Employee Abilities and Skills Quiz

PDF page 47: We begin with a look at employee abilities and skills. Abilities and skills generally represent those physical and intellectual characteristics that are relatively stable over time and that help determine an employee’s capability to respond. Recognizing them is important in understanding organizational behavior, because they often bound an employee’s ability to do the job. For example, if a clerk-typist simply does not have the manual dexterity to master the fundamentals of typing or keyboard entry, her performance will likely suffer. Similarly, a sales representative who has a hard time with simple numerical calculations will probably not do well on the job.

PDF page 47: It is possible to divide our discussion of abilities and skills into two sections: mental abilities and physical abilities. Mental abilities are an individual’s intellectual capabilities and are closely linked to how a person makes decisions and processes information. Included here are such factors as verbal comprehension, inductive reasoning, and memory. A summary is shown in Table 2.1.

PDF page 47: • Verbal comprehension. The ability to understand the meanings of words and their relations to each

PDF page 47: • Inductive reasoning. The ability to discover a rule or principle and apply it to the solution of a problem.

PDF page 48: environment and organize them in such a way that they make sense. People with high cognitive complexity tend to use more information—and to see the relationships between aspects of this information—than people with low cognitive complexity. For example, if a manager was assigned a particular problem, would she have the capacity to break the problem down into its various facets and understand how these various facets relate to one another? A manager with low cognitive complexity would tend to see only one or two salient aspects of the problem, whereas a manager with higher cognitive complexity would understand more of the nuances and subtleties of the problem as they relate to each other and to other problems.

PDF page 47: From a managerial standpoint, a key aspect of mental ability is cognitive complexity. Cognitive complexity represents a person’s capacity to acquire and sort through various pieces of information from the

PDF page 48: subordinates. In the area of decision-making, fairly consistent findings show that individuals with high cognitive complexity (1) seek out more information for a decision, (2) actually process or use more information, (3) are better able to integrate discrepant information, (4) consider a greater number of possible solutions to the problem, and (5) employ more complex decision strategies than individuals with low cognitive

PDF page 48: The second set of variables relates to someone’s physical abilities. Included here are both basic physical abilities (for example, strength) and psychomotor abilities (such as manual dexterity, eye-hand coordination,

PDF page 48: and manipulation skills). These factors are summarized in Table 2.2. Considering both mental and physical abilities helps one understand the behavior of people at work and how they can be better managed. The recognition of such abilities—and the recognition that people have different abilities—has clear implications for employee recruitment and selection decisions; it brings into focus the importance of matching people to jobs. For example, Florida Power has a 16-hour selection process that involves 12 performance tests. Over the test period of a couple of years, 640 individuals applied for “lineperson” jobs. Of these, 259 were hired. As a consequence of the new performance tests and selection process, turnover went from 43 percent to 4.5

PDF page 48: percent, and the program saved net $1 million. In addition to selection, knowledge of job requirements and

PDF page 49: • Stamina. The ability to continue maximum effort requiring prolonged effort over time; the degree of

PDF page 49: cardiovascular conditioning.

PDF page 49: • Finger dexterity. The ability to make skillful and controlled manipulations of small objects.

PDF page 47: We begin with a look at employee abilities and skills. Abilities and skills generally represent those physical and intellectual characteristics that are relatively stable over time and that help determine an employee’s capability to respond. Recognizing them is important in understanding organizational behavior, because they often bound an employee’s ability to do the job. For example, if a clerk-typist simply does not have the manual dexterity to master the fundamentals of typing or keyboard entry, her performance will likely suffer. Similarly, a sales representative who has a hard time with simple numerical calculations will probably not do well on the job.

PDF page 47: • Word fluency. The ability to name objects or use words to form sentences that express an idea.