SIOP Members in the News
Clif Boutelle
Reporters have found SIOP and its members fertile ground when searching for resources to provide information for work-related stories. And it is not always the mainstream news media—large metropolitan newspapers and magazines—contacting SIOP members. There are numerous specialty publications and .com sites looking for knowledgeable people to assist with stories. These publications have a surprisingly large readership and offer exposure opportunities for I-O psychology in a couple of ways: Reporters learn about the field by talking with SIOP members, and readers can become aware of I-O through the stories.
Also, because there are so many different media outlets, SIOP members are encouraged to share those outlets with the Administrative Office so we can add them to our growing list of opportunities to send our stories and refer SIOP members to reporters.
Every mention of a SIOP member and his or her work or comments in the media is helpful to our mission to gain greater visibility for I-O psychology and the work its members are performing.
Following are just some of the mentions in recent months:
Thomas Britt of Clemson University was featured in the April 30 issue of News Blaze, an online news source, about the limits of employee engagement. His research has found engaged workers to be highly attuned to aspects of their work environment that will either facilitate or thwart their job performance. If they are not getting the resources they feel they need to perform at their best, their engagement may be diminished.
The April 29 edition of the Financial Post (Toronto, ON) featured Ben Schneider of Valtera Corporation for a story on customer service. Treating customers well is a critical part of organizational culture that should be nurtured and reinforced at every level of the company. Employees are looking for messages that show the organization is committed to customer service, Schneider said. His research has found that organizations that invest in employees delivering quality service have greater customer loyalty and higher revenue.
For a story on offshore outsourcing in the April 28 issue of CIO.com, Miriam Nelson of Aon Consulting noted that “outsourced agents are not trained as deeply as agents who work internally for an organization and often lack the tools to do a thorough job for customers.” Offshore call centers also are faced with language barriers and cultural disconnects. “When we benchmark offshore service against onshore service, offshore scores much lower,” she added.
Research by Wendy Becker of Shippensburg University and a colleague was featured in an April 20 National Academy of Sciences report urging that forensic science laboratories be strengthened. They conducted a national survey of public crime labs and found that as the number of cases increases, the labs do not have enough staff, equipment, time, and information. Further, the nation’s forensics crime labs experience several critical issues, including pressure to complete cases quickly and find particular results.
Forbes, in its April 17 issue, ran a story on how CEO’s handle stress, which included comments from Debra Nelson of Oklahoma State University and NelsonQuick Group in Stillwater, OK and Douglas McKenna of Oceanside Institute in Greenbank, WA. Nelson said CEOs face stress stemming from the pace of their work life, the pain of downsizing in today’s economy, and social isolation. McKenna said CEO stress results from extreme complexities and ambiguities inherent in running an organization. The CEOs who do best, he said, neutralize problems and threats by stretching them out over long timelines rather than getting caught up in a series of isolated issues.
The April 16 Chronicle of Higher Education covered a talk by Scott Highhouse of Bowling Green State University at a conference of admissions officers. Although many admissions programs make it a point to evaluate the “whole student,” Highhouse said holistic evaluations have their limits and are often unreliable. He also cited research suggesting that personal interviews, which many colleges embrace as part of the admissions process, are an unreliable way to assess an applicant’s potential. Highly structured interviews seem more reliable than informal ones, but they are perhaps more coachable, or “fakeable.”
Seymour Adler of Aon Consulting was quoted in an April 26 Philadelphia Inquirer story about coping with unemployment. Following the initial trauma of being laid off, he noted that shame, fear, and panic are normal reactions. But, he added, people are resilient and cited several studies that show people who lose their jobs and are able to find another report that their life satisfaction is the same or better than it was before being laid off.
He was also featured in a March 19 London Financial Times story about how many organizations are using the economic slump to upgrade their talent. “There are some highly qualified people out there and companies are taking the opportunity to assemble an A-team,” he said, which helps better position organizations when they come out of the downturn. And, he added, they can bring in new talent more easily, and often more cheaply, than they could in a good economy.
And finally, an article Adler coauthored with Aon colleague Matthew Shadrick was selected as the article of the year by the WorldatWork Advisory Commission and published in the October 2008 issue of Workspan magazine. Entitled “Why You Should Be a Human Capital Risk Manager,” they said by “applying disciplined thinking to identifying and evaluating human capital risk, you can bring meaningful short- and long-term risk mitigation strategies to your organization.”
Mitchell Marks of San Francisco State University and Paul Heintz of Edison Community College in Piqua, OH, contributed to an April 1 Washington Times story about how men handle job losses. “Guys tend to tough it out. But the healthiest thing to do is talk it out,” Marks said. Societal norms make it easier for women to show and talk about their feelings than men, added Heintz.
Rebecca Schalm of RHR International (Calgary) published an article in the March 23 Toronto-based Financial Post advocating leaders be more forceful, especially during the current difficult economic climate. Leaders need to tighten up on fundamental people management principles, which, she acknowledges, is a change from the popular practice of managing people by empowering them. These principles include setting clear expectations, monitoring progress, reviewing priorities, and measuring success.
David Nadler of Oliver Wyman Delta Organization & Leadership and Constance Dierickx of RHR International (Atlanta) contributed to a March 23 Portfolio Magazine story about hiring CEOs. Last year almost 1,500 CEOs quit or were fired, resulting in numerous CEO searches by corporate boards. Yet only half the organizations have a succession plan in place. In searching for a new CEO, Nadler advises boards to keep their succession candidate lists quiet because an openly announced competition can cause a politically destructive environment within the company. Also, boards should make it a point to get to know candidates outside the office so board members can get a better feel for the candidate. Dierickx noted it is important to groom potential successors and track their progress through the company. Also, the board should do some long range planning to address challenges and market conditions the business will likely face in the future. Rather than filling the job on the basis of current needs, the future CEO will need to be tuned in to the company’s vision for the future.
