Workplace Violence: Why We Can’t Eliminate It (But We Can Reduce It)

No matter how you slice it, this has been a rough week for Americans. Yesterday, an Army Psychiatrist turned against the very people he was trained to care for. The nation was shocked. This was a major blow not just to Americans, but to its military, the mental health profession and the Muslim community. Before we could begin to process what had happened, we hear reports of yet another workplace shooting. This time, a Latino engineer apparently vented his frustrations against his former employer by shooting u an office filled with his former co-workers. What the hell?

Naturally, the people I have discussed this with express shock. More surprisingly, many of them seem frustrated and angry about these situations.

“Why does this keep happening?”

“How do we keep this from happening again?”

As you might expect, your friendly neighborhood Spiderman I/O psychologist has some thoughts to share. Sadly, these are not of the warm, fuzzy, comforting type. I am sorry, gentle reader. There is quite simply no real way of eliminating workplace violence. I can think of two major reasons for this being the case.

The first of these is perhaps the most important: Workplace violence is a specific expression of a more general human tendency to resort to violence. We attack others at work because we attack others period. This is not to say that violence in one context predicts violence in other settings; human behavior tendencies tend to not generalize across contexts the way we think they do. However, generally speaking, we are a violent organism and I can’t think of any place humans have not sullied with a little bloodshed. Our workplace is no more sacred than our homes, our schools, or churches.

The second reason we cannot eliminate workplace violence is less dramatic, but no less limiting. Before we develop initiatives to eliminate some type of human behavior, we must find good ways of predicting it. This means measurement of some sort. We have to measure individual’s capacity for future violence, history of violence, or other attitudes that are related to workplace violence. While this in and of itself is not a problem, as psychologists do this all the time, perfect psychological measurements are simply not possible (this may not always be the case, but it is for the current state of the art).

Every psychological measurement has error. All the sources of error are not always known, but we do know how much measurement error to expect. This is why psychology doesn’t deal in many absolutes, there simply aren’t many of them to be had. All organisms are complex, but none more so than a human.

Even if we developed ways to identify people who are likely to commit this type of atrocity, there will always be a certain number of people who are wrongly classified. Perhaps more importantly, a certain portion of the people we predict will not become violent in the workplace will give us an unpleasant surprise.

The key here is not to focus on the impossible. We cannot eliminate workplace violence. We can, however, reduce it. We may not be able to agree on what a “tolerable level” of workplace violence would be, but I think we can all agree that less is better. Toward that end, we have a legion of psychologists working on identifying the precursors to workplace violence. Their work may have real-world applications to help us reduce the danger of being assaulted at work. Before we start drafting a ton of policy that appeals to our common sense, let’s examine what science has to tell us. I am no expert in workplace violence, it has never appealed to the scientist in me for some reason, but I suspect some of the answers can be found in a few simple places:

1. Treat your employees with dignity, respect and fairness.
2. Ensure that your employees treat each other with dignity, respect and fairness.
3. Take steps to minimize the economic impact of market fluctuations on individuals. In other words, losing one’s job should lead to losing one’s livelihood.
4. Develop systems to identify employees facing economic, philosophical and psychological crises before they escalate.

Academics Are Important. Seriously!

Driving to Starbucks for my desperately needed Americano, I ended up stopping behind a bus. I have become so accustomed to the ubiquity of advertisements that I was surprised when I noted the bright red banner splayed on the bus’s rear. The big, bold, white letters read, “SR-22’s.” I presume somewhere beneath those letters was a telephone number one could cal to take advantage of said service, but I stopped reading (sorry, marketing people). I was lost in thought about the irony of advertizing a service that allows people to drive legally when they might otherwise be relegated to using mass transit (and reducing usage of mass transit, for that matter). At east, I think that’s what distracted me. I can’t say for certain, as the thought was pretty fleeting. I ended up thinking about the potential injustice of a system of governance that imposes a myriad of expenses on individuals and families that can least afford them. Fees associated with driving are pretty regressive in nature when you think about it. I could almost see the face of my old political science professor from my undergraduate days.

I sat in his class for a semester. Well, I was in the class for a semester technically; I could seldom be bothered to show up for class in those days. It’s a damned same too. I can think of few professors that influenced me more than he did. I think his name was Dr. Boquina. I never thanked him and I feel bad about that. Perhaps I can still correct that, but atonement is not the topic of this post. It is about the role academics can play in informing the institutions that shape our lives, especially our places of work.

