Productive and Counterproductive Behaviors
An organization will have employees with one of two behavior types. They can either be productive or counterproductive. The root cause of counterproductive behavior can be rooted in employee turnover, attendance issues, or lack of training. It is up to the organization to make an attempt to identify what the causes of their employees’ counterproductive behavior and attempt to find a workable solution.
Productive Behavior and its Impact on an Organization
Employers want productive behavior out of their employees because productive employees create revenue for the organization. However, employees tend to think just because they are doing “something” and not idle they are being productive. Their way of thinking would be incorrect. Productive behavior is “employee behavior that contributes positively to the goals and objectives of the organization” (Jex & Britt, 2008). As we can see merely doing something to occupy ones time is not being productive. Whether or not an employee is being productive can be measured by the cost associated with the employee’s performance and how effective they are.
For example, there are two employees in a shoe store with similar sales figures and they sell the same number of shoes each month. The only difference in these two employees is that employee A works ten hours per day and employee B works a six-hour day. Employee B is the more productive employee because employee B accomplishes the same goal in fewer hours. There is a lower cost associated with employee B making him the more productive employee. Efficient employees are productive because they complete large amount of work in a short period of time. When employees are being productive they are concentrating on performing “core tasks” (Jex & Britt, 2008) and are bringing in revenue for the organization. An organization with productive