Psy302 Industrial Organizational Psychology Paper
Industrial Organizational Psychology
Jinja Jones
PSY302: Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Instructor: Robin Daniels
October 27, 2014
Industrial Organizational Psychology is the study of an individual’s activities in the workplace. Industrial Organizational Psychology or I/O is the way the organizations are able to solve any problems that they might have with individuals, the supervisors and/or the company. This type of psychology is considerably new to the field. It is a cross between Industrial Psychology and Organizational Psychology. Industrial psychology is the study of an individual’s behavior in the workplace. For example, I/O Psychologists study the individual’s personality, thoughts, job performance, whether they are …show more content…
the right fit for the job and how they interact with their co-workers and supervisors. Organizational Psychology is the understanding of how an organization and its people interact together for a common goal (Youseef and Noon, 2012). For example, the person may like the job because they get a chance to make a difference in someone’s life and the organization’s goal is to make sure that their people are helped with life’s issues. Within this paper I will discuss different aspects of I/O Psychology and how it relates to my organization which is the Correctional facility.
Correctional Facility is a place where inmates-people who have allegedly being held for a commission of a crime or who are a waiting to stand trial for the commission of a crime. These inmates are detained and hopefully rehabilitated to become a changed citizen’s. The facility is broken up into three different levels of security. They have the minimum, medium and maximum security. They get three meals a day with a bed, hygiene packets, towels, sheets, blankets and uniforms. Within these facilities there are different departments that work with the inmates to make sure they get the help they need and that is afforded to them by the state or government. The facility has a Social Worker Office, Clinic, law library, and rooms for court proceedings. Some of these departments are from outside agencies, as for the internal offices we have a Lieutenant’s Office, a Captain’s Office, Administration Office and the Central Base where the supervisors are. The job that I will focus on is a Correctional Officer. I will give a formal job description As Correctional Officer you are the one who oversee that the individuals that are awaiting trial or inmates who have been sentenced are protected while inside the facility. As an Officer you are responsible for frisk searches, security tours within their assigned areas, to enforce the rules and regulations of the jail facility to the inmates, perform cell searches to keep control of any nuisance contraband (things that an inmate is not supposed to have in their cells), maintaining inmate counts in the assigned areas, deal with inmates in a large setting for any services they may attend like church, Jumar services, NA/AA services and recreational services (Appendix A). As an Officer you are also held to a certain standard and you are looked at to follow the rules as a sworn law enforcement officer. You must have a certain understanding of an individual and groups behaviors within the facility. Then you need to have knowledge of the equipment, training, personnel recruitment and the teaching/instruction for individuals. These things are not any different than any other field. For this job you need to be a great listener, give people your full attention to understand what people there needs are, than taking the time out to answer and ask questions they might have pertaining to their incarceration.
The decision making process is important at every level of an organization.
As a Correctional Officer you go through different phases to be hired (four phases). This is their way of going through the employee selection. Regardless of position, workers are faced with making daily decisions. Employees make decisions on how to structure their work, deal with customers challenges, and improve product quality (Youseef and Noon, 2012).When the organizations are making these decisions they look to rational decision-making models which help them to identify and select the outcome that best suites the organization. The first is the written exam that they call the Civil Service Exam. In today’s society organizations use tests and assessments to hire new applicants. To become a new hire at the Burlington County Correctional Facility I/O Psychologists used the cognitive-ability test. This test or assessment is generally used to measure the applicant’s intellectual and mental abilities (Youseef and Noon, 2012). In a Correctional setting you need this type of test because you need to be of a sane mind. The most popular cognitive-ability test is Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test which was developed by Eldon F. Wonderlic in the 1930’s (Youseef and Noon, 2012). This type of test is used for all kinds of jobs and comes in different languages. The test covers verbal comprehension, numerical reasoning and memory skills. Based on your scores, this would determine where you are stand and if you …show more content…
get hired. The way that you find out your results is by the Department of Corrections sending out notifications. Then the next phase, “is the completion of employment application, computer background check, written psychological examination, fingerprinting for background investigation and urinalysis testing for drug screening”(n.a, 1996-2014). The next phase is the background check. This is the process where you are interviewed and the recruiter follows up with the references placed in the application. Then once you completed phases 1, 2, and 3 you are then sent paperwork stating your eligibility so you can move on to the psychological part for mental stability (Appendix B). This is considered to be another test that the I/O Psychologists use for Correctional Officers is the Physical Ability test. This test helps the organization know what individuals don’t have the strength to keep up in the field. It is used to measure the physical strength of the individual. This test is supposed to measure the fine motors skills and flexibility of the body. There are different pay grades once you get hired. If you are coming in as an Officer then you will have the base salary, if you are coming in as a Sergeant or Lieutenant then of course you will be paid according to your experiences. Once employed at the facility or organization it is up to the individual to keep motivated so they can become productive.
