Motivating the Workforce Topic 7 (Chapter 9)

Nature of Human Relations

Human Relations

• The study of the behavior of individuals and groups in organizational settings

• Involves motivating employees to achieve organizational objectives efficiently and effectively

Motivation

• Inner drive (self within push) that directs a person’s behavior toward a goal

• A goal is the satisfaction of some need

• A need is the difference between an actual state (RM1200)( and a desired state (RM1500) = RM300

Morale is an employee’s attitude (way of thinking) toward his or her job, employer, and colleagues

• High morale leads to: One prominent aspect of human relations is morale on an
• High levels of productivity employee’s attitude toward his or her job, employer, and
colleagues. High morale contributes to high levels of
• High returns to stakeholders productivity, high returns to stakeholders, and employee
loyalty. Conversely, low morale may cause high rates of
• Employee loyalty
absenteeism and turnover (when employees quit or are fired
• Low morale leads to: and must be replaced by new employees).
• High rates of absenteeism

• High rates of employee turnover

Both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards contribute to motivation that stimulates employees to do their best in contributing to business
goals.

 intrinsic reward is the personal satisfaction and enjoyment that you feel from attaining a goal. For example, in this class you
may feel personal enjoyment in learning how business works and aspire to have a career in business or to operate your own
business one day.
 Extrinsic rewards are benefits and/or recognition that you receive from someone else. In this class, your grade is extrinsic
recognition of your efforts and success in the class. In business, praise and recognition, pay increases, and bonuses are
extrinsic rewards.

How to Retain Good Employees

1. Offer training and mentoring

2. Create a positive organizational culture

3. Build credibility through communication

4. Blend compensation, benefits, and recognition

5. Encourage referrals and don’t overlook internal recruiting

6. Give coaching and feedback

7. Provide growth opportunities

8. Create work/life balance and minimize stress

9. Foster trust, respect and confidence in senior leadership

Historical Perspectives on Employee Motivation
Classical Theory of Motivation

• Suggests that money is the sole (only) motivator for workers

• Time and motion (movement) studies

• Frederick W. Taylor, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth

• Analyzed how workers performed tasks to improve productivity

• Led to the application of scientific principles (theory/idea) to management

• Taylor’s ideas still in practice today

• Financial incentives for productivity

• E.g. Boeing sales team allocated each product shares in share incentive program

The Hawthorne Studies

• 1924 to 1932 at the Hawthorne Works Plant

• Elton Mayo

• Postulated (argues) that physical conditions (e.g light and noise level) in the workplace stimulate
(motivate) productivity

• Surprising results - Productivity increased regardless of physical conditions (the Hawthorne effect)

• Findings showed that social and psychological factors (e.g. attention received) could affect productivity
and morale

• Marked the beginning of concern for human relations in the workplace

Theories of Employee Motivation

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs ~~A theory that arranges the five basic needs of people—physiological, security, social, esteem,
and self-actualization

(i)Physiological (in the mind) needs

• The most basic and first needs to be satisfied, are the essentials for living-water, food, shelter ([Link]), and
clothing.

• According to Maslow, human devotes (give) all their efforts to satisfying physiological needs until they are met.

• Only when these needs are met can people focus their attention on satisfying the next level of needs – security.

(ii)Security needs

• -Relate to protecting yourself from physical and economic harm.

• -Actions that may be taken to achieve security include reporting a dangerous workplace condition to management,
maintaining safety equipment, and purchasing insurance with income protection in the event you become unable to work.

• -Once security needs have been satisfied, people may strive for social needs.

(iii)Social needs

• -Are the need for love, companionship, and friendship- the desire for acceptance by others.

• -To fulfil social needs, a person may try many things: making friends with a co-worker, joining a group, volunteering at a
hospital, throwing a party, and so on.

• -Once their social needs have been satisfied, people attempt to satisfy their need for esteem.
(iv)Esteem needs

• -Relate to respect – both self- respect and respect from others.

