HUMAN RESOURCES IN THE WORK PERFORMANCE FRAMEWORK
The WPF describes three aspects of people as a human resource—their mental abilities, their physical abilities, and their socioeconomic background. (See Figure 2-1, “Work Performance Framework—Human Resources.”)
FIGURE 2-1 Work Performance Framework—Human Resources
Merit-system principles require that appointments and promotions be based on the applicant’s qualifications for a position, where practicable, through competitive examinations. While the greatest attention is placed on mental abilities and some attention is placed on physical abilities, one of the roles of government is to help people who are disadvantaged by disabilities or unfavorable socioeconomic backgrounds. These requirements, which seem to conflict with one another, must be reconciled when filling positions in the public sector.
Mental Abilities
Figure 2-1 presents mental abilities as potential abilities, as opposed to inputs, which are applied abilities. Upon joining an organization, a person might need to learn operational requirements or refine his mental abilities to meet specialized organizational performance requirements. When recruiting new staff, an organization must decide whether it needs people with specialized knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to do the work or people with general mental abilities who can be trained to acquire the KSAs once hired. Often, dual strategies are employed to allow people with a specialized background to be appointed to a journey-level position, while generalists enter into a traineeship.
Figure 2-1 presents two categories of mental abilities—general mental ability and personality. While intelligence has been described in many ways, including attributes such as aptitude, wisdom, charisma, talent, and creativity, the WPF uses the term general mental ability or g, to describe the mental abilities that can be developed into KSAs required to perform specific work. The term intelligence, on the other hand, is presented in Chapter 8 as the beliefs and understanding we form as we experience and learn from all of life’s events.
Personality traits, which the WPF identifies as the second set of mental abilities, were out of fashion for many years in evaluating merit and qualification for a position. Personality evaluations were considered vulnerable to subjective biases by raters and unreliable because they could be faked.
With the growth in customer service requirements, however, personality has resurfaced as a factor of job performance and in the screening process of job applicants. In courts over the last two decades, plaintiffs alleging discriminatory hiring practices have been required to demonstrate not only adverse impact but also discriminatory intent by the defendant. This has facilitated public sector organizations in evaluating personality traits during the screening process.
The most popular model in the literature of personality traits is the “big five”—extraversion, emotional stability, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience (Funder 2001). Integrity tests, which are a type of personality test, have become popular screening devices used to reduce the probability of counterproductive job behaviors such as drinking, using drugs, fighting, stealing, or sabotaging equipment or operations.
Many aspects of general mental abilities and personality attributes must be considered when recruiting new people to an organization. Often there are trade-offs that must be acknowledged because each job requires an analysis of its important duties, the organizational environment, the work structure, and the competencies to perform the work. General mental ability and personality are HR abilities that potentially can be improved to some degree by training and development to perform specific work. Both are addressed in more detail in this chapter’s selected literature review.
Physical Abilities
Unusual physical abilities and agility are usually needed only in protective service positions requiring physical exertion, such as police officers and firefighters, or in positions that may require heavy lifting. Because of innate physical differences between men and women, including differences in strength, requirements for the protective services involving physical ability, physical agility, and height/weight standards have come under a great deal of scrutiny over the past few decades. As a result, performance standards on physical agility tests have in many cases been either eliminated or adjusted by setting separate standards for men and women. These changes have allowed more women to enter the ranks of the protective services.
Physical ability includes the factor of effort in work performance. High performers have not only the mental capacity and personality to deal with complex work situations, but also the energy and stamina to remain effective under the adverse conditions of long workdays, strained relationships, in-fighting, tight deadlines, and failing ventures. Energy level is not typically viewed as an attribute of physical fitness, nor is it heavily emphasized in professional literature as a necessity for public-sector jobs or in job analysis. However, energy level often appears in advertisements for private-sector jobs. In the public sector, physical abilities and physical agility tests are generally narrowly construed as a minimum requirement or overlooked entirely, instead of seen as a factor that can predict high performance.
Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits private employers, state and local governments, employment agencies, and labor unions from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities in job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment (EEOC 2008). While there is a legitimate interest in hiring energetic people, employers must not assume that a person with a disability has a low energy threshold or work limitations. The tendency among HR managers in the public sector has been to err on the side of including employees with disabilities rather than excluding them.
Jobs are often set aside specifically to be filled by the disabled. Section 55-b of New York State’s Civil Service Law authorizes the state government to fill up to 1,200 positions of the total workforce with people who are certified as disabled. Section 55-c authorizes the state to fill up to 300 additional positions with veterans who have a disability. These 1,500 positions are in the noncompetitive class, which means that a disabled applicant must meet the prescribed minimum qualifications for the position but is not required to compete for the position by taking a civil service examination.
People with mental health disabilities generally enjoy the same protections as those with physical disabilities, but mental disability may be more difficult to quantify and isolate, as it often varies in its manifestation from one day to the next. Mental health problems can be due to medical conditions, working conditions, or environmental conditions, such as stressors from family problems, financial problems, or transportation difficulties.
Drug or alcohol dependency might surface as a symptom of a mental health problem, and it can eventually become a problem in itself. Often, when a person is under a treatment program, he is protected from disciplinary action for his addiction but still subject to discipline for failing to meet performance standards. A person might be granted a leave of absence due to a disability, but after a fixed period of time, he or she can be terminated if still unable to return to work and perform at a minimum standard.
Socioeconomic Background
A person’s socioeconomic background can have a strong influence on how she performs in a position. Some groups, such as African Americans, have long experienced discrimination in housing and employment. People living at the poverty level endure many financial hardships. The public sector has an obligation to address injustices, and employment laws and practices reflect these concerns.
A stream of federal and state legislation, beginning with the national Civil Rights Act of 1964, has made it illegal to discriminate based on group differences such as gender, race, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or national origin, with particular attention given to equal access to housing and employment.
Veterans, as a specially designated group, receive extra points on civil service examinations and in some cases, absolute preference where their names are placed at the very top of an eligible list. Disabled veterans receive further preference within the group of veterans. Veterans are also often afforded preferred retention rights during layoffs. These benefits are viewed as partial payment for their special service to the country during times of war and other military conflicts.
In general, American society is wealthier today than at any other time in its history. Still, economic inequality is quite striking, with the wealthy able to live in very expensive homes and send their children to private schools and colleges, while the majority of people live in the middle class and strive to pay bills on time, send their children to college, and save for retirement. While their day-to-day needs may be taken care of, members of the middle class often have substantial debt and fall behind in saving for a rainy day or retirement.
People living in poverty have even harsher difficulties to face in paying for transportation, childcare, health care, and housing, which exacerbate their general financial difficulties. Children who live under difficult socioeconomic circumstances may face problems in early childhood development and self-esteem. Their deprivation may lead to acting out, promiscuity, and violence, which undermine their chances of getting a good education and finding a good job.
Affirmative action programs, set-asides for disabled workers, and other programs to benefit minority populations and disadvantaged people are important issues for public-sector recruitment and selection programs. They are addressed in Chapter 7 from the theoretical perspective of fairness.