“Motivation is one of the most basic and important drivers of human behavior, especially when we work” (Youseef and Noon, 2012.
Section 7.1, para. 3). “Because people on the job have different needs, personality traits, values, and emotions, they will possess a different set of factors that drive his or hers motivation” (Youseef and Noon, 2012. Section 7.1, para 1). For example, some people feel that they are working there because that is the only job they can find due to lack of education. Theories of motivations deal with a person’s needs that can be physiological and psychological. One American Psychologists, Abraham Maslow, who developed Maslow Hierarchy needs- influenced most of a person’s motivation on the job. He came up with five levels of needs: 1. Food, water and shelter, 2. Physical and emotional security, 3. Belonging to someone or something- ability to be affiliated, 4. How one feels about their abilities on the job and 5. The ability to give their all on the job (Youseef and Noon, 2012). Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs and Herzberg Two Factor Theory will allow you to understand the work attitudes such as satisfaction in the Correctional Facilities (Udechukwu, 2009). “While Maslow suggested that needs, which drive behaviors associated with work attitudes (e. g., satisfaction), can be assigned to various levels, Herzberg made the distinction that needs that influence work attitudes can be met intrinsically or extrinsically. Thus, applying each theory provides a
unique perspective on satisfaction in the form of the level and the type of satisfaction to be measured” (Udechukwu, 2009). Within the article, Correctional Officer Turnover: Of Maslow 's Needs Hierarchy and Herzberg 's Motivation Theory by Ikwukananne I. Udechuk he states that job satisfaction is the beginning of Correctional officers turnovers which means “that monetary and other resources invested in recruitment, hiring, and training do not produce desired returns. In turn, this situation can result in fewer resources available for initiatives to promote staff retention and development (e.g., pay raises and in-service training) as well as the for the betterment and management of offenders (e.g., inmate programs)” (Minors, Dawsons-Edwards, Wells, Griffith, and Angel, 2009). Motivation can be either an intrinsic or extrinsic quality that depends on your ability to want to be satisfied. Some jobs are trying to lure employees with alternative work schedules. These schedules include flex-time-which has to do with the employees being able to make their own hours, compressed work time-which is shortening the work week and Telecommunication- which is allowing the employees to stay home and stay in touch with the office (Youseef and Noon, 2012). These alternative work schedules help motivate and make it easy to apply positive psychology into a person’s life. Positive Psychology in my own words is the study of how a person can focus their lives by being happy and healthy. A person that is happy will look forward to more things in their life. That individual is optimistic about life, family and going to work. Positive psychology can manifest itself into the workplace by the organizations positive environment. If the atmosphere is a happy one the employee is more apt to want to come to work. The organization may make employee relationships easier to work together because of the ability to form groups that are supportive of each other. Working in these groups sometimes makes the production of products more because it is easier for them to get along well with the other employees. When you have a positive leader leading a company, an employee will want to work their best to make things stay happy. Positive Psychology is more applicable to use the performance appraisal because the organizations can evaluate an employee’s performance on the job, check their motivation to work, check their ability to do the right skills required of them for that position, and make sure that their performance on the job matches the answers that they marked on their employee test scores.
