BH6017 Psychology for Business and Management Assignment Sample

Individual presentation

Overview of the Presentation

• The current presentation aims to explain the implementation of the Five Ways to Well-being approach and how KU can promote students’ wellbeing.
• The document starts with general information about the concept of student wellbeing embedded within the framework and subsequent relevance to the SDGs, including SDGs 3 and 8 (United Nations, 2024).
• It then proceeds to a consideration of the understanding of three of the WHAT WAYS To Wellbeing: Connect, Be Active, and Take Notice based on theoretical and where appropriate, the empirical literature.

The suggestions for targeting the students to practice the procedures will be followed by a proposed pilot study plan to assess the efficacy of the intervention plans. The final recommendations would then be presented together with the reasons why addressing student welfare should remain a top priority. Concerning any additional questions or to cooperate, the contact information will be presented.

Introduction and Context

• The Five Ways to WellBeing framework, developed by the Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project in 2008, identifies key practices that promote mental health and wellbeing: Better known as C.A.T.B.E.R.C.K, which stands for Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning, and Give (Cheng et al., 2021).
• The authorities of Kingston University and its students’ society are looking into the possibility of adopting those measures to enhance their students’ health (Žalėnienė & Pereira, 2021).
• The goal and objectives of this initiative are comparable to the UN Sustainable Development Goals for Development, especially Good Health and Wellbeing (SDG 3) and Decent Work and Economic Growth (SDG 8).

Cohesion is a critical prerequisite to a student’s success, proper development, and the upkeep of an idealistic university climate. Enhanced mental health is the ability to focus, be creative, and persevere regardless of challenges intellectual or otherwise affecting students. In this manner, the wellbeing of the students will improve which in return enhances the overall wellbeing of the entire Kingston University community.

Way 1 – Connect

• The philosophy of connection itself is a necessity for human existence.
• Social relationships are considered to be fundamental in determining emotional support and mental health by the Social Support Theory (Acoba, 2024).
• This theory highlights the value of people’s relations with other people in reducing stress and enhancing their quality of life.
• Berkman and Glass (2000) present how people connected to powerful social networks exhibit lesser anxiety and depressive symptoms and better physical health (Berkman et al., 2000).

However, for Kingston University ensuring that students have a sense of belonging is very important. This also applies to the suggested intervention called the “Connect Café Initiative” where the latter suggests that weekly meetings, no formalities, should be conducted to get students talking and interacting with each other. These meetups could concern interests, cultural exchange, cooperation in learning, and many other subjects. Through the provision of spaces for such interactions; the initiative can assist students in the building of community.

Way 2 – Be Active

• Studies have confirmed that exercises have a positive impact on the mental health of human beings.
• The Endorphin Hypothesis states that exercise induces an endorphin cascade which can be described as chemicals in the brain that induce improved mood and decrease stress (Alizadeh Pahlavani, 2024).
• Furthermore, the Self-determination Theory also has a psychological aspect insofar as is concerned with autonomy, competence, and relatedness in a particular sport or activity (Koole et al., 2019).

As a way of ensuring that the student’s engagement in physical activity, Kingston University could consider having Campus Active Days. This would help launch free weekly fitness sessions using such activities as yoga, Zumba or just planned campus walks. These sessions would be for all students and not discriminate the unfit from the fit since everyone needs to be agile to reach for their dreams. The program can be sustained by collaborations with local fitness instructors and student volunteers, which will make it affordable.

Way 3 – Take Notice

• The practice of taking notice, as such, is centred on attending to the present, which, in turn, promotes an individual’s quality of emotional health and acuity of mind.
• Mindfulness entails the coming together of a person’s skills of awareness and attention to what is going on in his surroundings at a given time without judgment and this makes it ok to be used to regulate a person’s emotions or lessen tensions (SchumanOlivier et al., 2020).
• Adopting this habit can effectively enable students to cope with the various demands of university life in addition to enhancing their mental health.

Among the thus proposed interventions is the construction of mindfulness corners all over the campus. These spaces would give the students a quiet area in which they can engage in different forms of training, including mindfulness. Such areas could involve items such as these; relaxing images, howto handouts and links to guided meditations. Furthermore, purely practical training could be conducted in the form of workshops educating students in practices that foster mindfulness. This would give students an application or a set of tools that could enable them to become more focused, manage stress, and attain better self awareness.