• One aspect of esteem needs is competition – the need to feel that you can do something better than anyone else.

• Competition often motivates people to increase their productivity.

• -Esteem needs are not as easily satisfied as the needs at lower levels in Maslow’s hierarchy because they do not always
provide tangible evidence of success.

• -However, these needs can be realised through rewards and increased involvement in organisational activities.

• Until esteem needs are met, people focus their attention on achieving respect. When they feel they have achieved some
measure of respect, self-actualization becomes the major goal of life.

(v)Self-actualization

• At the top of Maslow’s hierarchy, mean being the best you can be (reach maximum potential).
• Self-actualization involves maximizing you potential (give challenging task).
• A self-actualized person feels that she or he is living life to its fullest in every way

Maslow’s theory maintains that the more basic needs at the bottom of the hierarchy must be satisfied before higher level goals can
be pursued.

Maslow’s theory also suggests that if a lower level need is suddenly re-activated , the individual will try to satisfy that need rather
higher level needs.

Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory

[Link]’s hygiene factors,

-Which relate to the work setting (environment) and not to the content of the work, include adequate wages, comfortable and safe
working conditions, fair company policies, and job security.

-These factors do not necessarily motivate employees to excel, but their absence may be a potential source of dissatisfaction and
high turnover.

-Employees safety and comfort are clearly hygiene factors

[Link] factors,

-Which relate to the content of the work itself, include achievement, recognition , involvement , responsibility and advancement.

-The absence of motivational factors may not result in dissatisfaction but their presence is likely to motivate employee to excel.

-Many companies are beginning to employ methods to give employees more responsibility and control and to involve them more in
their work, which serves to motivate them to higher levels of productivity and quality
Various Theories of Motivation
Douglas McGregor related Maslow’s ideas about personal needs to management. McGregor contrasted two views of management—
the traditional view, which he called Theory X, and a humanistic view, which he called Theory Y.

(1) According to McGregor, managers adopting Theory X assume that workers generally dislike work and must be forced to do
their jobs. They believe that the following statements are true of workers:
1. The average person naturally dislikes work and will avoid it when possible.
2. Most workers must be coerced, controlled, directed, or threatened with punishment to get them to work toward the
achievement of organizational objectives.
3. The average worker prefers to be directed and to avoid responsibility, has relatively little ambition, and wants security
(2) Managers who subscribe to the Theory X view maintain tight control over workers, provide almost constant supervision, try
to motivate through fear, and make decisions in an autocratic fashion, eliciting little or no input from their subordinates.
The Theory X style of management focuses on physiological and security needs and virtually ignores the higher needs
discussed by Maslow.

Theories of Employee Motivation

McGregor’s Theory Y is a humanistic view of management

I. The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest

II. People will exercise self-direction and self-control to achieve objectives to which they are committed

III. People will commit to objectives when they realize that the achievement of those goals will bring them personal
reward

IV. The average person will accept and seek responsibility

V. Imagination, ingenuity (innovation) , and creativity can help solve organizational problems, but most organizations
do not make adequate use of these characteristics in their employees

VI. Organizations today do not make full use of workers’ intellectual potential

(3) [Link], managers subscribing to the Theory Y philosophy have a management style very different from managers
subscribing to the Theory X philosophy.

(4) [Link] Y managers maintain less control and supervision; do not use fear as the primary motivator; and are more
democratic in decision making, allowing subordinates to participate in the process. Theory Y managers address the high-
level needs in Maslow’s hierarchy as well as physiological and security needs.

Theory Z

• Management philosophy that stresses employee participation in all aspects of company decision making

• First described by William Ouchi

• Incorporates elements of the Japanese approach to management; trust and intimacy (togetherness/closeness)

• Managers and workers share responsibilities

• Participative management style (work together & involved in decision making)

• Long-term, often lifelong employment

Equity (Fairness) Theory

According to equity theory, how much people are willing to contribute to an organization depends on their assessment of the
fairness, or equity, of the rewards they will receive in exchange. In a fair situation, a person receives rewards proportional to the
contribution he or she makes to the organization. However, in practice, equity is a subjective notion.

