matter what.”

A December 12 Reuters article about the use of personality tests focused on a Personnel Psychology article suggesting that employers reconsider the use of personality tests when hiring employees. Fred Morgeson of Michigan State University, one of the authors, said that these tests have the potential for faked answers. The story also appeared in the December 13 Management Issues.

In the December issue of HR Executive, Dave Arnold of Wonderlic Inc. responded to a previous story about employee screening. He took issue with a statement saying that “most” personality tests were not designed as pre-employment tools. He noted that in reality the vast majority is designed for employment purposes. Also, he said personality test critics often use Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory as examples. Their criticism is misguided said Arnold, pointing out that although these two tests are well-known personality instruments, most employers do use them to predict things like dependability, customer service skills, counterproductivity, and turnover. The MBTI, for example, was not developed as a hiring tool that predicts job performance, he added.

A story on telecommuting distributed to newspapers around the country on November 24 by Reuters News Service featured research by Timothy Golden of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It may be good for the telecommuting employee but those who stay in the office are more likely to be dissatisfied with their job, he said. His study suggests that a telecommuter’s co-workers tend to find the workplace less enjoyable and have fewer emotional ties to their fellow employees.

Insensitive women bosses are judged to be worse leaders than men who exhibit the same qualities was the conclusion of a study done by Kristin Byron of Syracuse University. Her findings were published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, as well as media outlets including the November 28 Syracuse Post Standard and Management Issues. She set out to discover whether being good at spotting emotions meant managers had more satisfied workers. She found that female managers who could not read unspoken emotions, such as facial expressions, posture, and tone of voice, were seen as less caring and thus received lower ratings of satisfaction from their staff. But men in similar positions who were unable to spot emotions were not viewed in the same negative light.

Stanley Gully of Rutgers University was included in a November 24 New York Times article about different ways of thinking about mistakes one makes. “In most personal and business contexts, if you avoid the error, you avoid the learning process,” he said. His research has looked at ways of training people to do complex tasks and in some cases encouraging them to make mistakes so they can learn to avoid them later. Nobody wants a worker who keeps making the same mistake and “if we fail and don’t learn from it, it is not an intelligent failure.”

When people are often late to meetings it is frustrating to those who are there on time. One late person can throw off the schedules of co-workers, was the focus of a November 13 Wall Street Journal column. One of the sources was Piers Steel of the University of Calgary who noted that past research suggested that lateness had its roots in psychological issues of avoidance and anxiety. But recent research shows that late people also show up late to events they want to attend. There’s not one comprehensive theory about why people are habitually late, but one primary cause is that late people “can’t get motivated well before their deadlines,” he said.

Belle Rose Ragins of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was quoted in a November 13 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story about high-achieving women. When the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche USA’s Sharon Allen, the company’s chairman, made an appearance in Milwaukee, Ragins said having a powerful businesswoman speak to groups can serve as a model and inspiration to women seeking to reach the upper echelons of the business world.

Mitchell Marks of San Francisco State University was quoted in a November 12 Wall Street Journal column about the potential problems that can occur when sales forces of competing companies merge. He noted that most corporate mergers involve rivals and “close to 75% of mergers fail to achieve their financial or strategic objective.”
 
A November 12 Chicago Tribune RedEye edition story on multitasking in the workplace included comments by Alice Stuhlmacher of DePaul University. Interruptions at work via nonessential e-mailing, Internet surfing, and instant messaging can be distracting to the work that needs to be done. It can also affect relationships, said Stuhlmacher. When people text message while with others it signals that they are not as important as the text message. “People know when you are not giving them your attention,” she said.

Employee turnover can be costly, perhaps as much as 1.5 times the departing worker’s salary, and one of the keys for retaining employees is an effective manager, Jack Wiley of the Kenexa Research Institute said in a November 6 MarketWatch story and the November 11 Wall Street Journal. “A lot of it has to do with treating employees with dignity and respect. I don’t know that that can be overestimated in terms of impact and value,” he said. In the same story Ann Howard of Development Dimensions International cited a DDI study on worker retention in China, where keeping employees is a major problem. Despite the huge population, China “doesn’t have nearly the kind of education system we have and they don’t have the kind of talent in great supply that works well with multinational companies,” she said. “There’s a lot of poaching going on and employees are not staying very long at jobs,” she added.

The October/December issue of Staffing included an article on how interviewers can determine whether interviewees are not being truthful, which quoted Brian Cawley of CorVitus in Colorado Springs and Jeffrey Daum of Competency Management Inc. in Las Vegas. Cawley said that effective interviewers should probe candidates to be as detailed as possible and not accept vague answers. It’s more difficult to fake answers when asked three or four follow-up questions, he said. Daum suggested watching for nonverbal cues. Focus on nonverbals while the candidate is thinking responses. Watch for posture changes, especially after a question in which it seems that the candidate has not been completely candid, he said.

Constant pressure to increase efficiency and boost profitability is redefining the nature of work for millions of Americans. But far from improving performance, corporate America is in danger of creating a demoralized, disengaged and far less productive workers. That is the thesis of a research article published in the fall issue of Journal of Applied Psychology by Stephen Humphrey of Florida State University, Fred Morgeson and Jennifer Nahrgang of Michigan State University. They analyzed more than 40 years of research regarding the effect of work design on employee attitudes and productivity. What they found was that simplifying tasks generally led to lower performance ratings and decreased worker satisfaction. Their findings were run in a story by Gannett news service that appeared in several newspapers throughout the country.

Please let us know if you, or a SIOP colleague, have contributed to a news story. We would like to include that mention in SIOP Members in the News.

Send copies of the article to SIOP at siop@siop.org, fax to 419-352-2645, or mail to SIOP at 440 E. Poe Rd., Suite 101, Bowling Green, OH 43402.