INFLUENCES ON
EMPLOYEE BEHAVIOUR
A MAJOR PURPOSE OF HUMAN
RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
 To assist employees and organizations in attaining
their goals
 Ultimate objective is to improve organizational
performance
 Major focus of most HRD interventions is an effort to
change employee behavior
MODEL OF EMPLOYEE BEHAVIOR
 Forces that influence behavior:
 External to the employee:
 External environment (economic conditions, laws and regulations, etc.)
 Work environment (supervision, organization, coworkers, outcomes of
performance)
 Within the employee:
 Motivation, attitudes, knowledge/skills/abilities (KSAs)
MODEL OF EMPLOYEE BEHAVIOR
MAJOR CATEGORIES OF EMPLOYEE
BEHAVIOR
Individual performance is multidimensional
Most HRD focuses on “Task Performance”
 Behaviors central to doing one’s job
Organizational citizenship behaviors
 Critical to organizational effectiveness
 Not specific to any one task
FACTORS IN THE EXTERNAL
ENVIRONMENT
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Economic conditions
Technological changes
Labor market conditions
Laws and regulations
Labor unions
S o u rc e : H e n e m a n , S c h wa b , Fo s s u m & D ye r ( 1 9 8 9 )
 In spite of excellent work and production, external influences
can result in down-sizing to reduce costs
WORKFORCE INVESTMENT
 Organizations invest a lot of time and money in their
workforce
 They must maintain their investment, even when restructuring
or downsizing
 Re-training “survivors” to do other work rather than laying
them of f
 Coaching and mentoring
 Individual development
 Multi-rater feedback
FACTORS IN THE WORK ENVIRONMENT
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Outcomes
Supervision and leadership
Organization
Coworkers
INFLUENCES ON EMPLOYEE BEHAVIOR
Factor
Outcomes
Issues
Types
Supervision
Effect on Motivation
Leadership
Organization
Coworkers
Performance Expectations
Reward Structure
Organizational Culture
Job Design
Norms
Group Dynamics
Teamwork
Control of Outcomes
OUTCOMES CAN INFLUENCE EMPLOYEE
BEHAVIOR
 Personal outcomes
 Organizational outcomes
 Both expectancy theory and equity theory predict that employee
perceptions of the outcomes they receive (or hope to receive)
influences their performance of that behavior.
 Expectancy Theory:
 Workers will perform behaviors that they perceive will bring valued
outcomes
 Better the outcome, better the work
 Equity Theory
 Outcomes are evaluated by comparing them to the outcomes
received by others
SUPERVISOR CHARACTERISTICS
 Immediate supervisor:
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Delegates tasks and responsibilities
Sets expectations
Evaluates performance
Provides feedback
Rewards desirable behavior
Provides discipline
 Leadership: Non-coercive influence to direct and coordinate the
activities of a group toward accomplishing a goal
 Performance expectations (Pygmalion effect ): Super visor's
expectations can influence workers behavior
 Evaluation of efforts
ORGANIZATIONAL INFLUENCES
 Reward structure
 Organizational culture
 Job design
REWARD STRUCTURE
 Focuses on:
 Types of rewards used
 How rewards are distributed
 The criteria for rewards distribution
 Rewards are more than money or plaques
 They can include recognition and acceptance
THE ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
 A set of values, beliefs, norms and patterns of behavior that
are shared by organization members, and that guide their
behavior
JOB DESIGN
 The development and alteration of the components of a job to
improve productivity and the quality of an a employee’s life
 A job design can af fect behavior and attitudes
 Altering the job may improve performance and attitudes
COWORKER INFLUENCE
 They control some of the outcomes and therefore some of the
behavior
 They may of fer or withhold friendship and recognition
 Norms set the guidelines for behavior in the group
 Group dynamics influence the way an employee behaves when
interacting with a group
GROUP DYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS
 Groupthink --concerned with unanimity rather than making
good decisions
 Social Loafing --tendency for individuals to reduce level of
ef fort as group becomes larger
 Teamwork:
 Trust
 Cohesiveness
MOTIVATION
 Psychological processes that cause the arousal,
direction, and persistence of voluntary actions that are
goal-directed
MOTIVATION CHARACTERISTICS
 Pertains to voluntar y behavior
 Focuses on processes af fecting behavior such as:
