Personality and Employee Performance - Essay Example

?Running Head: PERSONALITY AND EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE Inserts His/Her Inserts Grade Inserts Personality and Employee Performance The business and service providing organizations, in the current era, have advanced towards modern procedures of working and integration of technology into their operations. The organizations have not only adopted technology as the major tools of working but also aim upon understanding and translating the psychology of the human resources hired at the workplace. According to many modern day manufacturing and services organizations, all of them attempt to understand the psychological factors of their employees and associate these factors with their performance at work. Employee Performance The concept of employee performance is the most practical and applicable in the organizations these days. It refers to the performance or the productivity given by the employees with reference to their jobs or assigned tasks. This performance of workers, in essence, gives rise to the performance appraisals and other such measures to assess the criteria for their rewards and punishments. The concept of performance appraisal, also known as performance evaluation, pertains to a periodic and systematic procedure of assessing and evaluating the performance of employees and their productivity at jobs (Muchinsky, 2012). The performance of employees considers elements such as accomplishments, organizational citizenship behavior, weaknesses and strengths, and the future improvement potential. The concept of employee performance and the systems to measure it tend to align and manage all the resources of the organizations for the purpose of achieving a performance which is possible to the maximum. The performance management is the tool that organization largely utilize to establish the failure or success at the workplace. Thus, the highest priority of the present day organizations is to keep a track of the employee’s performance. Moreover, the performance appraisals also elaborates upon the incentives or reinforcements required for the employees regarding their output at the assigned tasks, punctuality and attendance, dependability, interpersonal relations, and needs for further performance improvement and development. Personality Traits The concept of personality entails wide perspectives within the term and belongs to the field of psychology. However, this term is widely used and applied in the scope of business as well. The term ‘personality’ can be described as an organized and dynamic array of characteristics which an individual possesses and which are capable of influencing the person’s emotions, behaviors, cognitions, and motivations in diverse situations. Personality may also pertain to the patterns of feelings, perception, thoughts and behaviours which the individuals depict with the passage of time. These patterns also have strong influences on the values and attitudes, self-perceptions, and have the ability to predict the individual’s responsiveness to the other people in the times of stress and problems. Relationship between Personality and Employee Performance The high demands and stress posed upon the employees at workplace in the present times generate a need for the employees, managers and all the workforce that deals with the everyday requirements of the organziations, subordinates and the pressure of workloads (Francis, 2007). The position of employees, specifically the middle and higher level employees such as managers and supervisors, requires a lot of stress and responsibility, as they are expected to give the outcomes which disregard elements of favourable or unfavourable situations. The leaders and managers are required to figure out solutions and take up variety of challenges which accumulate in the business every other day. Many of these demanding tasks inculde staff reassignment, limited budget, withdrawal of finance, reorganization of units, government policies, and lack of availability of resources which keep emerging in the organzational operations and activities. Researches suggest that the companies, in order to be successful and surviving, should not only indulge in the modificationa and layouts of machinery and tools, but should also give proper attention and consideration to the human factors. Personality plays a significant role in the maintenance of employees and managing their performance systems in the oragnzation. The element of personality contains many different traits which are utilized to understand the psychology and personality dimensions of the individuals. Some of them, known as the Big Five traits, include the openness to experience, extroversion, concsientious, agreeableness, and neuroticism. These are the major personality factors which are defined by various researchers to be forming the basis of an individual’s personality. Regarding the relationship between the employee performance and personality, studies have depicted both these variables to have strong relationship between them. The personality traits of the employees, irrespective of the nature of postion, will affect their performance at work to a certain extent and will ultimately impact their productivity either positively or negatively. The affects of few such personality traits on the performance of employee at workplace are provided below: Opennes to Experience One of the key factors of the personality dimensions of the employees include their openness to the experiences that they are countering. This feature observes that the employees bear active imaginations, attraction to their inner feelings, aesthetic sensitivity, intellectual curiosity and the pereference for variety. This personality has been discovered to be related to employee’s performance at work only under particular organzational contexts. Some recent studies have examined that the openness to new experiences is crucially associated to training proficiency instead of job aptitude. Besides this, this feature suggests that employees are more involved in learning and adopting the changes