The impact of personality traits on work performance

Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, US

^* Corresponding author: yul246@pitt.edu

Abstract

With the growth and advancement of business, organizations are focusing more on the well-being of individual employees as this can improve work performance, and reach team goals more effectively and efficiently. Studying the impact of employees’ individual differences of personality traits (PT) on work performance is one of the key research topics today. For their investigation on the relationship between the Big Five personality traits (BFPT) and job performance—which focuses on leadership, employee well-being, and employee burnout—researchers gathered data from a variety of studies. There is a lack of consensus regarding the relationships between BFPT and leadership, employee well-being, and employee burnout, despite research showing that PT have an impact on work performance. According to the study’s results, agreeableness, extraversion, and openness to new experiences all have a good impact on leadership and employee well-being and a negative impact on employee burnout. Conscientiousness does not have any significant relationship with employee well-being. Neuroticism negatively affects leadership and employee well-being, but it positively affects employee burnout. Research has demonstrated that all five personalities are directly correlated to employees’ work performance. This is precisely because different personalities have different ways of dealing with interpersonal relationships, workload, and stress management, resulting in positive or negative impacts on their work performance.