You see, when Dr. Boquina wasn’t teaching young minds that would rather be hanging with their fraternity brothers (or sisters), or dealing with hangovers in the privacy of their own little apartments, he was writing about the role that opera played in political science. Or maybe his research was about the way political institutions influenced their operas. I’m not sure; I wasn’t a very engaged undergrad. Quite frankly, I didn’t care. I did not see how his research had any impact on the world in which we all struggled. Pure science absolutely had some intrinsic value to me even then, but until recently I believed that the real value could only be realized until that pure science was applied to the real world. I think I may have been at least partially mistaken.

Academics are valuable to organizations because they have the time to really think about issues organizations face. It may not seem like a whole lot, but taking time to think an issue all the way through is too often a luxury in the field.  In practice, we often seek answers that are palatable and digestible by client organizations. Similarly, conducting appropriate research for a particular solution requires more time than many are willing to spend, so we turn to self-appointed experts that speak with confidence born of insufficient insight. Before any plan is approved, it must travel through various stakeholders, decision-makers, committees and focus groups, most of which lack the expertise to make positive contributions to the solution at hand. Yet, they make “contributions” anyway. What results are programs and interventions that may or may not work, but have sufficient buy-in. In other words, we offer solutions with potentially no value other than that they are found acceptable by a bunch of non-experts.

This is why we must take some time to listen to academics. Believe it or not, practitioners and academics share many of the same goals. We all seek to understand organizations, and develop interventions to make them work better for everyone involved.  It is premature to dismiss their knowledge as impractical or out of touch. In my experience, we dismiss this research out of hand, without actually reading it. Remember, academics can examine the same challenges we do, but they do so within different constraints. Academics can seek “optimum” solutions. They can examine a problem in its entirety, where practitioners can’t.  Academics have something of remarkable value to offer, in most cases at no cost to us. So why do we insist in ignoring their knowledge?

We must look within our own organizations and accept the idea that we may not have all the answers. We have to acknowledge the scary fact that experience is not the only answer. Experience helps us with situations we have encountered before, but it can lead us astray in novel situations. Continuing with business as usual serves no one’s interest.

Layoff Rumors and Condolences

It looks like an organization I am familiar with is about to announce a new round of layoffs. To my brothers and sisters, I offer my best wishes. If the rumors are true, you are about to feel pain with which too many of us are familiar.

Things will work themselves out. In the mean time, enjoy some well-earned rest.

Peace

What Not To Ask

Howdy y’all!

It has been a while since i updated this blog regularly. Sorry! I have been focusing on finding a new job and keeping my crops alive in Farmville (I wish I was kidding). I want to say I will be better about updating, but I am not in the habit of making promises I am not sure I can keep.

Anywho…. i ran across this blog post I thought deserved as wide a circulation as possible. HRM Today helpfully compiled a list of questions you should never ask a candidate, along with questions that are permissible. Now, most of my readers are HR professionals and probably have this list tattooed on their forearms already. It is not you folks making these mistakes. Sadly, you are not the only people getting information from candidates. In my experience, professional HR reps are not even in the room when people are being hired. This is probably a sad state of affairs for you HR types, but it represents a true liability for the organization doing the hiring.

Do your organization’s selection agents know what not to ask and why? If they don’t, guess who will be cleaning up their mess?

Forcing Industry to Do the Right Thing

Two related news items caught my attention today. The first of these was an article in the Washington Post about reducing limits on overdraft protection fees. The second of these was pending legislation limiting tarmac delays to less than 3 hours. These are not new issues; they have been hanging over the heads of the banking industry and airline industries for many, many years… Too many, if you do any flying or banking. My “WTF” moment came when I realized that it sometimes takes an act of congress to force organizations to make decisions that really benefit everyone (or serious threat of legislative action in the case of the banking changes). How is this possible? I thought the free market was supposed to right these kinds of wrongs.

How is it that an organization implements such barbaric policies on the very people they claim to serve? How do such policies continue after the first time they come to light? It is not like there were a dearth of stories about passengers stranded on air planes for excruciating periods of time (isn’t it called unlawful restraint or kidnapping when other people do it?). The abuses in overdraft protection fees have also been well publicized (I am pretty sure that it is called loan-sharking when individuals do what banks do). So why did organizations wait until the decision was nearly ripped from their hands?

