One of the many effects of globalization on the business world is the intensification of competition. Initially, companies competed nationally or regionally, with some enjoying immense control over their local markets. Attracting and retaining talents is one way that businesses employ to seek competitive advantages. However, not all the workstation characteristics utilized by organizations lead to organization attractiveness across all the talented job seekers. The issue causes substantial concerns because qualified workers are rare, while entities seeking them are uncountable. The following discussion reviews scientific findings on the most attractive workplace attributes that job seekers value and the role of personal values in perceiving organizational attractiveness.
Employers planning to use workplace designs and attributes to attract the right kind of employees for competitive advantage must utilize research to know which traits work best. Hicklenton et al. (2021) is one such influential scholarly article for this group of investors. The article utilizes a quantitative methodology and a study population of four hundred Australians to deliver its findings. Other crucial scientific principles adopted by the researchers include Berthon et al.’ (2005) Employer Attractiveness Scale (EAS), which provides guidelines for assessing organizational desirability. Hicklenton et al. (2021) use these aspects to develop and defend the Person-Organization (PO) fit philosophy that associates preference for specific organizational traits with talented personalities’ values. Hicklenton et al. (2021) utilize online surveys and offer the question of whether one is currently employed and willing to leave the present job for population screening. Subsequently, Hicklenton et al. (2021) have several findings concerning the subject under investigation. For instance, scholars affirm that talented employees generally value organizations featuring higher degrees of economic, interest, development, social, environmental, and application values.
Workplaces lacking necessary attraction receive marginal attention from the gifted workers, thus exhibiting a reduced potential to use HR strategies for competitive benefits. Hicklenton et al.’s (2021) six attributes feature unique aspects describing the organizational setting’s conditions. The economic element concerns salary and advancement prospects available to workers, while the development value measures an organization’s support for workers’ career and personal growth (Hicklenton et al., 2021). Moreover, the interesting facet touches on the organization’s reputation for supporting an innovative, exciting, and stimulating organizational environment that keeps workers absorbed. The social aspect gauges the entity’s ability to offer employees a positive and enjoyable social environment. Equally, application value connotes features such as having a robust commitment to customer satisfaction, social and racial fairness, and working in a way that stimulates public development.
Lastly, the environmental trait involves pro-environmental strategies that support environmentally sustainable processes. Connected to the earlier finding, Hicklenton et al. (2021) identify that workers with moderate self-enhancement embrace social, environmental, and application values relative to the other three corporate attributes. On the hand, the study shows that job seekers exhibiting above-average self-enhancement generally do not value social, application, and environmental values but mostly look at the earning and growth potential. Such a discovery complies with the PO fit model, which maintains that agreements between workplace qualities and job seekers’ values cause increased organization attractiveness (Hicklenton et al., 2021). Hicklenton et al. (2021) also describe ‘social,’ ‘application,’ and ‘environmental’ values as the sturdiest conjecturers of organization desirability across all the interviewed potential employees. Consequently, many people in Australia prefer working for organizations with a friendly and supportive culture, even when the pay is not the best.
The second discovery providing social, environmental, and application values as the strongest determiners of employer attractions among talented job-seekers are unique to this article. Generally, the best-performing organizations in the world use competitive salaries and employees’ freedom to attract and retain fine aptitudes for competitive benefits. Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and several other giants offer the best examples of such entities (Makridakis & Christodoulou, 2019). The matter complies significantly with the emergent generations X, Y, and Z’s insatiable desire to acquire wealth immediately after school to lead a luxurious life (Fulmer & Shaw, 2018). Accordingly, conducting Hicklenton et al.’s (2021) study in places such as America, Europe, Africa, or Asia may deliver varied conclusions. Over 50% of the active job seekers in these areas are generation Y and Z, implying economic, development, and interest facets as the most potent organizational attributes for the groups (Barrick & Parks-Leduc, (2019). Therefore, a study’s findings are highly influenced by its population, implying the need for variables’ considerations to boost reliability and validity.
Using Australians for study makes the findings mainly applicable in the nation. According to Abram et al. (2021), Australia is one of the areas in the world facing increased risk from global warming and other climatic conditions. Saha (2019) notes that the nation (Australia) has mature social settings that allow people to appreciate humanity and shelve excessive aggression. This article provides social and environmental attributes as the leading traits selling organizations to job seekers. Furthermore, looking at Hicklenton et al.’s (2021) mean population age significantly explains the results and conclusion. For example, the study’s mean population age is 40 years, proving its misrepresentation of the young generation taking over the workforce globally. Consequently, one must be careful when adopting this investigation’s conclusions as it primarily applies to a specific area and does not appreciate global changes in workforce composition. Nonetheless, finding that more job-seekers in Australia favor environmental conservation is a plus for the country as more companies must now join environmental conservation deals to win talents.