In the workplace there are different ways that an employer can measure an employee’s work performance. The one that the Industrial Organizational Psychologists use is a Performance Appraisal. Organizations conduct a performance appraisal because of certain reasons. They might want to measure an employee’s perform, increase the workers motivation on the job, make decisions to see this employee a possible candidate to move forward in their career, help make decisions to add specific training classes for the ones that are lacking in certain areas, figure out what skills the employee has that can be enhanced, and the results of tests and their validity. For example, as a Correctional Officer we get Performance Appraisals every year. When we get appraised they are checking your attendance with the facility, work ethics with your co-workers, your motivation with your job as an Officer and appearance of your uniforms. The Sergeants are the ones that are appraising you and they make you read it. If you agree then you sign it and they place the paperwork in your file with the organization. If you don’t agree then you write to the Lieutenant and he will reevaluate the appraisal with you and the Supervisor. I personally have never had an issue with the evaluations, but I know of people that have and the reason is because of certain Sergeants not liking them. That goes with being a good leader/manager and communicating to your fellow employees if there is a discrepancy with the way they might be doing their work. They can also write reports too to ask the Lieutenant or Captain if that particular person can get more advanced training.
We get additional training every six month with weapons, pepper spray (OC), CPR, and batons. At my facility we the only training that I get is with the weapons. Every six months we have to go to a classroom that teaches the safety of the weapon, the stances to shoot the weapon and the cleaning of the weapon. I personally think that it is a waste of time because according to the by-laws which is 10A and the state we are supposed to get retrained with the weapons every year. These things can make a person very unmotivated to do the training because as soon as your done we start over again, but the training is much needed in our organization because there are people that work there and are not weapons qualified which makes it difficult for a person to go out of the building with an inmate to appointments or hospital duty. This causes a lot of stress on the shift as a whole because then someone else has to take up the slack.
Where should I begin with the type of stress on the job? We have a lot of issues as Officers with our time that we request off. We as sworn law enforcers have to be on call at all times. That means that we don’t get enough time to spend with our family as a whole. The other stressors that we endure are the different supervisors telling us officers what to do at the same time which can ultimately cause conflicts. “The number one stressor that Officers deal with is the work-home issues experienced by correctional officers were demands and tensions from work that impact their home life; an incompatibility between the officer 's role at work and at home; and family circumstances that place strain on work experiences” (N.a, 20 February 2014). For example in my life the stress that I endure is the 12 Hour shifts and me not being able to spend time with my children. Within our facility we don’t have a stress reliever. If the stress gets too bad we have a 800 number that we can call for the help we need. We do have a way of motivating one another is by all of us meeting in the central base office airing praises to one another for the good work we may have done that week. I think in the Correctional facility the Equity theory is one that we follow because we measure our motivation on how equal we are treated to the other fellow co-workers. If our Sergeants (leaders)show us that all correctional officers are the same then the leadership would be a good one. Leaders are people that are not exactly made for leadership roles (Youseef and Noon, 2012). They sometimes are put in that role because of their actions and behaviors (Youseef and Noon, 2012). Due to their environment and their jobs they may come out on top as a leader or can be in a leadership position. An individual’s personality helps or hinders his/her leadership ability by their power. Power can make them (leaders) teach people to be weak and become subservient or it can make them positive, charismatic and creative (Youseef, and Noon, 2012). Leaders try to assert their visions so that we can all be on the same page which makes my Sergeant have good communication skills. Even though the Sergeant is the officer’s first line of defense we still are a team.
The type of team that a Correctional Facility uses is a Manager-led team. When we have to extract someone out of the cells for example, the Sergeant is the one that gives us our direct orders. In Manager-led teams the manager is the team leader who gives the direct orders like the goals, functions and methods of handling the daily activities of the facility. One thing that can affect our group operation is someone not holding up their end of the bargain. For example, when we are all prepared to extract someone and the leg man (person assigned a body part) grabs the arm and throws the whole operation away. Without everyone knowing where to go the extraction is considered a failure. “Before rushing into implementing the team concept, then, organizations must assess whether the problem is better addressed with individual or collective effort. Are multiple individuals required to complete the task? If so, organizations must then determine the complexity of the project. Teams are best suited for situations that are challenging and complex, whereas simple problems that require limited input and information-sharing should be left to individuals” (Youseef and Noon, 2012).As individuals sometimes we can get the job done quicker and more accurate.