in the surrounding environments with creativity and imaginations. This makes the employees exhibit positive performance and productivity in the organization. Extroversion Extroversion is another personality trait which provides a view of in individual by referring to one as outgoing, outspoken, energetic, sociable, talkative and enthusiastic. The factor of extroversion is positively related to the job performance. They are able to better represent themselves and their organization by being outspoken and sociable. In case managers or supervisors possess this quality, they shall be in a better position to explain themsleves to their stakeholder, employees and other people linked with the workplace. The extroverts may be good at their performance in the assigned tasks, however, they might prove to be harmful for the organization in the sense that they can be a possible source of increasing the turnover. Due to the fact that extroverts tend to be assertive and outgoing, they possess huge social networks than the employees of introvert personalities. It is most likely that extroverts have an easy access to the available opportunities of jobs and thus, they would be more likely to resign from their current positions at the organization to join the better opportunities in some other organizations. Moreover, the extrovert employees are also discovered to be positively related to the absenteeism in the organzaition (Judge et al., 1999). The organizations demanding more time and commitment are not suited to extroverts due to their overwhelming social circles, and this increases the chances of absenteeism as well as turnover in such workplaces. Concsientious One of the Big Five Factors of personality include Concsientiousness which pertains to the individuals being responsible, hardworking, perserving and careful. It is a trait which includes the characteristics of organization, deliberation, carefulness, self-discipline and the need for achievement. Such individuals are usually very reliable and hard working. According to various researches, only the conscientious employees are most positively and significantly connected to all the performance criteria. They fit on the scale of training proficiency, job proficiency and personnel data in all the groups of occupations. Since the concientious employees possess the qualities of being diligent, willing and reliable, so thay can move ahead with any type of job and occupational categories. Some jobs which require more hard work, or provision of quality services are best suited to the concsientious individuals who are likely to serve well in these positions. Furthermore, this feature relates negatively with the prevalence of absenteeism in the organization (Judge et al., 1997). The concsientious individuals demonstrate less behaviours of being withdrawn and are more likely to be bound towards rules. Therefore, it is observed that they do not appreciate absenteeism at the workplace. Moreover, such individuals are in a greater position to feel obligation and responsibility towards the workplace and thus, would depict a long term tendency to stay with the manager and the oragnization. They are flexible employees and tend to bear a lower quitting propensity. Thus, they exhibit a negative relationship with the organizational turnover. Agreeableness The feature of agreeablenss pertains to the individual being felxible, cooperative, trusting and caring in every possible manner with colleagues, family and peers. Such employees have been found to be positively related to the performance variable. The employees who are tolerant, flexible and good natured are specifically suited to the tiring and tough jobs of the modern day organizations. Such employees also pose greater correlation to the component of teamwork at jobs. Due to the increased flexibility and tolerance, there is a less, rather least, possibility that such employees would leave the organization or get absent in order to foster the envrionment of absenteeism. They possess higher ability to adjust to all kinds of environments and deal with all types of problems in their own manner. Emotional Stability The personality elemnt of emotional stability pertains to being stable, relaxed, secure and tolerant of all stress. This factor has also been observed as being at positive relation with the employee’s performance at work. At such organzaitions, where the workers are required to manage and sustain their attitudes and feelings alongwith possessing knowledge for the provision of quality services in right quantity to support the satisfaction of customers, the people with stable emotions serve well. On the other hand, such individuals who take a lot of stress and remain tensed and unstable would not succeed in the challenging environment of the present day organizations. Thus, we say that the emotional stability and service performance of employees bear a positive relationship. Conclusion The personality of an individual palys a vital role in the contributions towards personal, social and professional lives. The present day challenging organizations require hard working, reliable, tolerant and willing people, and for this purpose, the managers and supervisors need to understand the psychology of employees. The Big Five traits of personality include concsientious, agreeableness, emotional stability, extroversion, and openness to experience. All these factors, in one way or the other, contribute to the organization’s performance and productivity in positive or negative manner. REFERENCES Muchinsky, P. M., 2012, Psychology Applied to Work, 10th edition, Summerfield, NC: Hypergraphic Press, Print. Judge, T.A., Higgins, C.A., Thoresen, C.J. and Barrick, M.R., 1999, The big five personality traits, general mental ability, and career success across the life span, Personnel Psychology, Vol. 52 No. 3, pp. 621-52. Judge, T.A., Thoresen, C.J. and Martocchio, J.J., 1997, Five-factor model of personality and employee absence, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 82 No. 5, pp. 745-55 Francis, M., 2007, Stress and Managers. Web, Retrieved on April 24, 2012 Read More