News broke last month of recruiters requesting the Facebook login details of job candidates in order to screen profiles prior to offering them a position. The news set off a firestorm of controversy about what recruiters had the right to ask for. The debate soon broadened with news reports that a teaching assistant was fired by her employer for not allowing them access to her Facebook profile. This rapid progression of controversy has prompted some states to sponsor bills that would make such requests illegal.

What’s driving this invasive trend is the perceived importance of what gets posted on social media when it comes to evaluating a new hire or current employee. It stems from a study published earlier this year that claimed a glance at someone’s Facebook profile was a better indicator of future job success than more traditional personality tests. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite recent research suggesting that a cursory glance over a candidates Facebook profile is more effective at predicting future career success than an online recruitment test, such test still remain enduringly popular with HR departments.

Online tests for recruitment are widely used and routinely result in specific feedback to applicants in order to communicate decisions, emphasise the pedigree of the process to forestall complaints and to benefit the candidate. But does it deliver on these fronts, particularly when candidates have failed to meet the required threshold?
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Theft by employees is a major issue for firms, with cost estimates at around $200 million each year. The most common form of employee theft is ‘sweethearting’. Sweethearting is when employees give products away for free to preferred customers and is typically done by people operating the cash register in stores.

New research from Michigan State University suggests that better recruitment is the best way to prevent this form of employee theft. The research is one of the first studies to investigate sweethearting in isolation.

The research team investigated over 800 service employees in hotels, restaurants, tanning salons and several other similar service industries. Alarmingly, 67% of participants said they had participated in sweethearting in the last two months. The primary motivation was to receive better tips from their favoured customers or a similar sweetheart deal when they in turn shopped at the customers premises. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this year the Chartered Management Institute released research revealing that gender pay equality among managers could be 98 years away.

The 7^th annual UC Davis Study of California Women Business Leaders paints a similarly bleak picture. It reveals that less than 10% of the 400 largest public companies based in California has a female chief executive. Despite efforts to improve gender equality, this rate has improved by just 0.2% in the last year.

In addition, the study shows that over a third of the biggest companies in California have no women on their board of directors. This is a group that represents nearly $3 trillion of shareholder value. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Cisco launched their annual research project to track how technology is changing the workplace. Arguably, the most notable finding from the survey is data showing just how connected young people are to social media; so much so that they will often forgo a pay increase if it means keeping social media access or their choice of a smartphone device.

Study Highlights:

• Many respondents cite a mobile device as “the most important technology” in their lives.
• Seven of 10 employees have “friended” their managers and coworkers on Facebook.
• Two of five students have not bought a physical book (except textbooks) in two years.
• Most respondents have a Facebook account and check it at least once a day.
• Half of respondents would rather lose their wallet or purse than their smartphone or mobile device.
• More than two of five respondents would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to mobile device choice, social media access and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was growing up there was a popular advert for chips that featured a young girl who was asked by her older sister whether she preferred Daddy or chips. It’s probably indicative of the power of advertising that I now think of that advert whenever such comparisons are made. The comparison in question here, however, is one of slightly more importance. You see, a new study from Cornell University is asking whether people would prefer a highly paid job that demanded very long hours, or better work/life balance but with less pay.

This topic is not a new one. Indeed Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman suggested only last year that all we really need is $75,000 a year, over which any extra money adds nothing to our perception of happiness.

When The New York Times spoke with Kahneman about the study, he said “it’s not so much that money buys you happiness, but that lack of money buys you misery.”

So the Cornell paper goes against a pretty powerful opponent, with others such as Dan Pink also proposing that money comes quite a way down the list of things that motivate us. PricewaterhouseCooper added to the mix last year by suggesting that people would forgo their bonuses in return for more flexible working. Read the rest of this entry »

The idea of narcissistic leaders is sadly not an uncommon one, and with some justification. According to an article from Behavioural Sciences & the Law, “Corporate Psychopathy: Talking the Walk” by Paul Babiak Ph.D., Craig S. Neumann Ph.D., and Robert D. Hare Ph.D., leaders tend to score higher on measures of psychothapy than the general population. The authors conclude that “the very skills that make the psychopath so unpleasant (and sometimes abusive) in society can facilitate a career in business even in the face of negative performance ratings.