In my organization unfortunately working as a team is the way that gets the most results. I would change the lack of communication among the different Sergeants on the different squads. On my shift we are accused being the meanest officers because we go cell to cell taking down and collecting anything that obstructs your view from checking the inmate during lockdown. The other thing that I would change is the ability to talk with someone if they are going through a lot of stress. I would even allow the Officers to have access to a built in gym so that they could work out or off any added wait on their breaks. I just summed up some of the ideas that I have for my own facility, but there is a lot more and not enough room.
In I/O Psychology there are a lot of other theories and ways that a person can study the behaviors of the organizations and individuals in the workplace. Unfortunately I have only covered some of I/O Psychology, but if I had more space I would have list more things that stood out.
References
Minor, K., Dawson-Edwards, C., Wells, J., Griffith, C., Angel, E.(2009). Understanding Staff Perceptions of Turnover in Corrections. Retrieved from https://kucampus.kaplan.edu/documentstore/docs09/pdf/picj/vol4/issue1/PICJ_V4N2_Minor_43_58.pdf
N.a., 1996-2014. State of New Jersey Department of Corrections. Retrieved by http://www.state.nj.us/corrections/pages/careers.html#app
N.a, 20 February 2014. Sam Houston State University. "Correctional officer stress studied: Conflicts between work, family life common." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112511.htm>.
Udechukwu, I. I. (2009). Correctional Officer Turnover: Of Maslow 's Needs Hierarchy and Herzberg 's Motivation Theory. Public Personnel Management, 38(2), 69-82.
Youssef, C. and Noon, A. (2012). Industrial/Organizational Psychology. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
Appendix A&B
http://www.state.nj.us/corrections/pages/careers.html#app
Jinja Jones
PSY302: Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Instructor: Robin Daniels
October 27, 2014
Industrial Organizational Psychology is the study of an individual’s activities in the workplace. Industrial Organizational Psychology or I/O is the way the organizations are able to solve any problems that they might have with individuals, the supervisors and/or the company. This type of psychology is considerably new to the field. It is a cross between Industrial Psychology and Organizational Psychology. Industrial psychology is the study of an individual’s behavior in the workplace. For example, I/O Psychologists study the individual’s personality, thoughts, job performance, whether they are …show more content…
the right fit for the job and how they interact with their co-workers and supervisors. Organizational Psychology is the understanding of how an organization and its people interact together for a common goal (Youseef and Noon, 2012). For example, the person may like the job because they get a chance to make a difference in someone’s life and the organization’s goal is to make sure that their people are helped with life’s issues. Within this paper I will discuss different aspects of I/O Psychology and how it relates to my organization which is the Correctional facility.
Correctional Facility is a place where inmates-people who have allegedly being held for a commission of a crime or who are a waiting to stand trial for the commission of a crime. These inmates are detained and hopefully rehabilitated to become a changed citizen’s. The facility is broken up into three different levels of security. They have the minimum, medium and maximum security. They get three meals a day with a bed, hygiene packets, towels, sheets, blankets and uniforms. Within these facilities there are different departments that work with the inmates to make sure they get the help they need and that is afforded to them by the state or government. The facility has a Social Worker Office, Clinic, law library, and rooms for court proceedings. Some of these departments are from outside agencies, as for the internal offices we have a Lieutenant’s Office, a Captain’s Office, Administration Office and the Central Base where the supervisors are. The job that I will focus on is a Correctional Officer. I will give a formal job description As Correctional Officer you are the one who oversee that the individuals that are awaiting trial or inmates who have been sentenced are protected while inside the facility. As an Officer you are responsible for frisk searches, security tours within their assigned areas, to enforce the rules and regulations of the jail facility to the inmates, perform cell searches to keep control of any nuisance contraband (things that an inmate is not supposed to have in their cells), maintaining inmate counts in the assigned areas, deal with inmates in a large setting for any services they may attend like church, Jumar services, NA/AA services and recreational services (Appendix A). As an Officer you are also held to a certain standard and you are looked at to follow the rules as a sworn law enforcement officer. You must have a certain understanding of an individual and groups behaviors within the facility. Then you need to have knowledge of the equipment, training, personnel recruitment and the teaching/instruction for individuals. These things are not any different than any other field. For this job you need to be a great listener, give people your full attention to understand what people there needs are, than taking the time out to answer and ask questions they might have pertaining to their incarceration.
