Motivational Strategies - Essay Example

?Part I: Motivational Strategies Introduction We are an organization that deals with provision of services. As an organization and considering our line of operation, we believe that our people are our greatest asset in achieving our goals and maintaining our core values. Our goal is to be the leading company in our line of operation and to position our brand as the best in the market. Our main objective is to offer quality and value to our clients. What distinguishes us from our competitors is the ability to attract and retain the best talent around. This makes our brand outstanding among the many brands in the market. We do not only offer a place of work to our employee but what we offer is exciting careers full of challenges, growth and rewards. Our employees improve their ability every day through guidance, training, and knowledge diffusion through teamwork. According to Sarkis et al. (2010), knowledge diffusion is a learning process in which one learns through interaction with both people and the work he does. For this to be possible and effective, our Human Resource Management department believes that good and effective motivation strategies are paramount. To be effective in our motivation strategies we plan, design, update, implement, and evaluate our motivation strategies every now and then. This makes sure that we always remain relevant to our employees in terms of the motivations we give them as well as determining what is best for our company. When choosing a motivation strategy it is wise to determine the approach, which will maximize employees’ job satisfaction while remaining corporate cost effective (Gaspar 2005). To achieve this we undertake both qualitative and quantitative research on our motivation strategies before implementing them. A key principle of motivation is that people are motivated to pursue and satisfy their needs. This shows that as peoples’ needs increase so will they become more and more motivate in order to satisfy (Berman et al, 2009). To be in line with this principle we conduct research to identify the needs of various categories of our people and incorporate our findings to our motivation strategy. We also understand the difference in the needs of various categories of our employees and thus we do not apply the same motivation strategy to all the categories. There are two kinds of motivation strategies, which are intrinsic motivation strategy and extrinsic motivation strategy (Armstrong 2009). Intrinsic motivation strategy involves factors that influence people is to behave in a particular way like a sense of responsibility, autonomy, the scope of use and develop skills and abilities, interesting and challenging work and opportunities for career advancement. Extrinsic motivation strategy involves what I done to or for people in order to motivate them (Armstrong 2006). Purpose of motivational strategies Our motivational strategies purpose to encourage our people to put more effort in their work, with an objective of assisting the organization to achieve its goals. They also purpose to encourage to continually improving their skills and abilities which might make them earn promotions. This would enable the company to enjoy a pool of experienced and knowledgeable employees. The strategies also aim to improve the productivity of the employees in their day to day activities thus increase the company’s output. They also purpose to make the employees to be proud of working in this company which in return increases the company’s ability to retain them The scope of these motivational strategies Intrinsic motivation strategies We give our employees opportunities to practice their abilities and interests in a challenging work environment. We offer our employees opportunities to advance their career through on-job training and mentorship and offer them room for growth and promotion. We offer our workers a sense of responsibility by giving them the chance to be in control of their own learning and improvements. Extrinsic motivational strategies We reward our best performing department by offering all the employees of that department a trip to one of the most interesting and adventurous places in the world in order to motivate them to continue with their good performance. We also offer performance bonuses to the best performing employees twice a year just after the company’s semi-annual celebrations and our annual ceremonies. We also give our employees an award that we call the employees of the year award. This award is given on annual bases to the best performing employee in each of our departments. We also hold celebrations for our employees twice a year and it is in these celebrations that we reward our best performing employees. These events one is held at the beginning of the month of June while the other one is held at mid-December just before Christmas break. We also make sure that the company’s celebrations are held in unique places which make our employees to be always looking forward for the cerebrations’ day which makes the event to be a kind of motivation. Possible suggestions for improvements The company should increase the amount of money it gives in terms of performance bonus to go in like with the increasing levels of inflation. The company should keep on changing the reward it gives to the best performing employee annually to make even those who have won it to be motivated to win it another time. The company should also introduce more rewards and gifts to increase motivation on its employees that would raise their productivity. Conclusion We can say that we are perfect in terms of motivating our employees. We are aware that there is stillroom for improvement and that is why our human resource department is working day in day out to ensure that we improve on this motivation strategy. We are also aware that human capital issues are dynamic and that is why in our research on motivational strategies we very often include analysis of social and psychological behaviors of our employees. With this we have ensured that we are always at par with the changing nature of human capital in terms of motivation and we are ensuring our employees a consistent improvement in the rewards we offer them as well as introduction of new rewards as they continue to show us outstanding performances. Part II: Research on Motivational Strategies Various authors have different views about motivational strategies as an element of human resource management. Many managers tend to use motivation as a tool of justifying their inability to improve performance (Crouse 2005). Motivational strategies like other human resource management element are a very important aspect of human resource management system (Armstrong2008). Hegedus (2010) investigated the influence of motivational strategies on employees’ performance and cultural acquiescence and found out those promotional opportunities and public rewards are significant motivational tools. However, his investigation showed that financial rewards do not contribute much to increase in