Employee Competence & Task Completion

• Underworking (shirking) and overworking of employees can negatively impact both the individual and the organisation.
• A computational model was developed to study how employers distribute work tasks to employees
• The model focuses on work intensity and working time, and is empirically observed
• The simulations find that when managers correctly estimate task difficulty, but undervalue employee competence, opportunities for shirking are provided due to longer deadlines.
• Similarly, tighter deadlines lead to overwork if managers overvalue an employee's competence.
• Initially, misjudging task difficulty only influences employee working time.
• It gradually generates competence misjudgements that indirectly impact the employee's effort level.
• An interaction between competence misjudgement and task uncertainty slows the manager's ability to correctly estimate employee competence and prolongs initial competence misjudgements.
• The study highlights the importance of applying dynamic modelling methods, which allows for testing theory assumptions in silico, generating new hypotheses and offers a foundation for future research.

Work Intensity and Working Time

• Evaluating work performance is a difficult task.
• Theoretical approaches for guiding work performance evaluation have focused on the amount of effort exerted by the employee.
• The amount of effort and working time are related, given effort includes direction, intensity, and duration.
• Effort direction concerns the activity the individual is engaged in such as a work task or a non-work task.
• Effort intensity defines engagement level (i.e., work intensity).
• A temporal attribute refers to the amount of time a person is engaged in the activity (i.e., working time).
• Exerting more effort decreases the amount of time necessary for completing a task
• There is a limit to the reduction of working time.
• An employee cannot be dismissed on the basis of low work motivation, but can for not working during contracted hours
• Work effort relates to the basic obligation of employees to perform work conscientiously and carefully and to comply with the instructions of superiors related to work.
• Employers must customize work to the abilities of the employee
• Working time includes the time when an employee is at the disposal of their employer to perform work.
• Employers should plan an individual employee's work to use the allotted time to the fullest

Shirking and Overworking

• Work intensity and working time are two dimensions in which employee actions can deviate from the manager's expectations.
• Discrepancies between existing legislation and managerial expectations occur.
• Managers want their employees to complete work tasks, but the law obliges them to coin their expectations into eight-hour working days.
• Managers define task deadlines based on their knowledge of task difficulty and employee competences.
• Incorrect deadline estimation allows employees to shirk (i.e., insufficient work intensity or working time) or overwork (i.e., excessive work intensity or working time).

Task Performance

• Task performance signifies the diligent performance of activities a manager assigned for a contracted period of time.
• Task performance focuses on the act of working.
• Inspired by motivated action theories, direct task performance determinants are employee competence and effort level.
• Competence level is a broad resource of an individual needed for effective task performance.
• Competence incorporates three domains of educational activities: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor i.e. KSA (knowledge, skills and attitudes) approach.
• An employee's position in a network influences work performance.
• The computational model uses a multi-method oriented rationalistic approach to competences, which means competences are attributes workers possess for effective task performance.
• Higher competence levels increase task performance.
• Effort is an employee characteristic directly influencing task performance.
• Increasing effort positively affects task performance
• Motivation is a psychological state, while effort is a physical phenomenon.
• Motivation impacts task performance indirectly, by limiting the maximum level of exerted effort.
• The model assumes a direct relationship between effort and task performance
• Task difficulty provides information about the amount of resources needed to complete the task.
• The more difficult the task, the more effort is needed to complete it.

The Role of Informational Advantages

• The factors influencing task performance are associated with a certain informational advantage structure. Employee has better knowledge of competences and effort, but neither actor knows true task difficulty beforehand.
• Informational advantages are described using the principal-agent theory.
• Principal-agent theory indicates that one party ('the principal') relies on another ('the agent') to act on their behalf, in their best interests.
• This problem arises where the interests of the two parties are not aligned and where they have access to different information.
• Within an employment relationship, the agent's and principal's goals are conflicting and the manager wants the employee to exert maximum effort at all times, however, the employee is effort-averse
• Two principal-agent problems have been studied: adverse selection, i.e., hidden information, and moral hazard, i.e., hidden actions.
• The study focuses on the adverse selection problem of an employee hiding information on their competence levels
• In acquiring employment low-skilled agents pretend to be highly skilled, but the reverse is true after the contract is signed
• Task uncertainty is the degree to which tasks are open to chance-based, task-relevant influences
• Managers estimate the time to accomplish a task, but reality has informational advantages over managers and employees who merely guess the task's true difficulty and complexity