The decision making process is important at every level of an organization.
As a Correctional Officer you go through different phases to be hired (four phases). This is their way of going through the employee selection. Regardless of position, workers are faced with making daily decisions. Employees make decisions on how to structure their work, deal with customers challenges, and improve product quality (Youseef and Noon, 2012).When the organizations are making these decisions they look to rational decision-making models which help them to identify and select the outcome that best suites the organization. The first is the written exam that they call the Civil Service Exam. In today’s society organizations use tests and assessments to hire new applicants. To become a new hire at the Burlington County Correctional Facility I/O Psychologists used the cognitive-ability test. This test or assessment is generally used to measure the applicant’s intellectual and mental abilities (Youseef and Noon, 2012). In a Correctional setting you need this type of test because you need to be of a sane mind. The most popular cognitive-ability test is Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test which was developed by Eldon F. Wonderlic in the 1930’s (Youseef and Noon, 2012). This type of test is used for all kinds of jobs and comes in different languages. The test covers verbal comprehension, numerical reasoning and memory skills. Based on your scores, this would determine where you are stand and if you …show more content…
get hired. The way that you find out your results is by the Department of Corrections sending out notifications. Then the next phase, “is the completion of employment application, computer background check, written psychological examination, fingerprinting for background investigation and urinalysis testing for drug screening”(n.a, 1996-2014). The next phase is the background check. This is the process where you are interviewed and the recruiter follows up with the references placed in the application. Then once you completed phases 1, 2, and 3 you are then sent paperwork stating your eligibility so you can move on to the psychological part for mental stability (Appendix B). This is considered to be another test that the I/O Psychologists use for Correctional Officers is the Physical Ability test. This test helps the organization know what individuals don’t have the strength to keep up in the field. It is used to measure the physical strength of the individual. This test is supposed to measure the fine motors skills and flexibility of the body. There are different pay grades once you get hired. If you are coming in as an Officer then you will have the base salary, if you are coming in as a Sergeant or Lieutenant then of course you will be paid according to your experiences. Once employed at the facility or organization it is up to the individual to keep motivated so they can become productive.
“Motivation is one of the most basic and important drivers of human behavior, especially when we work” (Youseef and Noon, 2012.