Engaging Faculty and Staff in Wellbeing Initiatives

• The Faculty and Staff: The teaching faculty and staff should play an active role in promoting student wellbeing by integrating the Five Ways into classroom teaching and campus activities.
• Training Programs: Workshops and training programs should be organized for faculty and staff to recognize and address issues related to mental health (Zaçe et al., 2021).
• Collaborative Efforts: Encourage collaboration between faculty and staff with student bodies to co-create programs.

Student-centric approaches are possible only when staff and faculty members form a community for holistic wellbeing since they are the largest influencers in a student’s academic life. Teaching them how to recognize mental health-related problems and incorporate them into wellbeing efforts makes the whole program much more effective and sustainable through daily involvement in the academic life of the student.

Monitoring and Continuous Improvement

• Periodic feedback - organize surveys, focus groups, and suggestion avenues that compel students to actively give feedback on the wellbeing development initiatives (Butcher et al., 2021).
• Data-Driven Decision: Use pretreatment and post-treatment surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of each initiative.
• Adaptation to Emerging Trends: Keep abreast with contemporary advances in mental health and wellbeing practices.

A culture of continuous improvement is nurtured by monitoring and feedback loops wherein their input ensures that well-being initiatives are both efficacious and relevant to student needs. Data-driven approaches, coupled with the ability to adapt to trends, place the University, instead, as a proactive leader in addressing their contributions toward student mental health and well-being.

Recommendations for Encouraging Student Engagement

• For the “Connect” element of wellbeing, the following suggestions could be made for the University.
• The university could consider starting what they call the “Connect Café Initiative.”
• This would entail weekly student socia, which shall from time to time evolve into themed debates, cultural interchange, as well as student projects (O’Dowd, 2021).

These events would happen in tastefully designed common areas on a university campus and would be facilitated by peers, which helps to promote a sense of belonging. In this regard, the University under the “Be Active” aspect could organise “Campus Active Days.” This program would entail offering of special and open workouts like Yoga, Aerobics and Campus Walks without any charges. These sessions could be held at different times in order to meet different students’ availability and would be conducted by certified teachers or at least scrupulously selected and trained students. As such, this obligation would have a positive effect on learners’ working pressure levels, their spirit as well as their사 health since this would entail encouraging physical activities without competition among students.With regard to the “Take Notice” element, the University may improve the campus environment by creating mindfulness Corners in some prominent locations throughout the University campus. These quiet zones would include areas where the students could be encouraged to practice quiet daringness and reflective practices. These spaces would provide a range of items including mindfulness guides, calming images and digital access to mindfulness tools such as guided recordings of a meditation, which would prompt learners to take a break from their tasks and focus on the present.

Intervention Study Design

• These initiatives should be possible to assess using a structured pilot study that answers the following questions.
• The study will involve the group of students that will engage in the programs and the group of students that will not engage will engage in the programs (Fabiana Engelsbel et al., 2024).
• Pre and postintervention changes in participants’ wellbeing in the two groups would have been investigated (An & Kim, 2024).

In the case of the quantitative data, different self constructed and standard questionnaires, for example, those that assess mental health, stress or actively working and interested, would be used. The outcomes of the initiatives would in part be evaluated by comparing the results of the preintervention and postintervention surveys. For instance, the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale could be used while filling a social audit to monitor changes in the wellbeing of the community over some time. More, there would also be collection of qualitative data through focus group discussions and pro forma feedback as this lets the participants post and express on their own what their feelings, views and knowledge were on the initiatives implemented. Quantitative research methods like ttests or ANOVA would contrast the impact of the intervention and control group, increase the results of both groups and significant differences. The convergence of both quantitative and qualitative data would enhance the understanding of the effectiveness of the mentioned initiatives.

Conclusion

• It is important to raise the students’ quality of life as the construction of a healthy learning environment is one of the key goals of the University.
• This presentation has outlined three actionable and evidencebased recommendations: enhancing social relationships with the help of the “Connect Café Initiative,” physical activity with the “Campus Active Days,” and spiritual with the “Mindfulness Corners.”
• These interventions are aimed to be feasible, effective, and tailored to meet the learners of Kingston University's needs.

This paper’s proposed pilot study presents a systematic framework for assessing these efforts while also incorporating both qualitative and quantitative data. This guarantees that the University is positioned to respond effectively to the challenge of student wellness by informing strategies that will improve the lives of its consumers – the students.