Narcissists typically have many of the qualities we associate with those of a strong leader. They have high self-esteem, they’re confident and display authority. Research reveals that narcissists automatically take over the helm of a rudderless group of individuals.

So how does narcissistic behavior influence team behavior? Read the rest of this entry »

In her latest book, The Shift, London Business School academic Linda Gratton proclaims the death of middle management. The book contends that while the role of management was held in higher esteem in the past, the modern manager is often a figure of parody, with sitcom programs like The Office tapping into this zeitgeist perspective.

We live in an age where big companies can shed middle managers in the thousands and the public cheers their departure, deriding them as pen pushers and bureaucrats that add little value to either customer or employer.

“The days of general managers who know a little about a lot of things are completely over,” says Ms Gratton, further attesting that supervision and feedback is now increasingly given by peers rather than managers. She argues that rather than generalists, managers need to develop specialties in one or two areas.

The other side of the coin

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Creating a motivated and engaged workforce is one of the most pressing issues of our age. This task is hard enough when people are doing a job they generally enjoy and find fulfilling, but what if they’re doing a job they resent? Maybe their job attracts hostility from others from time to time, maybe it even earns you animosity from society at large. That’s the unfortunate reality for many who work in professions that are physically demanding, socially unpopular or morally questionable. The stigma of their work threatens their identity and pushes the undesirable stigma into their self-perception.

New research investigates these ‘dirty’ professions to see what kinds of characters thrive in them and how you can motivate those individuals.

A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina spent a couple of years collecting survey data from people involved in ‘dirty work’. After two months, 28% of these individuals had left their job, a stark contrast to more mainstream work where employee turnover is around the 10% mark.

So what encouraged the other 72% to stick it out? Read the rest of this entry »

The management profession has been under attack in recent weeks. Ratan Tata, the boss of the diverse Tata Group, launched an attack recently on the work ethic of managers at the UK Jaguar Land Rover plants. Such attacks are sadly not new. Personnel Today remarked back in 2005 that improvements in productivity are being hampered by poor quality managers.

But there’s new research that goes some way to redressing those charges. Wharton professor of management Ethan Mollick investigated the personnel that contributed the most value to creative organizations such as biotech and software firms. His paper, titled “People and Process: Suits and Innovators: Individuals and Firm Performance,” found that middle managers top the bill, providing more value to these companies than any other employee group.

Mollick  contends that middle managers play a crucial role in creative industries, where brilliant individuals need to be co-ordinated and resources managed effectively to ensure proper allocation.

“It is in these knowledge-intensive industries where variation in the abilities of middle managers” – the “suits” he refers to in his paper – have a “particularly large impact on firm performance, much larger than that of individuals who are assigned innovative roles,” Mollick says.

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I’m sure we’ve all had bosses that have driven us mad.  Inevitably thoughts drift through our heads of the dastardly things we’d like to do to that individual to get them back for the perceived hell they’re putting us through.

For the record, I should probably state that I don’t personally believe that such behaviour helps you and a victim mentality can easily set in whereby the perceived slight gets bigger and bigger.  Alas, for those of you who fancy a bit of retribution in the workplace, new research sheds some light on when you can take the mental voodoo doll and turn it into physical acts of retaliation.

The researchers surveyed professionals in the San Francisco area and based each question around two hypothetical workplace situations.

The first involved a manager that sexually harassed one of his employees, who was forced to leave as a result.  The manager subsequently needs something from the friend of the harassed individual.  People were asked to rate the acceptability of certain actions, from actively hiding the file to playing dumb and pretending ignorance of its location.

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