I can think of a few reasons. Ultimately, the biggest culprit is lack of leadership in these organizations. A leader would have identified these issues as damaging to their images and perhaps even unethical. One way or another, a true leader would have made these issues a priority.

Perhaps it is telling that both f these industries have found themselves the beneficiaries of public life support. Leaders, get the job done, or move out of the way.

Remembering 9-11 With An Eye towards Our Future

I wasn’t going to write anything about the anniversary of 9.11. I read many Facebook, twitter and blog posts from friends and acquaintances and was happy to know that the events of that day lived on in our hearts. That was enough for me. For some reason, I changed my mind when I looked at the date on my phone. Somehow, seeing those numbers stirred a passion in me I had underestimated. I remembered watching the news coverage that day, filled with grief for people I never met and filled with rage that someone had dared attacked my country. These emotions washed over me and as is so often the case these days, led to some self-reflection.

For me, this date is not just about losing nearly 3000 innocent people, or the destruction of the relative peace we North Americans had enjoyed for so many decades. It is also a celebration of the human spirit and American values I hold so dear (I don’t call these values uniquely American, as I have met people from enough places to understand the hubris of that statement). Many who lost their lives that day did so not of sheer bad luck, but out of a sense of duty. So many brave men and women ran towards the burning towers while so many others fled. These people chose duty over self-preservation and we are all enriched by their example.

The past few years have been challenging for Americans and many other nations and peoples. Countless crises have reared their heads. How will history remember us? Will we continue to hide from the obstacles before us, or ignore them until the next generation pries them from our weary bones? Will we rise to the occasion and band together in the name of duty?

Every crisis is an opportunity. Today, we face a great many opportunities. Let’s set aside our self-interest for a little bit and put our heads together to become a better nation and a better world. Our children deserve better than what we have been giving them recently.

What “9” Taught Me About Organizations

I just saw the movie 9. It was great; absolutely worth the price of admission, though I would not bring any young kids to watch it. The animation was fantastic, the plot was decent and the ending was anything but saccharine. I will be the first to admit it has little to do with organizational functioning per se, but a little analysis can tell us a bit about leadership specifically and organizations more generally. I will leave 9 and the topic of leadership for another post. Allow me some latitude and I will share some thoughts on organizations that this move inspired.

One of the movie’s central themes is a mistrust of science and technology. It is not a novel theme by any stretch. Plenty of movies caution us about the dangers and sometimes evils of technology and probing where mankind was “never meant” to probe. Being a scientist by nature and almost by training (I won’t consider myself a “real scientist” until I get my Ph.D.- damned dissertation won’t write itself), this theme bothers me more than a little bit. It gets my manties in a twist, so to speak.

As I drove home, I tried to untwist said manties by exploring the role of science and technology in history. Why does it get such a bad rap? It occurs to me that technology is but a manifestation of human nature. Technology is only as good or as evil as the humans wielding it. Very few technologies were specifically designed to kill or exploit. Notable exceptions come to mind, but the vast majority of human advancement is designed for other, more benign purposes. Look, humans are clever. We were killing each other just fine with pointy sticks. New technologies simply gave us longer, pointier sticks. Even if they were intended to make our homes stronger, or our hunting a bit less dangerous, we would be remiss if we couldn’t figure out how to kill someone with the most mundane of advances. Technology has no inherent capacity for good or evil, but humans have plenty to spare.

I know that organizations are not typically thought of as technology, but they are. Like every other technology, organizations are a reflection of the humans wielding it. Like guns, TNT, computers or the internal combustion engine, organizations are not evil nor are they good. But they do magnify, intensify and enhance the intentions of its human users. Organizations can be used to exploit employees and customers, reducing the quality of life for all involved, if only for brief periods of time. This may not be the original intent of the organization, but outcomes and intentions are not always related the way we expect. By the same token organizations can be a force for good. Some add real value to their customers, clients and employees. The best figure out how to do this while making a tidy profit. These organizations focus on helping everyone win, rather than impoverishing many for the benefit of a select few. Most organizations fall somewhere in between.

I know what kind of organization I want to work for. I know what kind of organization I want to partner with. I know what kind of organization I want to make purchase from. How about you? More importantly, where does your organization sit? If you were an outside observer, or a low-ranking employee, how “evil” would your organization appear? What can you do improve that?

