Managing Employee Motivation and Performance

INTERNATIONAL BURCH UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF political economy DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT MANAGING EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION AND PERFORMANCE RESEARCH PAPER by Nedzad ISAKOVIC Project Supervisor M. A. Edin SMAJIC SARAJEVO April, 2012 Contents 1. cornerstone2 1. 1. The Motivation Process2 1. 2. Wath Managers Do In Practice2 2. motive by Structuring lineages to Make Them Interesting3 2. 1. pedigree Design3 2. 2. Job Enrichment and Job Enlargement3 2. 3. The Job Characteristics Model4 3. Conclusion5 4. References7 1. Introduction Motivation is defined as the process that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented ways.Motivation is what causes us to act, whether it is getting a glass of water to reduce thirst, reading a book to impinge on knowledge or performing some specific argument fitting to get pay. Why is the pick up of employees so important at the snuff itplace? It is important for managers because it determines individual proceeding of the beters a coherent with ability of the benders and work environment. The more(prenominal) or less challenging mover for manager to control of these three is motive. Individual behavior is a complex phenomenon, and the manager packs to enter the core of the bother if he is going to solve it. 1. 1. The Motivation ProcessThe motivation process progresses with a series of discrete steps. Content, process, and wages perspectives on motivation talk different parts of this process (Griffin, 2008). Content perspective tries to find what factor or factors impel tidy sum. The roughly popular content theories argon Maslows hierarchy of needs, the ERG theory and Herzbergs two-factor theory. Process perspectives on motivation look for how the motivation process works and how it occurs. They try to find out wherefore people certain behavior options to fulfill their needs and how workers evaluate their satisfactions after(prenominal) their decisions.Theories of process perspectives are expectancy theory, equity th eory and the newer attri besidesion theory. The reinforcement perspective tries to find out which factors force employees to continue being motivated. It tells us that employees get out reprize the behavior for which they are reinforcered, and they wont repeat behavior for which they are punished. Reinforcement perspective uses ordained reinforcement, avoidance, punishment and quenching as tools to keep employees motivated. These are undecomposed theories which help managers to determine what to do in practice. 1. 2.What Managers Do In Practice The most shared manakin and strategy among managers in practice is that funds motivates. Because of that managers use large mixed bag of abide by systems such as merit reward systems, incentive reward systems and team reward systems to improve motivation and performance of their employees. Their assumption is castigate and employees do actually perform conk out when they know that they will pick up more gold for their improved performance. But a nonher question arises How long will the improved performance last if money is key incentive?The answer is that it wont last long. The studies have shown that individuals have encumbrance recalling the bonus they receive and it does not seem to have the same violation it did inwardly the first few weeks or months of receiving it. Thats because money, in and of itself, will not continuously motivate individuals. Employees are motivated practically more if money rewards are combined with recognition and with improved line of reasoning bearing. Another conundrum that arises from using the money as a key factor of motivation is that it costs.The companies need to give large amounts of money to employees as bonuses and there were some(prenominal) cases where bonuses are actually larger than annual salaries of some employees. This becomes a authorized problem if company wants to decrease the amount of bonuses employees receive. Employees become more dissatisfi ed and unmotivated because they are used to have large bonuses, so their performance falls quite a lot. My opinion is that the best way to motivate employees to perform better is to design capers by making them more large-hearted to people. 1. Motivating by Structuring Jobs to Make Them Interesting 2. 3. Job DesignThis coming of motivation is directed at improving the essential nature of the work performed by changing the design of the demarcation. Job design is concerned with structuring jobs in evidence to improve organization efficiency and employee job satisfaction (Snell/Bohlander, 2007). Employees today bind in repetitive movements, which they find highly routine and monotonous. Not surprisingly, people became bored with such jobs and their performance falls with time. Fortunately, todays organizational scientists have found several(prenominal) ways of designing jobs that arent just efficient, but are also pleasant and motivating.Job enlargement and job enrichment are t wo approaches that improve motivation by changing job design. 2. 