How Personality Predicts Employee Performance

What Extent Does Personality Predict Employee Performance Business Essay
According to research conducted by Zunker (2005, p. 132), personality traits have two different approaches that define them. These include the nomothetic method and the idiographic one. However, the nomothetic method believes that individuals inherit their personality traits and there is no way the surrounding environment can affect them. However, the idiographic approach to personality differs with the nomothetic one because it draws focus on entire personalities of people. For example, it specializes on factors such as richness and complexity that are imperative in understanding the deeper details of an individual. Ferguson (2009, p. 132) also asserted that there are different factors that affect the personalities of people, which entail the physical, social, cultural and the biological environment. For example, the physical environment encompasses the surroundings that an individual lives in, which plays a significant role in the personality of an individual. The social environment, which encompasses the society that raised an individual, also plays an imperative role in his or her personalities.
On the contrary, job performance calls for employees to perform all the responsibilities targeted by an organization in order to increase profits. Therefore, knowledge, quality skills and good attitude are imperative in job performance. Many organizations around the globe apply different methods including performance appraisal so that they can ensure good performance by employees. Concurrently, Stewart (1999, p. 950) claimed that many organizations have claimed that personality plays a significant role in the selection of employees. This is because organizations believe that personality factors are imperative in every organizational setting because different researches have indicated that bad personality turns out to be disastrous, thus causing tension and negative results in an organization (Hurtz& Donovan, 2000, p. 865).
In addition, Furnham (2008, p. 24) claims that employee performance is important because it acts as goal setter to the employees, thus encouraging their participation in different departments in an organization. As a result, it ends up acting as a source of motivation, thus promoting performances at work place and this enhances profits in an organization. Interestingly, researchers have been conducting different studies on the relationship between personality and employee performances and it revealed that the two factors have a small correlation. This is possible because many organizations are using personality assessment in determining the performances of their employees. In the assessment process, the employers apply the big five framework, which support them in selecting employees, since they analyse their personalities. The big five factors entail consciousness, openness, agreeableness, extroversion and neuroticism. Many organizations claim that out of the big five, the most common one applicable by most companies is consciousness, because they believe that individual showing conscious behaviours have high capabilities of enhancing good performances.
Remarkably, different researches have indicated that there is a good relationship between the assessment of big five framework and job performance in organizations. Additionally, the assessment has indicated that neuroticism lowers the rate at which employees perform their tasks because it makes employees to become prone to negativity thus lowering the rate of job performance together with the level of satisfaction at work place. Furthermore, Hogan (2007, p. 42) claims that extraversion is also among the big five framework and it supports the mingling of employees and encourages positive attitude towards their job, thus individuals with such personality have high chances of increasing job performances as well as satisfaction. Companies also claim that agreeable is an important personality in detecting good performances among employees because different researches have revealed that employees with such traits get along with other people easily. Therefore, this implies that such individuals will be able to collaborate with others at work place thus enhancing teamwork, which is imperative in increased performance.