Proving Impact of Employee Engagement, Part 1

Michael Lee Stallard tackles the thorny issue of finding proof of the economic impact of employee engagement. Given the complexity of the full answer, I thought I would add my two cents.

Stallard is correct that social science can’t prove this with a certainty. We can’t. In fact, social science can’t “prove” much of anything. If this sounds shocking, I understand. I was shocked too. The only thing social science can prove is that something is false. We cannot find proof that something is true.

Here’s the bigger surprise: This limitation is not exclusive to social science. It is something all scientists must wrestle, be they psychologists, business scholars, chemists or physicists. This is a fundamental feature of science and the search for truth. We can never find proof that a statement is true, but we can find evidence that is alternatives are false. This is the way science works. There is a pretty good reason for this too. It has to do with confirmation search bias and its pitfalls… I won’t subject you to the details unless you ask.

The correct way of stating what we know about engagement is to say that we have evidence that it is false to say that engagement does not impact performance. Here’s the thing: This nuanced understanding of evidence and proof seems to only make sense to other scientists. For everyone else, this sounds like “I can’t prove it.” For far too many this becomes equivalent to “I have no evidence of this.” These are NOT the same, but they can be readily confused by those without the training to avoid such semantic confounds (did I just coin a phrase?).

So here’s my advice. Around scientists, it’s ok to say “we can’t prove it.” They are more likely to know what you mean (though there is no guarantee that they do. Perhaps it is best to say that they are less likely to misunderstand). For everyone else, speak like a non-scientist. We have substantial evidence for this relationship and this is really what we are being asked anyway. Is this dishonest? I don’t think so. We are dealing with intent, rather than form. Do you disagree? Let me know.

This Assessment Pudding Lacks The Proof I Was Promised

I spent an hour on the phone with my buddy Tex yesterday (names have been changed to protect the “innocent”). His employer recently asked him to complete the DISC personality assessment and he really wasn’t sure what the score report was attempting to communicate. Given my background, he asked me to explain a few things.

I am pretty familiar with personality assessments like the MBTI and the NEO 5 along with a bunch of other non-clinical psychological assessments), but the DISC report threw me for a loop. A dug around the web for a little bit and I must say I was underwhelmed with what I found. Please note, I am not an expert on the DISC; I never heard of it prior to yesterday, but given the volume of proprietary psychological assessments out there, I can’t be surprised. I will also acknowledge that I did not take the time to engage in a literature review. However, what little I was able to find raised some red flags. Here is what my admittedly non-comprehensive search revealed.

• Very limited psychometric evidence. One website reports reliability data on one sample. That’s it. No evidence for a factor structure is presented. In this case, factor structures evidence tell DISC users that there are in fact 4 relatively independent personality variables. Without this evidence, we have no way of knowing if the test assesses a single personality dimension or 12.
• No validity evidence. Is this test appropriate for use in personnel selection, retention or development? I don’t know. The “validity” evidence reported was actually test-retest reliability. Whoops! Elementary mistake, folks. Validity data tells us that the test in question actually measures what it says it does. At minimum results of the assessment should be correlated with some measure of job performance.
• Get the theory straight. Every assessment is a function of an underlying theory. This theory tells us a number of things, but at minimum it describes the variables involved and how they related to themselves and others. It is the framework that gives meaning to the numbers reported. In this case, the DISC claims to be a 4- factor model of personality. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though a tremendous amount of research suggests human personality structure is composed of 5, near-universal dimensions (I say near-universal because I am pretty sure we haven’t studied Wookies or Klingons, though it apparently holds in dogs too). Sadly, some of the marketing materials on this site manage to plot these 4 dimensions onto a single, two-dimensional graph. It would be an impressive feat of mathematical genius, if it wasn’t wrong.

Why am I fretting about this test and its flaws? It’s not like this is the first (or sadly, the last) assessment that needs work. It’s probably not even particularly high-stakes. What is really under my skin is that this test may have been used for personnel selection. The best case scenario here is that this organization is spending a few thousand dollars on a test that yields no value.  The CEO probably spent more on an executive-grade mouse pad. Of course, the worst case scenario is that using this test made this organization vulnerable to pricy litigation. I don’t work for this company, nor am I a shareholder, so what do I care, right?