Ben Dattner of Dattner Consulting in New York City contributed an article to March 27 BusinessWeek online entitled “Work–Life Balance.” He pointed out that, without realizing it, people sometimes infect the workplace with personal biases from their family life or memories from their past.
Dattner also was interviewed February 16 on NY1.COM, a 24-hour news channel, about interviewing skills, particularly when there is stiff competition for jobs. He said interviewees need to make a positive, energetic impression during the first few seconds and to sound professional. He also suggested people should tell employers why the job is right for them, rather than why they are right for the job. By putting it that way, “you’re telling employers that you have some choice…and options…and offers…and that puts you in a more confident position.” Applicants should also come to the interview armed with questions that display your knowledge of the company and what it does.
Four SIOP members—John Behr of John Behr Group in Chicago, Judith Blanton of RHR International (Los Angeles), Lilli Friedland of Executive Advisers in Los Angeles, and Jeff Daum of Competency Management Incorporated in Henderson, NV—contributed to a March 9 SHRM online story on building and keeping workers’ trust in a crisis. Among their suggestions: two-way, transparent communication; providing outlets for emotional support; encouraging staff to look after their own physical and mental well-being, and simplifying confusing, stress-producing systems and processes.
In the March issue of Chief Learning Officer, Robert Kaiser of Kaplan Devries Inc. in Greensboro, NC authored an article that questioned the current business fad that preaches leaders should focus only on their strengths and stop wasting time trying to fix weaknesses. It’s a theory that has been gathering steam since 2001, he noted. However, he argued, weaknesses matter and ignoring weaknesses is both a lethal career strategy and a poor way to manage talent. Strengths become weaknesses when overused and it also inhibits development, he wrote.
Kaiser and coauthor Robert Kaplan followed up on the same topic in the February issue of Harvard Business Review. They urged business leaders to stop overworking their strengths, recognize when they are being overused, and learn to redirect their strengths for the good of the organization.
Also, the April 12 London Financial Times carried a story on strength-based leadership in which Kaiser again warned about the perils of concentrating on strengths. Weaknesses need to be recognized and addressed and not ignored, he said.
Goal setting has long been endorsed by organizations, but several media (including the Dallas Morning News, Boston Globe, and Forbes) stories in February and March cited management scholars claiming that corporate goal setting can sometimes cause more harm than good. Their reasoning runs counter to work done by Edwin Locke of the University of Maryland and Gary Latham of the University of Toronto, who are credited as the leaders of the goal-setting movement in this country. Locke and Latham maintained that goal setting had dramatic positive effects on success in just about any arena: work, school, and the playing field. Simply put, they said employees perform better when challenged to meet specific targets. However, the theory currently being advanced by some scholars is that individuals, governments, and companies can hurt themselves by setting and blindly following goals, even those that seem to make sense at the time. The argument is not that goal setting doesn’t work—it does, just not always in the intended way, they argue.
An interview with Paul Winum of RHR International (Atlanta) on selecting a CEO was featured in the February 24 issue of Corporate Board Magazine. He said hiring a new CEO is the most important and impacting decision a board can make, yet “many boards don’t exercise the degree of rigor in managing succession that this critical responsibility warrants.” He pointed out several factors that boards should follow to have an effective succession process as well as several of the resulting risks that can occur with a poor CEO selection.
A study of telephone call center employees by Steffanie Wilk of Ohio State University, Nancy Rothbard of the University of Pennsylvania, and Gina Dokko of New York University found that although previous work experience did lead to higher levels of skill and knowledge there are also some negative factors connected to previous job experience. The study found that workers sometimes retained old habits and ways of doing things that did not fit into their new jobs. Cultures and norms may differ in organizations and new employees must have the ability to adapt to a new situation, no matter how much previous experience they had. The story was published in the February 24 issue of Management Issues.
Wilk also was quoted in a February 7 Columbus Dispatch story about how more men than women are losing jobs as the economy worsens, thus closing the gender gap. She said there are better ways to look at the progress of women than parity in gender numbers, among them women’s pay levels compared with men with similar jobs, the availability of opportunities for advancement, and whether an employer treats men and women equally.
A February 15 story in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reacting to comments by the CEO of a large firm who denounced companies laying off thousands of jobs to improve their bottom line and instead urged them stop the layoff epidemic and accept smaller profits rather affect the lives of families, included comments by Rex Gatto of Gatto Associates in Pittsburgh. He said the CEO’s message resonated with so many people because it showed sensitivity toward people who have done nothing wrong.
Gatto also contributed to a March 5 Pittsburgh Business Times story on maintaining employee productivity and creativity during turbulent times. He said workforce morale can be maintained if leaders actively lead by being visible throughout the organization, stepping up communication, and inspiring and instilling hope and confidence among employees.
On January 7, the Wall Street Journal published a story entitled “Tests for Dwindling Retail Jobs Spawns a Culture of Cheating” that drew a response from Daniel Lezotte of APT, Inc. He said although it is tempting for companies to employ online selection tests (and many do), there is no way to verify the identity of the person completing an online application, and given the opportunity to cheat, many people will do so, especially if it means obtaining a desired job. “The most valid and defensible approach is still to verify a test taker’s identity and to complete the test in a secure location, usually at the company or in a testing center.”
Emotions of employees in financial markets were the subject of a January 5 story in Investment Dealer’s Digest. Mel Fugate of Southern Methodist was among the sources contributing to the article. Often a herd mentality (people doing what others are doing) will impact the markets causing certain reactions. For example, “Some people feel incredibly threatened and many will run and take on avoidance strategies. They just shut down,” said Fugate.
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 or fax to 419-352-2645.