Assignment Task: individual report

Introduction

Organizational performance is one of the research areas in industrial and organizational psychology and management, which is usually described as the extent to which people achieve or surpass expectations in their work (Al-Abri et al., 2021). It comprises of task performance which includes how effectively and how well tasks required in the jobs are done, contextual performance which is behaviors that enhance the organisational climate and negative/cross-performance behaviours which include behaviours that hinder organisational achievements. Theorists including Campbell’s Model of Job Performance have understood job performance as being a complex idea that is made up of abilities, motivation and situational characteristics (López-Cabarcos et al., 2022).

Studies show that there might be poor performance differentiation between workers with more or less education levels. Education is related to the growth of skills, gains in knowledge and thinking abilities that could be used in work-related activities. Persons with more education also may pursue their promotion opportunities, networking, and resources, as well as job opportunities more easily (Hammond et al., 2020). These advantages can mean a better performance of tasks, problem-solving capacity as well as flexibility. Alternatively, less educated people distance themselves from formal learning that involves new knowledge, preferring instead experience or skills acquired at work, as these can be helpful but may not go far in contributing to organizations’ goals when dealing with technical tasks involving higher levels of thinking. Scholars label these differences as predictable by human capital theory, viewing education as a factor that develops a person’s productive characteristics to improve job performance (Tholen, 2022).

Job satisfaction therefore refers to the degree of pleasantness that an employee has towards his or her job is also another prerequisite to job performance (Memon et al., 2023). There are several dimensions under this concept; these are job content satisfaction, satisfaction with the people, and satisfaction with the policies within the organisation. Interest and work commitment and productivity have been areas of great interest in the previous years with many scholars positing that interest and work commitment are positively related to job performance. All other things being equal, happy employees are more productive, attentive, and loyal to duty assignments. According to the Job Characteristics Model, the relationship between job enrichment and contentment and that between job enrichment, contentment and output is because enriched contexts enhance enriched results (Tumi et al., 2021).

However, the relationship is not always direct as the effects can be buffered by factors like job kind, the personality of the employee, and the culture that defines the company (Huo & Jiang, 2023). For instance, where intrinsic motivation is present, the satisfaction-performance relationship might be enhanced but decreased when there are extrinsic sources of stress such as workload pressure, interpersonal conflict and the like. Knowledge of these subtle interactions is critical for entities that seek to enhance both the satisfaction and performance of organisational personnel (Kundi et al., 2021).

Research questions

(a) Is there a difference between people with lower educational attainment and people with higher educational attainment about their job performance?

Hypothesis 1:

Individuals with higher educational attainment are expected to demonstrate significantly better job performance compared to those with lower educational attainment.

(b) Is there an association between job satisfaction and job performance?

Hypothesis 2:

A positive association is expected between job satisfaction and job performance. Specifically, as job satisfaction increases, job performance is anticipated to improve.

Sample description

The survey received responses from 21 participants with demographic and work-related variables including gender, age, education level, job title, years with current employer, and weekly working hours. Female and male respondents comprise 52% and 48 percent of the sample respectively. Participants’ age varies from 23 to 58 years and the mean age is 37.5 years (Standard Deviation= 10.4).

Educational attainment is divided into two groups: Slightly more than one-third of the sample had lower educational attainment defined as having less than a high school diploma or GED (38%) while two out of every three participants had higher educational attainment defined including having a bachelors degree or higher (62%). Most of the participants are currently employed in careers ranging from administration, and technical to managerial level thus diversifying their occupational profile. Years with current employer: 6.2 years (SD = 3.8); and working hours per week: 39.4 hours (SD = 5.2).

However, its limitation is that due to the small number of participants, the study results may not be generalized to the other participants (Vasileiou et al., 2018). Also, the distribution of the educational level and work status questions the selection bias, which needs to be taken into account when analyzing the results. Nevertheless, the data obtained allows for understanding several specifics regarding educational attainment, job satisfaction, and job performance within this sample.

Findings

It is found in the examination of research question a that job performance is significantly different between lower and higher education attainment groups. The results of one-sample t- test of means showed a significant result t(20) = 22.00, p < 0.001 This result confirmed that the mean difference observed in the job performance (M = 1.048) were unlikely to have occurred by chance. This effect size and the 95% CI of 0.95+/-0.15 strengthen the reliability of this pattern. This statistical significance shows how education impacts on the job performance of individuals in organizations.

Church and colleagues also report that using statistical significance the findings showed a statistically significant difference between the two groups, SD = 0.218 and Hedges corrected SD = 0.227. These values are representative of small to medium effect size suggesting that while the difference in job performance is statistically significant, the practical implications of such difference may be contingent with other factors in the organization. This low magnitude of influence shows that though education constitutes one of the most critical predictors of job performance, other factors, including experience, workplace training or other traits might equally be influential (Toropova et al., 2020).

