To What Extent Does Personality Predict Employee Performance - Essay Example

To what extent does personality predict employee performance? Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 Discussion 3 Conclusion 8 References 9 Introduction The personality of a human being refers to an organized and dynamic set of characteristics and traits that are displayed by the person over time and across different situations. The impact of the personality of an individual on the performance of the employee in his work is a widely studied topic among various researchers and practitioners. As per different researchers, the personality of a human being is an important decider of the performances of the employees. However, other scholars are of an opposing view that personality does not play a crucial role in job performances. For understanding the actual scenario of whether the personality traits of a human being affect his work performance levels, it is important to understand the perspectives and theories related to personality and assessing the connection between different personalities and performance efficiency of the employees. Discussion The personality of a human being can be described to be the motor that directly influences and drives his behaviour. The personality of a human being are said to remain consistent across situation and over time and is identified to be a main predictor of success of any employee at his workplaces. The personalities of different individuals and the impacts that they have on the workplace performances can be studied through suitable references made to the key personality theories that have been presented by scholars. The most popular model of personality, known as the Big Five Model of Personality traits can be used to describe the impacts of personality on the job performances of an employee. The Big Five model uses five different scales for the purpose of describing the personality of a human being. These are conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness to experience, emotional stability and agreeableness (Judge, Higgins, Thoresen and Barrick, 1999). The scale of conscientiousness is used to define the degree to which a human being is persistent and reliable. The scale of extraversion refers to the ambition, narcissism and sociability of a human being, the scale of openness to experience refers to the measure of the level of novelty seeking and creativity of an individual, the scale of emotional stability is used to measure the level to which a person can demonstrate self-control, calmness and poise in both normal and stressful situations and the scale of agreeableness defines the degree to which a person demonstrates an altruistic and cooperative behaviour. As per the Big Five Model of Personality Traits, the combination of these five scale and traits are the main influencer of the success and performance of an individual in his or her work. The impact of the combination of these five traits on the performance of an individual at his workplace can be measured in three ways. Primarily, it decides the reasons as to how and why a person can be motivated to attain different goals in his or her work. For example, individuals who have high extraversion traits are found to be more motivated to perform better and achieve any goal if a reward or appraisal of any kind is involved with the achievement of the goal. Secondly, the personality traits of any human being directly affect his mood, which subsequently impacts the ways in which the person responds to different kinds of situations and different people at the workplace. As per many researchers, the agreeableness and the conscientiousness of an individual indirectly impacts the organizational citizenship of the employees through the impact on the satisfaction derived from the job roles. Therefore, this theory establishes the fact that if the emotional satisfaction of an employee is reached through his or her work then that employee is likely to perform as a more efficient organizational citizen at this or her workplace. Thirdly, the personality profiles of the employees directly affect the interpersonal relations of the employees at the workplaces. Since, the interpersonal relationships with other employees, colleagues and managers are significant in deciding the success of an employee, therefore, an employee who is able to build better work relationships is likely to perform in a more efficient manner in his respective job profile. Career success can be based on two different perspectives which are extrinsic success and intrinsic success. Intrinsic success in job performance refers to the job satisfaction that an employee receives from performing in the job roles. On the other hand, extrinsic success refers to the status and income that the employee achieves from the performance in the different woks involved his job roles. According to many researchers like Torrington, Hall, Taylor and Atkinson (2011), the personality traits like extraversion and conscientiousness of a human being are positively related to the extrinsic success of the employee in his job role (Torrington, Hall, Taylor and Atkinson, 2011). Other personality traits like neuroticism and general mental comprehension abilities affect the extrinsic success factors but show no effects on the intrinsic success factors of an employee. Generally, a person with higher cognition and smartness earn higher salaries and has higher job positions which ultimately lead to enhanced job satisfaction. The key personality traits that are present in an employee in his childhood and developed over his adulthood can be utilized and studied to explain the intrinsic as well as the extrinsic factors related to career success. Some other researchers like Hurtz and Donovan (2000) have argued that the success and performance of an employee in his job can be directly related to demographic factors and several other external factors like training, education and work experiences of the respective employee (Hurtz and Donovan, 2000). Also, they