Section 7.1, para. 3). “Because people on the job have different needs, personality traits, values, and emotions, they will possess a different set of factors that drive his or hers motivation” (Youseef and Noon, 2012. Section 7.1, para 1). For example, some people feel that they are working there because that is the only job they can find due to lack of education. Theories of motivations deal with a person’s needs that can be physiological and psychological. One American Psychologists, Abraham Maslow, who developed Maslow Hierarchy needs- influenced most of a person’s motivation on the job. He came up with five levels of needs: 1. Food, water and shelter, 2. Physical and emotional security, 3. Belonging to someone or something- ability to be affiliated, 4. How one feels about their abilities on the job and 5. The ability to give their all on the job (Youseef and Noon, 2012). Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs and Herzberg Two Factor Theory will allow you to understand the work attitudes such as satisfaction in the Correctional Facilities (Udechukwu, 2009). “While Maslow suggested that needs, which drive behaviors associated with work attitudes (e. g., satisfaction), can be assigned to various levels, Herzberg made the distinction that needs that influence work attitudes can be met intrinsically or extrinsically. Thus, applying each theory provides a
unique perspective on satisfaction in the form of the level and the type of satisfaction to be measured” (Udechukwu, 2009). Within the article, Correctional Officer Turnover: Of Maslow 's Needs Hierarchy and Herzberg 's Motivation Theory by Ikwukananne I. Udechuk he states that job satisfaction is the beginning of Correctional officers turnovers which means “that monetary and other resources invested in recruitment, hiring, and training do not produce desired returns. In turn, this situation can result in fewer resources available for initiatives to promote staff retention and development (e.g., pay raises and in-service training) as well as the for the betterment and management of offenders (e.g., inmate programs)” (Minors, Dawsons-Edwards, Wells, Griffith, and Angel, 2009). Motivation can be either an intrinsic or extrinsic quality that depends on your ability to want to be satisfied. Some jobs are trying to lure employees with alternative work schedules. These schedules include flex-time-which has to do with the employees being able to make their own hours, compressed work time-which is shortening the work week and Telecommunication- which is allowing the employees to stay home and stay in touch with the office (Youseef and Noon, 2012). These alternative work schedules help motivate and make it easy to apply positive psychology into a person’s life. Positive Psychology in my own words is the study of how a person can focus their lives by being happy and healthy. A person that is happy will look forward to more things in their life. That individual is optimistic about life, family and going to work. Positive psychology can manifest itself into the workplace by the organizations positive environment. If the atmosphere is a happy one the employee is more apt to want to come to work. The organization may make employee relationships easier to work together because of the ability to form groups that are supportive of each other. Working in these groups sometimes makes the production of products more because it is easier for them to get along well with the other employees. When you have a positive leader leading a company, an employee will want to work their best to make things stay happy. Positive Psychology is more applicable to use the performance appraisal because the organizations can evaluate an employee’s performance on the job, check their motivation to work, check their ability to do the right skills required of them for that position, and make sure that their performance on the job matches the answers that they marked on their employee test scores.
In the workplace there are different ways that an employer can measure an employee’s work performance. The one that the Industrial Organizational Psychologists use is a Performance Appraisal. Organizations conduct a performance appraisal because of certain reasons. They might want to measure an employee’s perform, increase the workers motivation on the job, make decisions to see this employee a possible candidate to move forward in their career, help make decisions to add specific training classes for the ones that are lacking in certain areas, figure out what skills the employee has that can be enhanced, and the results of tests and their validity. For example, as a Correctional Officer we get Performance Appraisals every year. When we get appraised they are checking your attendance with the facility, work ethics with your co-workers, your motivation with your job as an Officer and appearance of your uniforms. The Sergeants are the ones that are appraising you and they make you read it. If you agree then you sign it and they place the paperwork in your file with the organization. If you don’t agree then you write to the Lieutenant and he will reevaluate the appraisal with you and the Supervisor. I personally have never had an issue with the evaluations, but I know of people that have and the reason is because of certain Sergeants not liking them. That goes with being a good leader/manager and communicating to your fellow employees if there is a discrepancy with the way they might be doing their work. They can also write reports too to ask the Lieutenant or Captain if that particular person can get more advanced training.
We get additional training every six month with weapons, pepper spray (OC), CPR, and batons. At my facility we the only training that I get is with the weapons. Every six months we have to go to a classroom that teaches the safety of the weapon, the stances to shoot the weapon and the cleaning of the weapon. I personally think that it is a waste of time because according to the by-laws which is 10A and the state we are supposed to get retrained with the weapons every year. These things can make a person very unmotivated to do the training because as soon as your done we start over again, but the training is much needed in our organization because there are people that work there and are not weapons qualified which makes it difficult for a person to go out of the building with an inmate to appointments or hospital duty. This causes a lot of stress on the shift as a whole because then someone else has to take up the slack.