Equity theory might explain why many consumers are upset about CEO compensation. Although the job of the CEO can be incredibly
stressful, the fact that they take home millions in compensation, bonuses, and stock options has been questioned. To counter this
perception of pay inequality, several corporations have now begun to tie CEO compensation with company performance.

Because almost all the issues involved in equity theory are subjective, they can be problematic. Author David Callahan has argued
that feelings of inequity may underlie some unethical or illegal behavior in business. Some employees may take company resources
to restore what they perceive to be an inequity (inadequate pay, working hours, or other deficient benefits).

Expectancy Theory

1. Psychologist Victor Vroom described expectancy theory, which states that motivation depends not only on how much a person
wants something, but also on the person’s perception (belief/opinion) of how likely he or she is to get it.

2. A person who wants something and has reason to be optimistic (positive) will be strongly motivated.

Goal-Setting Theory

1. Goal-setting theory refers to the impact that setting goals has on performance. According to this philosophy, goals act as
motivators to focus employee efforts on achieving certain performance outcomes.

2. Setting goals can positively affect performance because goals help employees direct their efforts and attention toward the
outcome, mobilize their efforts, develop consistent behaviour patterns, and create strategies to obtain desired outcomes.

[Link] 1954, Peter Drucker introduced the term management by objectives (MBO) that has since become important to goal-setting
theory.

[Link] refers to the need to develop goals that both managers and employees can understand and agree upon.

Strategies for Motivating Employees

[Link] modification involves changing behaviour and encouraging appropriate (right) actions by relating the consequences of
behaviour to the behaviour itself. It is the most widely discussed application of reinforcement (process of strengthening) theory.

[Link] to Reinforcement theory:

• ·Behavior that is rewarded will tend to be repeated

• ·Behavior that is punished will tend to be eliminated(remove)
• ·Two strategies may not be equally effective
 • ·Generally, rewarding appropriate behavior is more effective

Managers have several strategies that they can use to design jobs to help improve employee motivation. These include :

• Job rotation allows employees to move from one job to another in an effort to relieve the boredom that is often
associated with job specialization. Job rotation is a good idea, but it has one major drawback. Because
employees may eventually become bored with all the jobs in the cycle, job rotation does not totally eliminate
the problem of boredom.

• Job enlargement adds more tasks to a job instead of treating each task as separate. Like job rotation, job
enlargement was developed to overcome the boredom associated with specialization. The rationale behind this
strategy is that jobs are more satisfying as the number of tasks performed by an individual increases.

• Job enrichment incorporates motivational factors such as opportunity for achievement, recognition,
responsibility, and advancement into a job. It gives workers not only more tasks within the job, but more control
and authority over the job. Job enrichment programs enhance a worker’s feeling of responsibility and provide
opportunities for growth and advancement when the worker is able to take on the more challenging tasks.

Flexible scheduling strategies.

(i) Flextime is a program that allows employees to choose their starting and ending times, as long as they are at
work during a specified core period.
(ii) (ii)The compressed workweek is a four-day (or shorter) period in which an employee works 40 hours. Under
such a plan, employees typically work 10 hours per day for four days and have a three-day weekend.
(iii) Job sharing occurs when two people do one job. One person may work from 8:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.; the
second person comes in at 12:30 p.m. and works until 5:00 p.m.
(iv) Two other flexible scheduling strategies attaining wider use include allowing full-time workers to work part-
time (full-time => part-time) for a certain period and allowing workers to work at home (telecommuting)
either full- or part-time.

Importance of Motivational Strategies

• Fosters (encourage) employee loyalty

• Boosts productivity

• Influences pay, promotion, job design, training opportunities, and reporting relationships

• Employees are motivated by the nature of:

• The relationship they have with supervisors

• Their jobs

• The characteristics of the organization