Professional Documents
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PERBEZAAN INDIVIDU
One approach has been thought to explore the role of individual differences.
Personality traits influence an individual’s ability to cope with job loss. Personality
factors are thought to affect employment outcomes, in part, through their influence on
the expectations people have for their future performance.
Barrick and Mount (1991) found that conscientiousness had consistent and positive
relationships with job performance across a variety of occupational groups. Likewise,
extraversion was related to job proficiency for occupations involving social interaction,
such as managers. Salgado (1997) confirmed many of the relationships between the
Big Five factors and various job performance criteria and found openness and
agreeableness to be valid predictors of training proficiency.
While this research did not focus on executives and did not consider performance
following outplacement, it is reasonable to expect executives who are more extraverted,
agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable will secure higher quality
reemployment. Therefore, we hypothesize that executives who score higher on
extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and stability should find new positions
that are more satisfying, where they perform well, and can advance.
For outplacement success, an instrument was developed for use in this study designed
to measure several dimensions of outplacement success. The instrument focused on
two broad aspects of success: client progress during the transition and quality of
employment following the transition. Four aspects of progress during the transition were
identified based on interviews with outplacement professionals in the host firm. These
aspects were labeled personal growth, resilience, optimism, and achievement.
Growth measured the degree to which the client experienced personal growth during
the transition, put forth his or her best effort to make positive changes, and was open to
ideas and suggestions from their counselor.
Resilience considered how well the client coped with emotional stress and tension, felt
they were in control of the process, continued to express anger at their former employer
(reverse scored), remained in denial of their circumstances (reverse scored), and
worked to improve their health and physical well-being.
Optimism assessed the degree to which the client was focused on and committed to his
or her outreach effort, had feelings of self-worth at the end of the engagement,
rebounded psychologically from their initial separation, and maintained their energy
level during the transition.
Achievement measured client accomplishment during the transition including whether
they achieved the objectives they set at the beginning, how well they managed the
transition, how proud they were of what they accomplished while in transition, whether
they secured a new position in a timely manner, and how well suited they were for their
next position.
The procedure taken was that each executive was involved in an extensive
outplacement program that included various assessments, counseling, training and
coaching, office support, resource assistance, and follow-up activities. Although multiple
counselors were employed by the firm, each used a similar outplacement protocol.
Based on the results of this and other studies, it is clear that individual differences
should be assessed and carefully considered in the outplacement process. The results
of this study point to the richness of information that is available to the outplacement
professional through personality assessment. This study also suggests that
outplacement counselors should tailor counseling to meet individual needs. The
primary managerial implication of this study is that client personality has a significant
impact on outplacement outcomes both during the transition and after reemployment
and counselors should understand and be willing to accommodate these individual
characteristics.