Where should I begin with the type of stress on the job? We have a lot of issues as Officers with our time that we request off. We as sworn law enforcers have to be on call at all times. That means that we don’t get enough time to spend with our family as a whole. The other stressors that we endure are the different supervisors telling us officers what to do at the same time which can ultimately cause conflicts. “The number one stressor that Officers deal with is the work-home issues experienced by correctional officers were demands and tensions from work that impact their home life; an incompatibility between the officer 's role at work and at home; and family circumstances that place strain on work experiences” (N.a, 20 February 2014). For example in my life the stress that I endure is the 12 Hour shifts and me not being able to spend time with my children. Within our facility we don’t have a stress reliever. If the stress gets too bad we have a 800 number that we can call for the help we need. We do have a way of motivating one another is by all of us meeting in the central base office airing praises to one another for the good work we may have done that week. I think in the Correctional facility the Equity theory is one that we follow because we measure our motivation on how equal we are treated to the other fellow co-workers. If our Sergeants (leaders)show us that all correctional officers are the same then the leadership would be a good one. Leaders are people that are not exactly made for leadership roles (Youseef and Noon, 2012). They sometimes are put in that role because of their actions and behaviors (Youseef and Noon, 2012). Due to their environment and their jobs they may come out on top as a leader or can be in a leadership position. An individual’s personality helps or hinders his/her leadership ability by their power. Power can make them (leaders) teach people to be weak and become subservient or it can make them positive, charismatic and creative (Youseef, and Noon, 2012). Leaders try to assert their visions so that we can all be on the same page which makes my Sergeant have good communication skills. Even though the Sergeant is the officer’s first line of defense we still are a team.
The type of team that a Correctional Facility uses is a Manager-led team. When we have to extract someone out of the cells for example, the Sergeant is the one that gives us our direct orders. In Manager-led teams the manager is the team leader who gives the direct orders like the goals, functions and methods of handling the daily activities of the facility. One thing that can affect our group operation is someone not holding up their end of the bargain. For example, when we are all prepared to extract someone and the leg man (person assigned a body part) grabs the arm and throws the whole operation away. Without everyone knowing where to go the extraction is considered a failure. “Before rushing into implementing the team concept, then, organizations must assess whether the problem is better addressed with individual or collective effort. Are multiple individuals required to complete the task? If so, organizations must then determine the complexity of the project. Teams are best suited for situations that are challenging and complex, whereas simple problems that require limited input and information-sharing should be left to individuals” (Youseef and Noon, 2012).As individuals sometimes we can get the job done quicker and more accurate.
In my organization unfortunately working as a team is the way that gets the most results. I would change the lack of communication among the different Sergeants on the different squads. On my shift we are accused being the meanest officers because we go cell to cell taking down and collecting anything that obstructs your view from checking the inmate during lockdown. The other thing that I would change is the ability to talk with someone if they are going through a lot of stress. I would even allow the Officers to have access to a built in gym so that they could work out or off any added wait on their breaks. I just summed up some of the ideas that I have for my own facility, but there is a lot more and not enough room.
In I/O Psychology there are a lot of other theories and ways that a person can study the behaviors of the organizations and individuals in the workplace. Unfortunately I have only covered some of I/O Psychology, but if I had more space I would have list more things that stood out.
References
Minor, K., Dawson-Edwards, C., Wells, J., Griffith, C., Angel, E.(2009). Understanding Staff Perceptions of Turnover in Corrections. Retrieved from https://kucampus.kaplan.edu/documentstore/docs09/pdf/picj/vol4/issue1/PICJ_V4N2_Minor_43_58.pdf
N.a., 1996-2014. State of New Jersey Department of Corrections. Retrieved by http://www.state.nj.us/corrections/pages/careers.html#app
N.a, 20 February 2014. Sam Houston State University. "Correctional officer stress studied: Conflicts between work, family life common." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112511.htm>.
Udechukwu, I. I. (2009). Correctional Officer Turnover: Of Maslow 's Needs Hierarchy and Herzberg 's Motivation Theory. Public Personnel Management, 38(2), 69-82.
Youssef, C. and Noon, A. (2012). Industrial/Organizational Psychology. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
Appendix A&B
http://www.state.nj.us/corrections/pages/careers.html#app