Data reliability and validity are major concerns in social science, especially in organizational psychology investigations. Riggio (2017) defines reliability as the regularity of a quantity over time. Moreover, the authors describe validity as the correctness of interpretations made from a measurement. According to Riggio (2017), these two data aspects must be there for research findings and conclusions to make sense. Validity and reliability constitute a major sub-topic under Riggio’s (2017) second chapter. As a study focused on organizational psychology, Hicklenton et al. (2021)’s article is under obligation to ensure that its variable and measurements are reliable and valid. However, failing to control the study population leads to skewed findings that depict the biased Australian situation, making the article weak. As noted earlier, applying Hicklenton et al.’s (2021) study in America or other locations apart from Australia will give contradictory information. Hicklenton et al. (2021) confess that several aspects, including the mean population age that differs from the registered national value of 38 years, exhibit unconventional trends that affect the acquired outcomes’ generalization. Therefore, the article disagrees with the topic’s directives, making the work’s generalizability meaningfully poor.
Operating business establishments with which every person seeks association is a principal desire among almost all investors. However, the lack of conclusive research-based data directing how to realize this goal leaves business leaders confused. Hicklenton et al. (2021) provide compelling evidence that many people in Australia want to work in an organization whose culture promotes mutual growth, a sense of belonging, customer satisfaction, and environmental conservation. Other vital results from Hicklenton et al.’s (2021) work are that persons with average self-enhancement provide the best workforce for the entities planning to create conducive work culture. However, job seekers with above-average self-enhancement often seek personal benefits that focus on economic and development facets. Hicklenton et al. (2021) argue that highly self-enhanced individuals suffer from over-confidence, leading to workplace conflicts due to assuming peers and desiring to take credit even for group accomplishments. Accordingly, not all job-seekers intend to work for every employer due to variations in organizational cultures conflicts between such and personal values.
Several scholarly works exist investigating the role of organizational attributes in attracting or chasing away employees with specific personalities. Examples of such investigations include Cletus et al. (2018) and Ronda et al. (2018). The two sources cover organizational aspects similar to those explored by Hicklenton et al. (2021). Consequently, Cletus et al. (2018) provide workplace diversity as a critical organizational characteristic desired by many job seekers. The scholars argue that workplace diversity enables businesses to draw talent, boost corporate attractiveness, and improve productivity. Moreover, Cletus et al. (2018) maintain that companies with a diversified workforce celebrate differences and are less discriminative. The facets help attract more workers from different backgrounds for inclusivity purposes.
Workforce diversity falls under the social component due to its promotion of organization-based interactions. The aspect forms a vital part of Hicklenton et al.’s (2021) work, thus proving significant agreement between Cletus et al. (2018) and Hicklenton et al. (2021). Equally, Ronda et al. (2018) explore how businesses can become employee-centric. The researchers contend that attributes and values alone cannot explain why specific workers prefer particular organizations. Ronda et al. (2018) describe employee benefits as harmonizing traits leading workers to given employers. The argument that specific features must align for workers to select different employers depicts agreements between Ronda et al. (2018) and Hicklenton et al. (2021). Therefore, employees’ selection of employers never happens blindly, implying the need for business managers to operate organizations in appealing ways to get the talents they deserve.
The hiring process is one of the most tedious and costly endeavors in the business sector. The activity involves advertising job offers to the public without the assurance that the right people will apply. Consequently, research to identify how businesses can maneuver to maintain confidence among job-seekers is vital. Several studies covering the topic already exist but fail significantly on various elements. The matter makes this subject considerably open for numerous future investigations. For example, reading Hicklenton et al.’s (2021) work provides the need to conduct further investigations on the topic using a population representing the world views instead of a single country’s situation. Equally, there is a need for additional studies investigating the role of gender in determining organizational attractiveness. That is because men and women feature varied job preferences, making it hard for a one-size-fits-all solution (Barrick & Parks-Leduc, 2019). As such, scientific investigations hold answers to many issues disturbing humans today. Adopting the appropriate strategies, methodologies, variables, and settings is all that scholars need to utilize the power of data in unraveling challenges.
The above work reviews the role of organizational attributes in influencing workers’ choice to work for different employers. At least six characteristics are covered in the research based on the EAS model. According to this paradigm, job-seekers look for economic, social, interest, development, application, and environmental traits before deciding to seek employment in a company. Likewise, people’s personalities interact with the business-associated characteristics to influence where one seeks employment or works.
References
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