CHAPTER 6

 APPLIED MOTIVATION PRACTICES

 OUTLINE

I.                    THE MEANING OF MONEY IN THE WORKPLACE

Money is more than just an economic medium of exchange in the employment relationship; it is a symbol with much deeper and more complex meaning.

A.      Money and Employee Needs

1.       Money is strongly linked to the fulfillment of existence needs because it allows us to buy food and shelter.

2.       People see money as a symbol of respect and status.

B.      Money Attitudes and Values

1.       Money is associated with greed, avarice, and generosity.

2.       Cultural values seem to influence attitudes toward money.

C.      Money and self-identity

1.       People tend to identify themselves in terms of their ownership and management of money.

2.       Money and financial rewards do much more than pay employees back for their contributions.

II.                  TYPES OF REWARDS AND THEIR OBJECTIVES

A.      Membership and Seniority-Based Rewards

1.       The largest portion of most paychecks is based on membership and seniority.

2.       Advantages and Disadvantages of Rewards

a.       Membership-based rewards may attract job applicants, particularly when the size of the reward increases with seniority.  However, there are disadvantages:

·         They discourage poor performers from quitting.

·         They do not directly motivate job performance.

·         They discourage people from leaving the organization.

b.       Seniority-based rewards reduce turnover because the cost of quitting increases with the employer’s length of service. 

B.      Job Status-Based Rewards

1.       Job evaluation assesses the worth of each job within the organization.

2.       Job evaluation and job status-based pay motivate employees to compete for positions further up the organizational hierarchy.

a.       They try to maintain internal equity –they try to make pay levels fair across different jobs within the organization.

b.       It tries to minimize pay discrimination by ensuring that jobs dominated by women receive similar pay as jobs dominated by men.

c.        Job status-based pay and benefits create a psychological distance between employees and management.

C.      Competency-Based Rewards

1.       Competencies are the skills, knowledge, and other underlying characteristics that lead to superior performance.

2.       Skill-based pay plans represent a variation of competency-based pay with employees earning higher pay rates with the number of skill modules they have mastered.

3.       Competency-based rewards improve workforce flexibility because employees possess a variety of skills to move into different jobs as demands require.

4.       One potential problem with competency-based pay is that measuring competencies can be subjective, particularly where they are personality traits or values.

D.      Performance-Based Rewards

1.       Individual rewards

a.       Piece rate calculates pay by the number of units the employee produces.

b.       Commissions pay people based on sales volume rather than units produce.

c.        Royalties pay individuals a percentage of revenue from the resource or work ascribed to them.

d.       Merit pay involves increasing the individual’s pay based on performance appraisal results.

2.       Team rewards

a.       Gainsharing plan motivates team members to reduce costs and increase labor efficiency in their work progress.

b.       Gainsharing plans tend to improve team dynamics and pay satisfaction.

3.       Organizational rewards

a.       Employee stock ownership plans (ESOP’s) encourage employees to buy shares in the company, usually at discounted price or a no-interest loan from the company.

b.       Stock options are variations of ESOP’s, which give employees the right to purchase company stock at a future date at a predetermined price.

c.        Profit-sharing plans pay bonuses to employees based on the previous year’s level of corporate profits.

d.       The main problem with organizational level rewards is that employees often perceive a weak connection between individual performance and corporate profits or the value of company shares.

E.       Improving Reward Effectiveness

1.       Criticisms of performance-based rewards

a.       These rewards distract employees from the motivation that comes from serving customers or achieving challenging objectives.

b.       They can potentially create relationship problems.

c.        They can discourage creativity and risk taking because employees are less likely to explore new opportunities.

2.       Link rewards to performance

a.       Employees with better performance should be rewarded more than those with poorer performance.

b.       The pay-for-performance linkage can be improved by minimizing biases in pay systems. 

c.        Subjective measures are necessary, companies should rely on multiple sources of information.

3.       Ensure that rewards are relevant

4.       Use team rewards for interdependent jobs

5.       Ensure rewards are valued

6.       Watch out for unintended consequences

F.       Beyond Money and Financial Rewards

1.       Money isn’t the only thing that motivates people to join an organization.

2.       Some companies motivate employees by designing interesting and challenging jobs.

III.               JOB DESIGN

Job design refers to the process of assigning tasks to a job, including the interdependency of those tasks with other jobs.

