Evidence-Based Management

Finding The Right Match Can Be Tricky: The Effectiveness of Various Candidate Selection Methods May Shock You!

Key Points: Selection tools are quite different in their ability to predict performance than previously thought. Some less, some more. Overall (rather than contextualized) personality measures and years of job experience, are not meaningful predictors of performance. Structured Interviews, Job Knowledge, Biodata, Work Samples, Cognitive Ability and Integrity Tests are useful assessment methods and criteria.
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Myth-busting

Myth-Busting: How Believing Smart People to be Socially Stunted Could be Costing You and Your Business

Key Points: The belief that highly intelligent people lack social skills is a common stereotype, but recent research suggests it is more likely a myth than an informative stereotype. Findings suggest that smarter people tend to be better at accurately interpreting and responding to the social and emotional cues of others. By using objective data,
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Teamwork

How an Employer-Employee Identity Discrepancy May be Exhausting Your People and Bleeding Your Profits

Key Points: Studies indicate that employees identify with organizations when there is an alignment in values, feelings of support, and they feel trust in the organization’s leaders to make the right decisions. The evidence suggests that organizational identification is malleable and can change with changes in the values of the organization or with changes in
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It’s All Fun and Games Until You’ve Created a Hostile Work Environment: How Workplace Bullying is Linked to Mental Health

Key Points: Workplace bullying has been linked to negative outcomes of health and mental illness. Although depression, anxiety, stress, and burnout were all associated with being bullied. Symptoms of depression were most consistently. Anxiety and stress fall into two categories: Generalized anxiety and PTSD, which had stronger relationships with workplace bullying. Similarly, burnout symptoms were
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“Working together”: Does it really matter for Team Performance?

Key Points: Team collaboration is not fixed; embedding it is a great target for organizational improvement. Teams can be designed for collaboration. Focus on building collaboration into tasks and outcomes the team is pursuing. Team collaboration can impact how we think, act, and feel about our teammates. In turn, it improves performance. This Evidence-Based Summary has
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Team Building: How to Get Real Results from Team Building Activities

Key points Team building interventions have three essential characteristics which clarify the confusion around the term and help differentiate it from other interventions aimed at teams; Team building interventions improve team members’ feelings and team interactions, but don’t have a considerable effect on team performance; Effective team building activities are not only fun, but must
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Training & Development

Goal setting can influence job performance. But under which conditions?

Key Points: Set challenging and specific goals for higher performance. Use data, feedback, and progress monitoring to achieve goals effectively. Consider individual differences and intrinsic motivation for successful goal setting. Most personal and professional progress is directed by our goals. Research shows that when we set and reach goals, we get into a virtuous cycle
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A Quick-Start Guide to Leadership Training Done Right

Key Points: When delivered effectively, leadership training programs can improve leadership, change behavior, and help an organization’s bottom line. But you can’t just assume that the training you’re considering (or already receiving) is actually being delivered effectively. You should conduct a needs analysis before beginning training to ensure that the program that you’re considering is
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How Mindfulness Can Benefit Leaders, Their Followers, and Make for More Profitable Business

Key Points: Mindfulness is positively correlated with many highly sought health and wellness indicators. Mindfulness is similarly correlated with highly sought and highly effective leadership styles like transformational leadership, authentic leadership, and with specific leader behaviours like less leader abuse. Organizations would do well to implement demonstrably effective evidence-based mindfulness training as it’s both cost
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Team Building: How to Get Real Results from Team Building Activities

Key points Team building interventions have three essential characteristics which clarify the confusion around the term and help differentiate it from other interventions aimed at teams; Team building interventions improve team members’ feelings and team interactions, but don’t have a considerable effect on team performance; Effective team building activities are not only fun, but must
Continue Reading

Performance Management

Lean on Me: A Leader’s Impact on Wellness

Key Points: Mental health is a vital occupational health factor that organizations should prioritize by actively developing positive leaders who reflect effective leadership styles and behaviours, implementing supportive policies, and proactively monitoring employee well-being to create a more productive and inclusive work environment. Effective leadership styles like transformational leadership, relations-oriented leadership, and task-oriented leadership, and
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Finding The Right Match Can Be Tricky: The Effectiveness of Various Candidate Selection Methods May Shock You!

Key Points: Selection tools are quite different in their ability to predict performance than previously thought. Some less, some more. Overall (rather than contextualized) personality measures and years of job experience, are not meaningful predictors of performance. Structured Interviews, Job Knowledge, Biodata, Work Samples, Cognitive Ability and Integrity Tests are useful assessment methods and criteria.
Continue Reading

Diversity & Inclusion

How an Employer-Employee Identity Discrepancy May be Exhausting Your People and Bleeding Your Profits

Key Points: Studies indicate that employees identify with organizations when there is an alignment in values, feelings of support, and they feel trust in the organization’s leaders to make the right decisions. The evidence suggests that organizational identification is malleable and can change with changes in the values of the organization or with changes in
Continue Reading

What Can You Do to Encourage Discussions About Accommodating Employee Disabilities?

