Supreme Court clarifies ADEA burden shifting

On June 19th the U.S. Supreme Court made several employment-related decisions. Of most interest for us is their decision in Meacham v. Knolls.

The case involved workers over 40 who were suing over their layoffs. They claimed they lost their jobs due to age discrimination, claiming a violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). Although they claimed both disparate treatment and disparate impact, the important issue here is the latter--employment decisions that may not intentionally discriminate but have that effect.

How the court ruled is closely tied to its 2005 decision in Smith v. City of Jackson, in which they held that adverse impact cases could be brought under the ADEA, but employers could prevail if they could show (per the language of the ADEA) that the employment decision was based on a "reasonable factor other than age" (RFOA).

So what was the decision? The court made it clear that the employer in these cases bears both the burden of production and the burden of persuasion that the employment decisions were based on a RFOA. This is similar to other adverse impact discrimination cases, such as those brought under Title VII, where an employer must show their practice was "job related and consistent with business necessity."

So what does this mean? It doesn't mean a new requirement. It reinforces that all employment decisions--hiring, firing, and everything in between--should be based on logical, non-discriminatory reasons. The fact that the employer may face a slightly easier hurdle in ADEA disparate impact cases compared to, say, race or gender cases, is practically insignificant.

Important note: the plaintiffs in this case provided expert testimony that employee scores on "flexibility" and "criticality" had both the most manager discretion and were tied the strongest to outcomes. Words like these are often invoked in age discrimination cases (a jury can easily see how these types of words might be proxy for "young"), and employers are wise to strongly consider in hiring and firing situations whether the rating factors are tied to benchmarks and can be shown to be important for success on the job.

Have teens lost the ability to write?

Have teenagers lost the ability to form a coherent sentence? It's something I've been hearing off and on the last few years from hiring managers and teachers. Generally I chalk it up to the normal generational differences, but given results from a recent survey I may have to change my tune.

The survey results come from a new study out by the Pew Internet and American Life Project--"Writing, Technology, and Teens." The researchers conducted focus groups and a national telephone survey of 700 parent-child pairs in the fall of 2007.

Here are some of the results:

• "85% of teens ages 12-17 engage at least occasionally in some form of electronic personal communication, which includes text messaging, sending email or instant messages, or posting comments on social networking sites." [They were twice as likely to send text messages as they were e-mail]

• "60% of teens do not think of these electronic texts as “writing.”"

• "50% of teens say they sometimes use informal writing styles instead of proper capitalization and punctuation in their school assignments"

• "38% say they have used text shortcuts in school work such as “LOL”"
  

• "25% have used emoticons (symbols like smiley faces ☺) in school work"
  

Wow. Color me wrong. I had no idea the practice was so rampant. But there may be a silver lining to this survey:

• "86% of teens believe good writing is important to success in life"

and they may know how to improve things:

• "82% of teens feel that additional in-class writing time would improve their writing abilities and 78% feel the same way about their teachers using computer-based writing tools"
  

So is this a big deal for recruitment and assessment? Potentially, if the work that needs to be done requires traditional, formal writing skill. But what if it doesn't? And what happens when this generation becomes managers--will they care if their subordinates use shortcuts and emoticons?

If one thing is made clear by this survey, it's not that teens don't think writing is important. It's that we may be in for a slight evolution in our written language. We may need to re-think the answer to this question: What is good writing?

Is age related to job performance?

Is there a relationship between age and job performance? It's an important question for many reasons, including the fact that claims of age discrimination appear to be on the rise. Ng and Feldman set out to better understand this issue and their meta-analysis is published in the March '08 issue of Journal of Applied Psychology.

Previous research has generally shown a weak relationship between age and job performance--at least when we look at objective measures. But the current authors set out to use a much broader array (10 to be exact) of criterion measures, including workplace aggression, safety performance, and OCBs.

So what did they find? Well, there's where things get a bit complex. Although there did not appear to be a relationship between age and several outcomes, including core task performance, creativity, and performance in training programs, it had stronger relationships with the other seven measures. In addition, age had a curvilinear relationship with core task performance and CWBs, and results varied depending on how the study was conducted.

So does age have a relationship with job performance? Like all important research questions, the answer is an emphatic it depends.


Other articles
There's quite a bit of good research in this volume, including:

- The development of a potentially useful way to predict team member performance

- A fascinating look at how frame-of-reference influences the validity of personality measures (pre-published version here)

- A discussion of the importance of the distinction between constructs (e.g., ability, personality) and methods (e.g., interviews) when comparing predictors in personnel selection

- How to test for adverse impact when your numbers are small (hint: significant testing bad, z-score good)

- Last but not least, a meta-analysis of the relationship direction between attitudes and job performance--what causes what? (hint: attitude matters...but not that much)

New MSPB study has gems

A new study out by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), "Attracting the next generation: A look at federal entry-level new hires," while focused on the federal government, has good information for all of us. The study of recent federal hires uses data from over 1,000 survey participants as well as personnel records. Some of the insights include:

- Both those under 30 and those 30+ were most likely to find out about the job through a friend or relative. On the other hand, those 30+ were more likely to use USAJOBs and agency web sites, whereas those under 30 (not surprisingly) were more likely to discover jobs through school job fairs or placement offices. In addition, those under 30 were more likely to use "non-government job sites."

- The most common forms of assessment used were (mostly unstructured) interviews and reviews of transcripts. Narrative statements, written exams, and job simulations were (unfortunately) used much less often--despite evidence of their superior ability to predict job performance.

- Agencies also relied heavily on the "point method" for reviewing training and experience--i.e., the more training/experience you have, the higher your score. This despite evidence that the correlation between experience and performance is complex and peaks fairly quickly, while education does not generally predict performance very well. Not to mention that they make little sense when hiring for entry-level jobs.

- There were very few differences between age groups when it came to what applicants wanted in a job. For both the under 30 and 30+ groups, salary and benefits came out tops. The only significant differences came when looking at pensions (more popular among those 30+) and health insurance and tuition reimbursement (more popular among those under 30). Job security was also mentioned by both groups as a big draw to the federal government.

- Those under 30 were much less likely to predict staying with the feds for their entire career (although still an impressive 45%), and more likely to predict eventually moving to the private sector.

- "Length of the process" was by far the biggest obstacle faced by applicants in their pursuit of a federal job.


MSPB recommends federal agencies make several improvements to their recruiting and assessment efforts, including:

- Use more predictive assessment tools instead of relying on training and experience measures.

- Use a balanced set of recruitment practices to reach all the various segments of the job market. MSPB points out that conducting a proper job analysis and identifying true minimum qualifications can help cut down the number of unqualified applicants.

- Market what is important to applicants. For federal agencies this means job security, benefits, and the ability to make a difference.

- Evaluate the hiring process and remove any obstacles that are unnecessarily lengthening the process.

- Avoid stereotyping based on generational assumptions, since the data indicate substantial similarities between age groups in what they want out of a job.

Again, good information for all of us. There's a lot more information in the report.