Computational Model of Task Performance

• A computational model programmed in an agent-based framework operationalizes the process of task performance in organizations.
• This method was chosen because shirking and overworking emerge from employee decisions influenced by various factors.
• Computational modeling enables designing a complex formal model and performing simulations
• The knowledge gap about the dynamics of shirking and overworking can be bridged through a method enabling dynamics and easily achieved temporal dimension analysis
• In the model, employees gradually achieve excellence in their ability to handle work tasks.
• The model illustrates an organisation comprised of three employees and a set of tasks for them to complete.
• Each employee is characterized by a certain level of competence, enabling the employee to complete work tasks.
• Initially, all employees are available to receive tasks.
• Once employees are assigned tasks, a new task is added to the pool such that ten always await assignment.
• Work tasks vary by degrees of difficulty and competence-dependence
• Each employee is assigned tasks based on two rules:
  • Assigning to available employees
  • Task difficulty corresponds to employee competence level perceived by the manager
• Tasks are appointed starting from the least skilled employee

Task Completion

• Once an employee knows the deadline for task completion, they can choose a minimum level of effort.
• The employee and the manager might misestimate task completion time, as the employee does not know the task's true difficulty.
• Informational advantages implemented in the computational model:
  • Manager estimates competence through competence level + a competence level error term whereas the employee knows their actual competence
  • Manager expects certain amount of employee effort, at 0.8, whereas actual effort varies by employee

Competence level

• As employees gain experience by performing tasks in the organisation, they increase their competence levels.
• The rate of increase depends on the level of already obtained competences.
• The competence level of employee j (cj) is expressed as follows: Cj = Cmaxtanh(Ej/Es)
  • Cmax is the maximum competence level
  • Ej is the work experience of employee j
  • Es is the scaling parameter
• Increase in experience does not depend task's competence-dependence or level of employee effort
• Increase occurs faster for the employee exerting a greater amount of effort.
• The manager updates the initial values of employee competence and task difficulty with their perceptions.
• The overall experience level of employee j (Ej) is a function of his initial abilities (Eoj) and a sum of what he has learned after having performed his first n tasks in the organisation

Aberrations in Work Intensity and Working Time

• Employees' actions may deviate from the manager's expectations regarding exerted effort (work intensity) and working time.
• Lower/higher than expected levels of effort and time correspond to shirking/overworking.
• Overworking with respect to intensity is limited, as there is an upper limit on effort
• The degree of overworking with respect to intensity is limited, as there is an upper limit on effort.
• Aberrations from the manager's work intensity expectations can be calculated by subtracting the level of effort expected by the manager from the actual employee exertion e.g. objective effort exerted by employee = manager's expectations regarding effort exerted by employee / performing task i
• Manager is expected to abide by the law and expects a legally-defined working time from the employee.
• Managers view percentage of spent working time as either shirking or overworking

Results

• The experimental design was defined as true estimate of initial competence misjudgement and a true estimate of task difficulty as the control condition
• As expected, the control condition presents no aberrations of time or effort, independently of the initial competence level of employees.

Impact of Adverse Selection

• If managers misjudge employee compentence, the simulations show correct evaluation of task difficulty directly affects the level of invested effort, but not the amount of time it takes to complete a task.
• Employee competences generates opportunities to shirk.
• Belief in employee competence results in necessity to overperform in order to complete a task.
• The effect of initial knowledge on time investment is only temporary as predicted by the principal-agent theory
• Employees learn to correctly estimate the amount of effort needed and managers become able to estimate the competences of her subordinate better and is, therefore, able to set more realistic deadlines

Impact of Task Uncertainty

• Suggested that relationship between task uncertainty and work aberrations is complex
• Underestimating task difficulty necessitates working longer than expected by the manager.
• Overestimating task difficulty generates opportunities for employees to shirk.
• If expected working time is overestimated: The difference between actual and expected work-time is numerator, yielding a smaller fraction
• Task difficulty misjudgement operates differently than competence misjudgement:
  • Misestimating task makes more extreme differences the lower the organizational experience
  • competence misjudgement: The smaller the differences when employees have higher experience.
• the manager believes that the employees, whose perceptions are also biased by task uncertainty.
• The resulting perception is to underestimate employees, the manager overestimates competence development of her subordinates.
• The effect of over- and under-estimating task difficulty on work intensity, competence misjudgement and working time is impacted

Adverse Selection and Task Uncertainty Interaction

• manager overestimates the competences of her subordinates, with difficulty
• overestimation result in lengthening the duration of overworking with respect to effort, causes less output
• underestimating employee compentence affects the amount of work they are capable of by the manager
• employees have different perceptions it creates a barrier for what both parties view the amount of output the manager is ending
• smaller differences in difficult cause worse issues for what work compacity

Conclusions

• Shirking and can negatively affect employees and the compacity working for them
• Popular activity include:
  • browsing the internet for personal use.
  • spending time with employees
  • personal time
• the effects are:
  • affect on the employee's effort
  • disturbance's
  • social life
  • family
• the model that presented The study highlights the importance of applying dynamic modelling methods, which allows for testing theory assumptions in silico

Explore factors influencing employee competence increase during task completion. Understand the role of 'cmax,' simulation end conditions, and the learning curve approximation. Analyze the impact of manager's competence estimation on project timelines.