Organizational Behavior and
Leadership
Why Good Employees Quit?
Attitudes and Behavior at Work
Claudia Toma
Claudia.Toma@ulb.be
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Learning Objectives for today
1. Identify the major work attitudes that
affect work behaviors.
2. List the key set of behaviors that matter
for organizational performance.
3. Understand the connection between
attitudes and behaviors at work
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FOSTERING POSITIVE JOB ATTITUDES AND
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Delivering Happiness: The Case of Zoom Video
Communications
• Zoom is one of the most valuable cloud-based companies in
the world
• The founder instilled values of doing the right thing for his
customers and investing in his employees
• Zoom views happiness of customers and people as
the core elements of their corporate culture and the
key to their success
CASE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Review websites such as Glassdoor to see what employees
like and dislike about working at Zoom and Amazon. Would
you like to work in a company such as those?
2. How satisfied, commited do you think their employees are ?
Any differences between Amazon and Zoom?
3. Zoom uses “happiness” as part of their brand as an employer.
What advantages and downsides do you see to this brand?
4. What is the connection between employee attitudes,
customer satisfaction, and revenue growth as described in
this case? How generalizable is this relationship to other
industries and companies?
CASE DISCUSSION INTRUCTIONS
1. Form groups of max 5 students
2. Each group read at lest 10 comments / evaluations from
employees for each company (Zoom and Amazon)
3. You have 20-25 minutes to discuss the four questions
4. Debriefing with the entire class
WORK ATTITUDES
• Making sense of how people behave at work depends on
understanding their attitudes
• An attitude refers to our opinions, beliefs, and feelings about
aspects of our environment
• Two work attitudes:
– Job satisfaction refers to the feelings people have toward
their job
– Organizational commitment is the emotional attachment
people have toward the company they work for
Major Job Attitude at Work
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Job Satisfaction
• Common Definition
– A positive feeling about a job resulting from an
evaluation of its characteristics
• Two approaches for measuring Job Satisfaction
are popular:
– The single global rating
– The summation of job facets
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What is Job Satisfaction?
How It Can Be Measured?
Insert Exhibit 3.2
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Pay and Job Satisfaction
Study done by Michael Page on over 260 occupations (2012)
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FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO JOB ATTITUDES
Psychological Contract
•
People come to work with a set of
expectations - an understanding of their
responsibilities and rights
•
Psychological contract breach occurs when
an employee doesn’t get what they
expected
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CONSEQUENCES OF POSITIVE WORK
ATTITUDES
• Studies between job satisfaction and job performance
can differ
• The correlation between commitment and performance
tends to be even weaker
• Factors that prevent you from reducing your
performance:
– The fear of getting fired
– The desire to get a promotion
– Professional work ethic
Job Satisfaction and Performance
Jackson &
Fransman (2018)
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Job Satisfaction and Performance
Isac, Anghel & Yanik (2015)
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Four Employee
Responses to Dissatisfaction
Insert Exhibit 3-5
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ASSESSING WORK ATTITUDES IN THE
WORKPLACE
• Three systematic ways companies can
track work attitudes:
– Attitude surveys give employees a
chance to voice their concerns
– Exit interviews involve meetings with
departing employees which can
identify areas of improvement
– Sentiment analysis entail the
automatic identification and coding of
positive and negative sentiments in a
text
WORK BEHAVIORS
Job
Performance
General mental
abilities
Citizenship
Counterproducti Absenteeism Turnover
ve Work
Behaviors
How we are
treated at
work
Personality
How we are
treated at work
Personality
Negative job
attitudes
Stress (-)
Positive work
attitudes
How we are
treated at work
Positive work
Age of the
Note: Negative relati onships are indicated w ith (-)
attitudes
employee
Personality
Health
problems
Poor
performance
Work/life
balance
issues
Positive
work
attitudes (-)
Positive work
attitudes (-)
Stress
Age of the
employee (-)
Personality
Age and
tenure of the
employee (-)
JOB PERFORMANCE
• Job performance refers to the degree to which an employee
successfully fulfills the factors included in the job description
– Measured by the quality and quantity of work performed, its
accuracy and speed, and the overall effectiveness
– Determines whether a person is promoted, rewarded, given
additional responsibilities, or fired
• Major predictors of job performance:
– General mental ability
– Perceptions of organizational justice and interpersonal
relationships
– The stress experienced on the job
– Work attitudes like job satisfaction and job engagement
– Conscientiousness, emotional intelligence, and proactive
personality
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ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP
BEHAVIORS
• Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) are voluntary
behaviors employees perform to help others and benefit the
organization
– Helping a new coworker understand how things work
– Volunteering to organize company picnics
• Major predictors of citizenship behaviors:
– Understanding organizational justice and interpersonal
relationships
– People who are conscientious and agreeable
– Positive job attitudes
– Age
COUNTERPRODUCTIVE BEHAVIORS AT WORK
ABUSING
OTHERS
Gossiping, spreading rumors, harassment, insulting, and embarrassing
others are among the different ways people behave badly at work.
PRODUCTION
DEVIANCE
Intentionally performing at a low level, such as by ignoring instructions or
by slowing down and reducing performance.
THEFT
Stealing money or things. Yes, it is illegal. Some employees still do it so
often that they keep track of their “shrinkage” of stock on a regular basis.
Even seemingly minor theft such as someone else’s lunch from the
employee kitchen can be very disruptive.
SABOTAGE
Intentionally damaging equipment and the physical environment.
WITHDRAWAL
BEHAVIORS
Taking long breaks, being tardy, or skipping work altogether indicate that
the person is physically and mentally somewhere else during work hours.
ABSENTEEISM
• Absenteeism refers to unscheduled absences from work
• Causes of absenteeism (study 2022-2023 – 50
companies US and EU)
OB TOOLBOX: DEALING WITH LATE
COWORKERS
• Try to get to the root cause and find out what is making
your coworker unhappy
• Make sure that lateness does not go without any
negative consequences
• Make an effort to schedule meetings around everyone’s
schedules
• When people are late, be sure to ask them to
compensate, such as by doing extra work
• Shortly before the meeting starts, send everyone a
reminder
• Reward timeliness
• Be on time yourself
TURNOVER
• Turnover refers to an employee leaving an organization
– Voluntary turnover refers to departure initiated by
the employee
– Involuntary turnover is initiated by the organization
• Reasons for turnover:
– Employee’s performance level
– Work attitudes
– Stress levels
– Personality
– Age and how long the employee’s been at the
organization
TURNOVER
OB TOOLBOX: TIPS FOR LEAVING
YOUR JOB GRACEFULLY
Don’t quit on an impulse.
Don’t quit too often.
When you decide to leave, tell your boss first, and be professional.
Do not badmouth your employer.
Guard your professional reputation.
Finish your ongoing work and don’t leave your team in a bad spot.
Don’t steal from the company.
Job Satisfaction and Turnover
Mosadeghrad, Ferlie, & Rosenberg (2008)
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WHAT DO YOU THINK?
1. What is the difference between performance and
organizational citizenship behaviors? How would you
increase someone’s performance? How would you
increase citizenship behaviors?
2. Are citizenship behaviors always beneficial to the
company? If not, why not? Can you think of any
citizenship behaviors that employees may perform with
the intention of helping a company but that may have
negative consequences overall?
3. Given the factors correlated with job performance, how
would you identify future high performers?
Summary and Implications for Managers
• Managers should be sensitive to employees'
attitudes
• Spend the time necessary to understand what’s
important to each employee.
• Understand what drives their behavior
• Reinforce positive work behavior and monitor the
negative behavior
• Be a role model !
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