A  job is a set of tasks performed by one person.

IV.                JOB DESIGN AND WORK EFFICIENCY

A.      Definitions

1.       Job specialization occurs when the work required to perform a job is divided into specific tasks, each person specializing in one of those duties.

2.       Horizontal job specialization involves dividing the physical behaviors required to provide a product or service into different jobs.

3.       Vertical job specialization refers to separating physical tasks from the administration of these tasks.

B.      Scientific Management

1.       Frederick W. Taylor introduced this concept which involves systematically partitioning work into its smallest elements and standardizing tasks to achieve maximize efficiency.

2.       Taylor popularized many organizational practices that are commonly found today, such as goal setting, employee training, and incentive systems.

C.      Problems with Job Specialization

1.       Job specialization tries to increase work efficiency, but it doesn’t necessarily improve job performance.

2.       Some companies offer discontentment pay – to compensate for the job dissatisfaction of narrowly defined work.

3.       Job specialization costs more in terms of higher turnover, absenteeism, sabotage, and mental health problems.

V.                  JOB DESIGN AND WORK MOTIVATION

The job characteristics model details the motivational properties of jobs as well as specific personal and organizational consequences of these properties.

A.      Core Job Characteristics

1.       Skill variety  -- refers to using different skills and talents to complete a variety of work activities.

2.       Task identity – degree to which a job requires completion of a whole or identifiable piece of work, such as doing something from beginning to end.

3.       Task significance – degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the organization and/or larger society.

4.       Autonomy – the degree to which the job provides freedom, independence, and discretion in scheduling the work.

5.       Job feedback – the degree to which employees can tell how well they are doing based on direct sensory information from the job itself.

B.      Critical Psychological States

1.       Experienced meaningfulness

2.       Experienced responsibility

3.       Knowledge of results

C.      Individual Differences

1.       Job redesign doesn’t increase work motivation for everyone in every situation because it tends to increase stress and reduce job performance.

2.       A second condition is that employees must be reasonably satisfied with their work environment.

VI.                INCREASING WORK MOTIVATION THROUGH JOB DESIGN

A.      Job Rotation

1.       The practice of moving employees from one job to another.

2.       Job rotation would occur where employees move around those three jobs every few hours or days.

B.      Job Enlargement

1.       Combines tasks into one job.

2.       Significantly improves work efficiency and flexibility.

 

C.      Job Enrichment

1.       Occurs when employees are given more responsibility for scheduling, coordinating, and planning their own work.

2.       Relates directly to vertical job loading because it reverses vertical job specialization.

D.      Empowering employees

1.       Empowerment is a feeling of control and self-efficacy that emerges when people are given power in a previously powerless situation.

2.       Employees are given autonomy – the freedom, independence, and discretion over their work activities.

E.       Forming natural work units

·         A way to enrich jobs is to group tasks into a natural grouping, such as completing a whole task.

F.       Establishing client relationships

·         It puts employees in direct contact with their clients rather than using the supervisor as a go-between.

VII.             JOB DESIGN PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS

A.      Obstacles in Job Design

1.       Objective measures of job characteristics are expensive, and the perceived job characteristics measures typically used by scholars and consultants.

2.       Job design interventions also face resistance.

3.       Labor union leaders have been bitter foes of job specialization and scientific management.

4.       There is difficulty finding the ideal balance between job enrichment and specialization.

VIII.           MOTIVATING YOURSELF THROUGH SELF-LEADERSHIP

The emerging view is that employees should manage themselves most of the time through self-leadership – the process of influencing oneself to establish the self-direction and self-motivation needed to perform a task.

A.      Personal Goal Setting

·         Effective organizations establish norms whereby employees have a natural tendency to set their own goals to motivate themselves.

B.      Constructive Thought Patterns

1.       Self-talk refers to any situation in which we talk to ourselves about our won thoughts and actions. 

2.       Mental imagery is the process of mentally practicing a task and imagining that it will be successfully performed.

C.      Designing Natural Rewards

D.      Self-Monitoring

E.       Self-Reinforcement