 Energizing—The generation or mobilization of effort
 Direction—Applying effort to one behavior over another
 Persistence—Continuing (or ceasing) to perform a behavior
 An individual phenomenon: Based on the individual
because of unique
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Needs
Desires
Attitudes
Goals
NEED-BASED THEORIES
 Underlying needs, such
as needs for survival,
safety, power, etc., are
what drives motivation
Theories:
 Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs theory
 Alderfer’s existence,
relatedness, and growth
(ERG) theory
 Herzberg’s two-factor
theory
NEED ACTIVATION-NEED SATISFACTION
PROCESS
MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
S e l f - Ac t ua l iz a t io n
Needs
Esteem Needs
Belonging & Love Needs
Safety Needs
Survival Needs
COGNITIVE THEORIES
 Expectancy theory
 Goal-setting theory
 Social learning theory
 Equity theory
EXPECTANCY THEORY
 Motivation is viewed as a conscious choice
 People put their efforts into actions they can perform
to achieve desired outcomes
 Three key elements:
 Expectancy – expect effort to result in success
 Instrumentality – performance results in reward
 Valence – value individual puts on outcome
EXPECTANCY THEORY
IN OTHER WORDS…
 You believe you can do it
 You believe your performance is linked to the results
 You believe that the results are worth the effort
 You won’t do it if you don’t believe it’s worth the
effort
GOAL SETTING THEORY
 Specific, difficult, and understood goals generally
lead to higher performance
 Keys to success are the level of difficulty and the
clearness of goals
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
 Self-efficacy – judgment of what you think you can do with the
skills you have
 Major prediction of the theory is that expectations determine:
 Whether a behavior will be performed
 How much effort will be expended
 How long you will perform the behavior
SELF-EFFICACY AND EFFORT
EQUIT Y THEORY
Major assumptions:
 If you are treated fairly, you will keep working well
 If you think you are being treated unfairly, you will
change your behavior in order to be treated fairly
EQUIT Y THEORY
A NONCOGNITIVE THEORY
 Reinforcement theory
 Based on “Law of Effect”
 Behavior that is followed by a pleasurable
consequence will occur more frequently
 Process known as “reinforcement”
 Behavior that is followed by an adverse consequence
will occur less frequently
COMPLEXIT Y OF BEHAVIOR
BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION
Principles for controlling employee behavior:
 Positive reinforcement refers to increasing the frequency
of a behavior by following the behavior with a
pleasurable consequence
 Negative reinforcement increases the frequency of a
behavior by removing something aversive after the
behavior is performed
 Extinction seeks to decrease the frequency of a behavior
by removing the consequence that is reinforcing it
 Punishment seeks to decrease the frequency of a
behavior by introducing an aversive consequence
immediately after the behavior
A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE
 Sleeping in Class:
 1. Warning
 2. Leave class and explain to the Assistant Dean
why you were asked to leave
 Too often – you are dropped from the class
 Question: Is this positive or negative reinforcement,
and why?
MOTIVATION AND PERFORMANCE MODEL
OTHER INTERNAL FACTORS THAT
INFLUENCE EMPLOYEE BEHAVIOR
 Motivation
 Attitudes
 Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSAs)
ATTITUDES
 A person’s general feelings of favor or disfavor
towards something
 Feelings towards a person, place, thing, event, or
idea
 Tend to be VERY stable and hard to change
 Attitudes are important in training – e.g., does the
trainee intend to use the training or ignore it?
THE BEHAVIORAL INTENTIONS MODEL
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES
(KSAS)
 Abilities – general capacities related to the
performance of specific tasks
 Skills – combines abilities and capacities, generally
the result of training
 Knowledge – understanding of the factors or
principles related to a specific subject
 HRD programs mostly focus on changing skills and
knowledge
SUMMARY
 HRD generally seeks to change human behavior
(some efforts to change attitudes)
 Behavior is influenced by both external and internal
factors
 Worker motivation is the key
 We can work on knowledge, skills and abilities
 Attitudes are often where the problem lies