Characteristics of the Employee

When we think about describing the characteristics of an individual, we tend to first consider variables such as the person’s abilities and skills, attitudes, diversity, emotions, personality, perceptions, and attributes. However, there are other characteristics of the individual that play a critical role in determining employee behavior.

Some of the variables that affect how an employee performs on the job are:

• Job satisfaction, which refers to the positive or negative feelings that an employee has about his or her work.
• Job involvement, which is the extent to which an employee devotes himself or herself to the job, including investing time and energy, as well as seeing the job as an important definition of himself or herself.
• Organizational commitment, which is an employee’s loyalty to an organization and his or her desire to continue to actively participate in the organization’s activities.
• Organizational citizenship, which refers to an employee’s voluntary actions on behalf of the organization (over and above what is expected at work) that contribute to the organization’s success.

Every person is a unique blend of personal attributes, such as hereditary factors (e.g., gender and race), demographic factors (e.g., age and environmental background, such as urban or rural and poor, middle class, or wealthy), abilities (i.e., the talent to perform a mental or a physical task), skills (i.e., learned talents), temperament, and tendencies. These factors blend together to influence how a person interacts with the opportunities and responsibilities of his or her organizational environment. For example, why do different people respond differently to the same situation? Differences in behaviors and job performances among individuals can be attributed to differences in their characteristics.

The combination of job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship contribute to our understanding of an individual’s job performance. Each of these variables is impacted by the employee’s individual characteristics, such as abilities and skills, attitudes, emotions, personality, perceptions, and attributions. However, even if a manager was to fully predict all of these listed variables, other factors will also impact performance.