have suggested that the success of an employee is also dependent on the ancillary factors like organizational success, rewards and growth opportunities. Often, organizational success and employee performances exist in positive correlation with each other. According to other researchers like Michel, Shoda and Smith (2004), there are two main approaches that can be used to define personality of an individual. These are the idiographic approach and the nomothetic approach. The nomothetic approach for personality is of the view that personality traits are inherited and as such, the external factors do not play an important role in deciding the personality and performance of an individual. The nomothetic approach of personality considers a number of variables for studying the personalities of different human beings. This approach for personality is in contrast with the idiographic approach according to which, the personality of an individual depends on the inherited as well as the environmental factors. This approach is used to study the overall personality of a human being and does not involve any kind of comparison among the personalities of other individuals. The idiographic approach of personality is based on the assumption that the personalities of different individuals are built up according to the inherent characteristics of the individual as well as the external factors that influence the experiences of the individual through his childhood and adulthood phases. As per the nomothetic approach, the personality traits seldom play a crucial role in deciding the performance level of an employee in his job functions (Michel, Shoda and Smith, 2004). On the other hand, as per the idiographic approach, the personality traits of an employee are the key deciders of the efficiency, overall performance and the career success of an employee. The Carl Jung’s theory of introversion and extraversion is another theory which supports the view that the personality traits of an employee are key deciders of the level of performance and success of the employee in his job role. According to this theory, the extrovert people are sociable in nature and like to mix up with other people. As such, these kinds of personalities find it easier to develop strong and beneficial work relationships which add to their efficiency and overall performance within an organization. In contrast, the introvert people are shy in nature and like to work in job roles that do not involve a high level of communication and team work. These people find it difficult to build beneficial work relationships with their colleagues and managers and often face difficulty in adding value to their performances through the use of interpersonal relationships. Since, it is very important to develop and maintain strong relationships with colleagues, managers, subordinates and business partners in the corporate world, therefore, it is argued by most human resource managers that the employees who are extrovert in nature often have more advantageous positions in an organization as compared to the employees who have predominantly introvert personalities (Barrick, Stewart and Piotrowski, 2002). Also, the Carl Jung theory of personality postulates that the personality types of people can be decided through the use of four functions that are commonly used by a person to deal with other people and situations. These are intuition, sensing, thinking and feeling. In this theory, intuition refers to the ability to know things beforehand by analysing the situation and people, sensing involves receiving important information through the use of the basic five senses present in a human body, feeling involves receiving information as well as evaluating them through the use of emotional factors and thinking refers to the ability to use decision making powers for the evaluation and analysis of information. This theory proposes that any employee uses these four basic functions to decide on his work priorities and the ability of every employee to perceive and process information through these four functions are different. Therefore, the ability of the employees to process information through the four functions plays a crucial role in the development of his personality and directly impacts his work efficiency, performance levels and long term career success. Conclusion Thus, it can be identified from the above analysis that personality is a significant contributor and predictor of the performance of an employee in his specific job role. However, it cannot be said that personality is the only predictor of performance and success of an individual in the workplace. Along with the personality traits, various other external and internal factors are responsible for shaping up the efficiency of an individual as an employee or as an organizational citizen. While the personality of an employee acts as a base for him to build up his efficiency, the external environmental factors like his experiences, rewards and appraisal for good performance, organizational culture, work environment, scopes of growth, motivation involved in the work etc. also impact the individual performances to a large extent. References Barrick, M. R., Stewart, G. L., & Piotrowski, M. 2002. Personality and job performance: Test of the mediating effects of motivation among sales representatives. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.87 (1), pp.43-51. Hurtz, G. & Donovan, J. 2000. Personality and job performance: The Big Five revisited. Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol. 85(1), pp.82-84.  Judge, T. A., Higgins, C. A., Thoresen, C. J. & Barrick, M. R. 1999. The big five personality traits, general mental ability, and career success across the life span. Personnel Psychology. Vol. 52(1), pp.100-104. Michel, W., Shoda, Y., & Smith, R. E. 2004. Introduction to personality: Toward an integration. New York: John Wiley. Torrington, D., Hall, L., Taylor, S. & Atkinson, C. 2011. Human Resource Management. 8th edition. London: Prentice Hall. Read More