4. Job Enlargement and Job Enrichment One of the first modern approaches to redesigning jobs suggested that boredom of employees by engaging in highly repetitive jobs could be minimized by having people perform an increased number of different tasks all at the same level. This approach is known as job enlargement (Greenberg/ office, 2008). Because of this approach employees dont need higher(prenominal) skills or have higher responsibility, but perform more different actions at the same level.Changing job in this way is an increase in the horizontal job loading. several(prenominal) studies showed that job enlargement is very useful way to increase employee job satisfaction and employee boredom at the workplace. A more effective approach, job enrichment, gives employees not only more jobs to do, but more tasks to perform at a higher level of skill and responsibility (Greenberg/Baron, 2008). The main musical theme of job enrichment is making jobs more interesting to people so that they will be more highly motivated to perform them.Job enrichment gives employees the opportunity to look at greater control over how to do their jobs. Because people performing enriched jobs work at higher levels than others, this approach increases a jobs upright job loading. Even the job enrichment is successful it has some problems in implementation. graduation exercise one is difficulty of implementation because it is expensive to redesign existing facilities. endorsement problem is lack of employee acceptance because not all employees are typeset to accept the changes in their job accomplishment and higher obligations for the work they perform. 2. 5. The Job Characteristics ModelIn previous text I stated that employers should enrich the jobs, but I failed to specify precise what elements of a job need to be enriched for it to be effective. Job characteristics model answers this question. It assumes that jobs can be designed so as to help people get enjoyment out of their jobs and care virtually the work they do (Greenberg/Baron, 2008). It tells us how jobs can be redesigned to help employees intent that they are doing meaty and valuable work. The model specifies that enriching certain elements of jobs influences employees mental states in a manner that increases their work effectiveness.It identifies five core job dimensions that help create three critical mental states, bleeding to several beneficial personal and work outcomes. The five critical job dimensions are skill variety, task identity, task conditional relation, autonomy, and feedback. Skill variety shows us how some(prenominal) different tasks the employee performs using several of his skills and talents. Task identity shows us how much is employee involved in one piece of work, from beginning to end. Task significance shows us how much impact employees work has on others.Autonomy shows us how much freedom employees have in planning and performing jobs as they wish. Feedback shows us how much the job allows employees to know is their performance efficient enough. The model tells that these various job dimensions have important effects on numerous critical psychological states. Combination of these job dimensions have effect on experienced meaningfulness of the job performed, which is then experienced as highly important, valuable and worthwhile. Job dimensions also determine how much employees are personally amenable and accountable for their work.When they are free to decide what to do and how to do it they tone of voice more responsible for their work. Finally, these job dimensions impact employees knowledge of the results of their work. When a job is designed to provide employees with information about the effects of their actions, they better understand how effective they are and such knowledge improves their effectiveness. These critical psychological states affect personal and work outcome s such as feelings of motivation, the quality of work performed, satisfaction with work, absenteeism and turnover.The higher these psychological states are, the more positive the personal and work benefits and outcomes will be. The job characteristics model is highly applicable and it has high and positive results. The employees that respond best to this model are the ones which have high need for personal growth and development. The model has been focus of many empirical tests, most of which are rewardive of many aspects of the model. One study conducted among a classify of South African clerical workers found particularly strong support for the job characteristic model (Greenberg/Baron, 2008). . Conclusion In my opinion alter employee motivation by changing job design is much more productive and better than improving motivation by incentive reward systems. It is true that inducing motivation by changing job design has several problems, such as difficulty of implementation and l ack of employee acceptance, but these problems are easier to overcome than problems that occur when companies use money to motivate their employees. bonus reward systems have problems beside the incredibly high costs to organization.These systems may lead to lower job satisfaction as the employees work until they reach their rebound and then they become unhappy. They can also create competition within the organization and destroy cooperation among employees. Employees cannot be treated just as machines and the money they receive for their work just isnt enough to satisfy them. They need recognition for their work and they need to see that the work they do is meaningful and worthwhile, and this is the thing that job design allows them to have. They feel respected and fulfilled and, at the end, motivated to perform the best they know. . References Ricky W. Griffin (2008). Management (9th Edition ed. ). Houghton Mifflin Company. Jerald Greenberg Robert A. Baron (2008). Behavior in Or ganizations (9th Edition ed. ). Pearson prentice Hall. Luis R. Gomez-Mejia David B. Balkin Robert L. Cardy (2007). Managing Human Resources (5th Edition ed. ). Pearson Prentice Hall . Scott Snell George Bohlander (2007). Human Resorce Management. Thomson. http//psychology. about. com/od/mindex/g/motivation-definition. htm , http//www. entrepreneur. com/article/202352