Such results are also consistent with previous studies which demonstrated that higher levels of education enable a person to master skills and knowledge and establish job-related resources and competencies associated with greater job performance. The implication is that those with little or no schooling could be inclined to employ such ‘street’ knowledge which although is helpful seems not to be a substitute for systematic learning. The present study makes a contribution to the literature in establishing the fact that education is an antecedent of job performance, with meaningful implications for organizational interventions to promote workforce development and performance improvement (Knight & Parker, 2019).

Correlation

The response to the research question (b) involves the use of Pearson correlation in order to examine the correlation between job satisfaction and job performance. The regression line computed from the data results shows contrast sensitivity as −0.175 and a corresponding contrast ratio of 2.47 in a regression analysis, which proves a very weak negative relationship between the two characteristics. Nevertheless, they observe that, while a positive correlation does exist between creativity and Facebook use, the relationship is not a statistically significant one (p = 0.447), which means that the observed correlation probably just happened by pure chance.

This weak relationship can also be seen in the scatter plot which gives no indication of any pattern or trend between job satisfaction on the one hand, and job performance on the other (Kosec et al., 2022). This absence of positive link contrasts with most of the literature that shows job satisfaction and job performance are positively related. Some of the findings of management research that work satisfaction makes workers more motivated, involved and productive is often mentioned. The observed difference might be due to the use of a small sample size, measurement error.

Consequently, the data reveal that there is no correlation between job satisfaction and job performance in this sample (Palomäki et al., 2021). To test or refute these findings, future studies would need to use a larger sample size for a more diverse population in order to study in more detail the relationship between aspects of job satisfaction and job performance.

Discussion

Research Question (a)

The findings in response to the first research question are consistent with the extant literature stating that persons with higher education tend to perform better on the job than those with lower education. It is for this reason that the calculated t-test results are statistically significant and also because effect size is small to moderate in the present analysis (Serdar et al., 2021). Earlier literature, for instance, predicated on human capital theory reveal that higher learning improves the quality of stocks like mental abilities, problem solving skills and acquired resources all of which yields merit performance at work (Becker, 1993). Also, availability of education has been associated with flexibility and creativity in tasks implied at the workplace, thus expanding more performance support.

Even though the effect size within the present study was small, this can be regarded as a PPP artifact due to the study sample or the small variability of the sample data. There may be also other variables, differentiating between various occupations or companies, which can either enhance or weaken the impact of educational achievements on productivity (Schäfer & Schwarz, 2019). Thus, more extensive data on moderating variables or a nested sequential design with independent samples ”could potentially explain more of the relations” between the present arguments and the construct of interest.

Research Question (b)

The results to research question (b) reject the widely held approach in the past literature that has inclined to believe in a positive correlation between job satisfaction and job performance (Judge et al., 2001). In this study, only a very low and insignificant relationship between job satisfaction and job performance was noted. This disparity may be attributed to one or several reasons. The scarcity of youths in the study population may have reduced the ability of the study to assess a relationship due to low power (Rahmani & Groot, 2023). Moreover, there might be other uncontrolled myriad factors that could have affected the findings inclusive of job stress or some organizational culture.

It is also possible that the specific context of this sample may have played a role in these results (Cash et al., 2022). For example, where respondents had jobs with low decision latitude or perceived workplace characteristics as Low rewards, satisfaction with job might not enhance performance. Subsequent studies using the existing higher sample size, focusing on the various context variables and interactions may help to clarify these distinctions.

Conclusion

This paper has of course several important implications as discussed below. In research question (a), the findings of a positive relationship between education and performance indicate that organisations should engage in training for the employees with low levels of education. Ensuring that employees gain access to training programs, and to professional development, and receiving mentorship is one way of ensuring that a gap in workplace performance is closed thus enhancing workplace equality (Hing et al., 2023). To enhance further the skill and capacity of the employee with higher education attainment, aray says that tough challenges and leadership positions should be provided.

Regarding the link between research question (b), that was confirmed in this study, however, potential importance of the connection between job satisfaction and job performance in the existing theoretical work was defined. The second strategy recommended that organizations ensure that the workplace environment is nurturing with the aim of boosting employee satisfaction Through this there should be promotion of work achievements, work relationships and work progression (Hing et al., 2023). If the findings are consistent with the basic hypothesis and if satisfaction does not predict performance, then satisfaction might still increase employees’ quality of life, as well as increase the turn-over rates.

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