Key Points: People with disabilities face barriers in employment, and accommodations such as accessibility facilities, flexible policies, and modified equipment are crucial for their work experience and quality of life. Many Canadian companies lack clear accommodation practices, resulting in less than 20% of people with disabilities using accommodations despite their right to be accommodated. The
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Leadership

Lean on Me: A Leader’s Impact on Wellness

Key Points: Mental health is a vital occupational health factor that organizations should prioritize by actively developing positive leaders who reflect effective leadership styles and behaviours, implementing supportive policies, and proactively monitoring employee well-being to create a more productive and inclusive work environment. Effective leadership styles like transformational leadership, relations-oriented leadership, and task-oriented leadership, and
Continue Reading

How an Employer-Employee Identity Discrepancy May be Exhausting Your People and Bleeding Your Profits

Key Points: Studies indicate that employees identify with organizations when there is an alignment in values, feelings of support, and they feel trust in the organization’s leaders to make the right decisions. The evidence suggests that organizational identification is malleable and can change with changes in the values of the organization or with changes in
Continue Reading

If you want to motivate people, avoid these four words: “You have no choice!”

Key Points: Providing support for autonomy can help provide the basic underlying needs for intrinsic motivation – autonomy, competence and connectedness. When these needs are satisfied, employees are more likely to experience intrinsic motivation for their work. This is in-turn related to higher levels of general well-being, work engagement and positive work behaviors, and lower
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Recruiting and Selection

Finding The Right Match Can Be Tricky: The Effectiveness of Various Candidate Selection Methods May Shock You!

Key Points: Selection tools are quite different in their ability to predict performance than previously thought. Some less, some more. Overall (rather than contextualized) personality measures and years of job experience, are not meaningful predictors of performance. Structured Interviews, Job Knowledge, Biodata, Work Samples, Cognitive Ability and Integrity Tests are useful assessment methods and criteria.
Continue Reading

Enhancing the Online Applicant Experience: Shaping Perceptions and Behavior in Online Recruitment

Key Points: Applicant experience seems to be linked to how applicants perceive the organization or whether they finish their application or not. Applicant experience’s correlation with perception and behavior do not seem to vary based on gender and sex. There are no differences between males and females and various age groups. Nowadays, many companies use
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Employee Turnover

Health and Safety

Lean on Me: A Leader’s Impact on Wellness

Key Points: Mental health is a vital occupational health factor that organizations should prioritize by actively developing positive leaders who reflect effective leadership styles and behaviours, implementing supportive policies, and proactively monitoring employee well-being to create a more productive and inclusive work environment. Effective leadership styles like transformational leadership, relations-oriented leadership, and task-oriented leadership, and
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Job Insecurity: Why It Matters and Is It All Inside Your Head?

Key Points: Job insecurity is significantly related to a staggering 51 unique negative work and individual outcomes. Cognitive job insecurity – thoughts tied to job insecurity – and affective job insecurity – feelings tied to job insecurity – are found to be related but different concepts. Feelings related to job insecurity seem to be more
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Interviews

Finding The Right Match Can Be Tricky: The Effectiveness of Various Candidate Selection Methods May Shock You!

Key Points: Selection tools are quite different in their ability to predict performance than previously thought. Some less, some more. Overall (rather than contextualized) personality measures and years of job experience, are not meaningful predictors of performance. Structured Interviews, Job Knowledge, Biodata, Work Samples, Cognitive Ability and Integrity Tests are useful assessment methods and criteria.
Continue Reading

Enhancing the Online Applicant Experience: Shaping Perceptions and Behavior in Online Recruitment

Key Points: Applicant experience seems to be linked to how applicants perceive the organization or whether they finish their application or not. Applicant experience’s correlation with perception and behavior do not seem to vary based on gender and sex. There are no differences between males and females and various age groups. Nowadays, many companies use
Continue Reading

What Can You Do to Encourage Discussions About Accommodating Employee Disabilities?

Key Points: People with disabilities face barriers in employment, and accommodations such as accessibility facilities, flexible policies, and modified equipment are crucial for their work experience and quality of life. Many Canadian companies lack clear accommodation practices, resulting in less than 20% of people with disabilities using accommodations despite their right to be accommodated. The
Continue Reading

An Evidence-Based Take on Understanding Workplace Behaviors: Interview with John Ballard, PhD, Author of Decoding the Workplace

John Ballard is emeritus professor of management at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2016 the university presented him its Distinguished Scholar Award for his efforts to bridge the management scholar-practitioner gap through his blogs, tweets, and his award-winning book. He is co-author of the much-acclaimed “Who Built Maslow’s Pyramid? A History of
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