I care because this poor decision is a symptom of a larger, more serious problem. I can’t begin to count the number of vendors selling assessments and other personnel-related services purported to enhance their client organizations. I am confident my HR buddies will back me up on this one; you al probably shoo us away on a daily basis. We pretty much all market our services on the basis of research and scientific evidence. Sadly, increased exposure to this industry has led me to conclude that it is much easier to say our claims are backed by research than actually perform said research. Apparently few bothers to check and those that do are confused by impressive-sounding jargon.

It’s a problem, seriously. You wouldn’t buy a microwave that didn’t heat your food, nor would you buy a car that won’t start (unless you like Gm products… LOL! I Keed!) Why then would you buy a survey, analysis or any other assessment that may not work? That, my friends, is a rhetorical question. You should not.

Poorly researched assessments and interventions are a burden to both clients and vendors. They put our credibility and hence our industry at risk. I feel that every shoddy piece of work reflects on me personally, which is why I get so worked up about this.

So what do we do about this?

• HR clients, demand proof. Don’t be satisfied with claims of research support. Ask to see the research. More importantly, be prepared to be in a position to understand that information. I am sorry to tell you, but neither a degree in HR or business, nor years of experience in the field will give you the tools to understand research results. You either have to obtain some decent training in psychological assessment, or you must seek the advice of someone with this background on your decision team. The latter is much easier (My advice is free to my friends and cheap to people I like).
• Service providers. You have to step up your game. We have an ethical and professional responsibility to back up your claims. If any of your marketing materials or sales people refer to research evidence, make sure you actually have it. It is not that hard to do. If you don’t have the expertise on hand, get it. The employment market is still soft and you can probably pick someone up on the cheap. Once you have them, set them on the task and get out of their hair; I have seen too many managers and marketing people constrain the science of their experts.

Employee Engagement and Productivity: Are These Really Related?

I always mean to write more on the topic of employee engagement. The topic is as important as it is misunderstood. As I have immersed in the HR Bloggosphere, I have come to learn that the topic can also be unexpectedly polarizing. Many in the HR community would claim that employee engagement is the most important development in employee productivity since the assembly line. At least as many HR professionals (ok, I didn’t survey, don’t ask for the data) think engagement is as important as those trust exercises where your co-workers catch you as you fall backwards- this is where you learn that broken trust sounds a lot like a human skull bouncing off a marble floor.

I have a bit of experience with employee engagement, having most recently been employed by an organization whose primary service offering was assisting organizations with their employee engagement surveys. I also have extensive training in human behavior in the workplace, coupled with a lifetime of both pleasant and unpleasant work experiences. As you might imagine, I have a few things to say about the topic of employee engagement and I think my view on the topic is the best EVAR. Thankfully, I am not deluded enough to expect anyone else to agree with my opinions- that only happens after my third beer.

So are engaged employees more productive employees? In my analysis, the answer must be a qualified yes. I qualify it because as every I/O psychologist knows (or maybe it was just my colleagues at NIU), the real answer to just about any question about the human condition is “it depends.” Human productivity is a complex phenomenon and is driven by a host of factors including job design, leadership, employee goals as well as attitudes and motivational states. Employee engagement is only part of the performance equation.

The question we should be asking ourselves is not whether or not employee engagement is important, but how important it is. When several variables impact performance, it is important to understand the relative import of each of them so we might focus our limited organizational resources on those that promise the most impact. Is engagement important enough to spend money boosting it? That depends on what else is going on in your organization. You have to fix the basics before you can fix the hard stuff. In the immortal words of Mr. Miagi, “First learn stand, then learn fly.”

To really understand the impact of employee engagement on performance, we must understand the nature of performance. I will keep it simple: I/O Psychologists and business scholars recognize two major types of performance, task and contextual (also called organizational citizenship behaviors). Some of the organizational interventions we can engage in impact task performance (training, selection, effective management techniques, job design). Other interventions focus on contextual performance- this is the domain of employee engagement, though other concepts also apply.  Enhancing contextual performance can deliver return on your investment that improvements in task performance cannot.  By the same token, improvements in task performance yield improvements that enhancements to contextual performance cannot.

Bottom line: if you want your employees to do their jobs and do them well, focus on task performance interventions. However, if you want your employees to go beyond their jobs, be creative and think about the organization and its mission, then you better make sure they are engaged.