motivation of people in their workplaces. Martins & Remenyi (2007) reveal that after a company has attracted and gained a pool of motivated worker it should promote them so that to give them a more sense of belonging and hence retain them. Pattanayak (2005) distinguishes motivation and incentives. He gives motivation as will-to-do something and that it is individual oriented while incentives as something introduced in a work environment to encourage workers to accomplish their personal goals. On the other hand, Keller (2009) brings out the concept of motivation measures and motivation strategy a design that improves the way the human resource management looks at the concept of motivation. Lastly, Lundy & Cowling (1996) brings out the concept of how motivation strategies and rewards can be appropriately manages to give the company maximum output while minimizing costs. To understand the levels of motivation in our company a survey was undertaken using our employees as the sampling frame. To improve the reliability of the survey the human resource department decided to us anonymous questionnaires that was to be distributed by our junior HR staffs to the respondents in a Monday morning and then collected later in the evening. These kinds of questionnaires improve the truthfulness of the data collected and thus making the survey to be more reliable. Moreover, the HR department also decided to use simple random sampling technique. Each sampling unit has an equal chance of being included in the sample in this sampling technique. A distinguishing advantage of this technique is that it helps to reduce biasness in our data and thus making our estimates to be more accurate (Black 2011). In this survey, a group of 50 employees was selected at random from our various departments to be included in our sample. This was a good sample size compared to the sampling population of our employees that is made up of about 500 workers. The data collected was recorded, analyzed, and interpreted by our human resource experts to reveal the level of motivation of our employees. It also measured how much they are satisfied with the current efforts of the company to motivate them. The results of the survey indicated that 80% of the employees working in this company are highly motivated and are proud to be working in this organization. About 62% of those involved in the survey said that in this organization they found a place where they could develop and nature their careers to great height and opportunities for growth and promotions. They also admitted that although working in this organization offers many challenges, these challenges help to motivate them to do better in their work. The survey also indicated that about 90% of our employees are very much motivated by the companies’ initiative to award the excellent performers during its annual and pre-annual ceremonies. However, about 50% of the employees said that the companies need to improve the amount it gives in terms of performance bonuses and also about 20% said that they are not comfortable with the way the company publicizes success of other employees. Among this 20%, majority commented that this publicizing could make some worker to feel superior to other. Although the company cannot claim to be having excellent motivational strategies to motivate its workers, it is clear from the conducted survey that the motivation strategies that the company has employed have been yielding positive results. This is indicated by the percentage of employees who have the drive to always do better for the sake of the company. It is also shown by the degree in which employees of our company are comfortable with the motivational strategies that our Human resource department employs to motivate employees. Furthermore, the results of the surveys shows that a good majority of our workers are proud to be working in our company which itself has made them motivated to always do better to overcome the challenges they encounter in their workplaces. However, the survey results also revealed some of the aspects of the company’s motivational strategies that the company should improve. It revealed that the performance bonuses need to be reviewed as well as our various performance rewards to be in line with the changes in socio-economical and psychological states of our employees. Our human resource department welcomed these observations and took an initiative to see how they can collaborate with other departments concerned to address these issues. However, due to the limited sample size used the HR department felt that there is a need for another bigger survey to be undertaken to support the finding of this research and as a result. As we are talking, the survey is in progress and a focus group has already been conducted. A focus group is a special kind of group in terms of size composition and procedure conducted to gather information (Krueger & Casey 2000). This focus group will help us to determine some of the questions to include in our questionnaire. Moreover, the HR department has promised that by the mid of next month detailed results of the survey will be out. In this new survey, a sample size of 100 employees has been proposed and it had been proposed that this sample should have all the departments equally represented. Furthermore, the questionnaire which will be used will be somehow larger than the previous one so us to collected as much information as possible. The new survey will not only reveal the level of motivation but it will also level what needs to be done to improve the motivation strategies of this company and thus it will be used in decision making. References Armstrong, M 2006,A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 10th edn. Kogan Page Publishers, London. Armstrong, M2008,Strategic Human Resource Management: A Guide to Action, Kogan Publishers, London. Armstrong, M 2009,Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 11th edn. Kogan Page Publishers, London. Berman, E M. et al.2009, Human Resource Management in Public Service: Paradoxes, Processes, and Problems, SAGE Publications, Thousand Oak. Black, K 2011,Business Statistics for Contemporary Decision Making, 7th edn, John Wiley & Sons, Danvers. Crouse, N 2005,Motivation is an Inside Job: How to Really Get Your employees to …. iUniverse, Lincoln. Gaspar, JE 2005,Introduction to Business, Cengage Learning, Mason. Hegedus, G 2010,An Exploration of Connection Between Human Resource Management and …. GRIN Verlag, San Francisco. Keller, JM 2009,Motivation Design for Learning and Performance: The Arcs Model Approach, Springer, New York. Krueger, RA& Casey, MA 2000,Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research, 3rd edn, SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks. Lundy, O & Cowling, A 1996,Strategic Human Resource Management, Routledge, Abingdon Martins, B & Remenyi, D 2007,ECKM 2007: 8th European Conference on Knowledge Management 2007 … Vol. 1, Academic Bookshop, Berks. Pattanayak, B 2005,Human Resource Management, 3rd edn, PHI Learning Ltd, New Delhi. Read More