Dear Joan,

The Motivational Employee-Satisfaction Questionnaire

An employee questionnaire designed to generate enthusiasm and gauge employee morale and job satisfaction.

BY PHAEDRA HISE

http://www.inc.com/magazine/19940201/2768.html

Hi!

I believe that 'good worker' overlaps a lot with the concept of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). - And there are more scales which measure that concept.

Good luck with your research!

Anders Skogstad

Further, I have to mention that contexual behavior or performance ( as compared to task performance) is another highly overlapping concept of OCB (and 'good worker').

As regards measurement see e.g. Bakker, Demerouti &  Verbeke (2004).

Academic regards,

Anders Skogstad

Hello,

This is an interesting question.  I am doing my dissertation research on the potential use of an emotional intelligence assessment scale such as the EQ-2 for just such a purpose.  It depends on how you define  "good worker".  Is this the same as an "engaged" worker?  Is so, there is an abundance of research indicating that there is not a good scale of measurement yet available.  Surveys tend to be used for this purpose, but they are neither reliable or valid typically.

The criteria that define "good worker" vary depending on the industry and the role that the worker population that you are interested in plays in the organization. (E.g. what people think makes a worker "good" are not necessarily the same for supervisors and frontline staff). 

That said, emotional intelligence assessments such as the EQ-2 measures personality traits that are believed to influence worker behaviors such as productivity, organizational loyalty, and customer orientation.

Best regards,

Stephanie Hartberg

What is your operationalize definition for  good worker....

I absolutely agree with those who have said that it depends on what you mean by a "good worker". There are four obvious possibilities:

• A worker who is a "good citizen", who does what the organisation, their manager, their team wants them to do - the Organisational Citizenship referred to by Anders
• A worker who is good to work with - the EQ aspect mentioned by Stephanie
• A worker who is motivated to work hard - as suggested by Beatrice
• Someone who is good at their job and gets results; this may be job-specific and so would be measured by some form of tailored behaviourally anchored rating scale or possibly "hard" job performance measures

Although there will be some intercorrelation (between the first two in particular), these are all separate concepts, so it is important to define what you want to investigate.

The mentioned definition for good worker is a multidimensional.

You are looking to good workers from which perspective??????

I openly asked to know if there were any. But still very important what you ask, because if I want to know what people understand by 'good worker', I should turn to a Social Representation approach, or grounded theory.

Thanks a lot for the very useful answers!

A grounded theory approach would be a great approach.  I would be interested in your methodology.

Joaquin,

You need to identify the research problem you are trying to solve with this question before deciding on a research methodology. 

I agreed that methodology depends on what "good worker" means for you or, most precise, for your research. Nevertheless, I recommend you to take a look on BARS (Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales) technique.

What is good?  In who's perception is good.

To explore this one must contemplate the history of philosophy!

In this regard the only way to develop a scale is to ask each individual worker what they would mean by being a good worker!

I suppose in this respect you are wanting to get at the essence of the experience of "good worker".  Now from who's perspective? The worker themselves? Those for whom they work? Or society as a whole so that education can "produce" good workers?

I guess now that you are going to have to explore the different underlying perspective's here Hegel? Marx? Zizek? Freire? Sartre?

Go well in what could be a very interesting outcome

I would also consider the value of scales for measuring conscientiousness and agreeableness. According to this paper, these scales can help predict task performance in the short and longer term. This concerns immediate supervisors' concept of a good worker, gauged by performance in assigned tasks.

These findings and similar research into personality traits may concern a potential to be perceived as a good worker -subject to certain working conditions in particular cultural contexts. 

http://www.cqtesting.net/papers/JAP%20Kamdar%20and%20Van%20Dyne%202007.pdf

hi

in my openion you can see Good Work Index and then use and change it  your direction