1.4.6 Motivation in Practice

Motivation in Practice 

Key Definitions

Motivation: The way a business is able to encourage productivity and efficiency, and an overall good approach to work within their staff.

Piecework: When employees work in return for a payment per unit produced, receiving no basic or shift pay.

Commission: A bonus that is earned on top of a basic salary that is usually earned in line with an achievement in the business, such as reaching a sales target.

Profit Share: A financial bonus given to staff as a percentage share of the profits earned by the business.

Performance-Related Pay: A financial reward given to the staff who work at an above average level. 

Empowerment: Giving an employee more power and control over their working life, enabling them to make their own decisions about how they manage their time and work.

Delegation: The process of passing the authority for a task down to a worker in a lower position to give them more decision-making power.

Consultation: The process of asking and considering the views and opinions of the staff you manage to help inform the decisions made by a manager. 

Team Working: The attempt to maximise staff satisfaction and involvement in a job by organising employees into relatively small teams. 

Flexible Working: The way a business gives its employees more flexibility around their job over things like how long, where and when they work. 

Job Enlargement: A general term to describe the way a business increases the scope, or importance, of a job through either job rotation or job enrichment.

Job Rotation: Increasing the activities a worker does by encouraging them to switch between jobs of a similar difficulty level.

Job Enrichment: Providing employees with more opportunities for work within the business by redesigning the job to make it more challenging.

Remuneration: The financial rewards an employee receives, including any fringe benefits, such as a company car.

Flexitime: The way staff are given flexibility over their arrival and departure time at work, as long as the right number of hours are completed over the week. 

Kaizen: The Japanese concept of continuous improvements, a key element for any business.

Quality Circles: Discussion groups in which staff discuss a problem with the operations with the aim to find a solution to the problem.

Financial Reward Systems

Piecework

This means working in return for a payment given per unit produced by the worker. Workers using this would get no basic salary and they get no shift pay, meaning there is no sick pay, no holiday and no company pension. It is used mainly in small-scale manufacturing companies, such as jewellery manufacturing. Managers like it because it means they don't need to supervise their workers, all they need to do is to operate a quality control system to ensure the finished product is worth paying for. 

There are disadvantages to piecework though:

• There may be lots of scrap if the workers focus solely on their speed of output.
• There is no motivation for the worker to produce the best quality, only "acceptable" quality.
• Workers will work harder at times they want higher earnings, this may not coincide with times that customer demand is high
• By focusing workers on maximising their earnings by repeating a single task makes it very difficult for change to happen within the workplace, as they are reluctant to produce something differently.

Commission

This is a bonus earned on top of a basic salary that is usually given as a reward to employees. These are widely used to incentivise staff and motivate them to work hard. Managers of retail stores such as clothing shop will use commissions to incentivise their staff. 

Note that commission is not a motivator, Herzberg defined it as a Hygiene Factor. 

Bonus

It can be said that a bonus is an important part of remuneration for a business. A relatively small-scale bonus can be seen as a good thing - a nice way the business says "thank you" to their workers for working so hard. However, if they become big enough to become the focus of a worker's work life, this can cause problems with their work, such as encouraging the worker to become a 'money seeking robot'. 

Profit Share

This involves giving staff a share of the company profits, helping to boost the sense of involvement among the staff. Annual profit share can be good, but only if the employee is enjoying their job, otherwise they may not see it as something of value. A good employer knows that motivation comes from job satisfaction, and that profit share is only a way of saying "thank you". 

Performance-Related Pay

A financial reward given to those whose work is above-average. It is used for when the work achievement cannot be measured with numbers, and the rewards are normally given after an appraisal and evaluation process is done at the end of the year.  The normal approach to giving performance-related pay is given below:

1. Establish the targets for each member of staff/management at an appraisal interview.

2. At the end of the year discuss the individual's work achievements compared to the targets. 

3. Those who have performed outstandingly well receive either a 'Merit 1' pay rise, or a bonus worth, for example, 6% of their salary

Lack of Evidence for the Benefits of Performance-Related Pay

Even though employers enthuse over using performance-related pay, they are rarely able to provide evidence to show the benefits behind it. This indicates a problem with the use of PRP: the fact that it does nothing to encourage and promote teamwork as staff will be more encouraged to focus on improving their own performance. This risks the development of an unhealthy rivalry between managers in order to gain the 'Merit 1' pay rise.

Other Problems for Performance-Related Pay Systems

• Perceived Fairness/Unfairness: There is a big risk of staff suspecting favouritism towards those earning the maximum pay rise, damaging the sense of team spirit within the workplace.
• Perceived Basis in Human Psychology: The question can be raised whether the managers have a sound basis in human psychology and about whether PRP truly does increase staff motivation levels.

A key assumption about PRP is that the chance to be paid more money will result in a change in individual behaviour, resulting in an increased motivation to work.

So Why do Businesses Still Use PRP?

1. To make it easier for managers to control their staff

2. To reduce the influence of collective bargaining and trade unions on the workplace.

Empowering Employees

Empowerment

Empowerment means to have more power and control over working life, and being able to make significant decisions about how they allocate their own time. This involves giving the employee the authority to manage a task and also some flexibility and scope to decide what the task should be. An empowered store manager would be able to choose a range of stock that best suits the needs of the local customer, or it can implement a staffing policy that is different from the national store policy. It could lead to greater risks being taken, but also the identification and exploitation of opportunities within the workplace. 

Delegation

This is when the authority for a task is passed down to junior staff. The person who delegated the task is still responsible for it, but the junior manager is able to decide how to get the task done. This is only effective when the boss:

• Trusts the junior member of staff
• Provides extra training if needed
• Provides the resources that will be needed
• Stays interested in the task but does not intervene or 'micromanage'

When this is done effectively this motivates the member of junior staff as it shows the management trusts them and it offers the junior staff a new challenge. Effective delegation of important tasks is a sign of democratic leadership, as it passes the decision-making authority down through the business hierarchy. 

Consultation

This involves a manager asking their staff for their opinions and then taking these opinions into consideration when making important business decisions. Consultation is done successfully when the boss:

• Consults on important issues within the business
• Consults widely and deeply so that all full-time staff feel as though they have had their say in the decision
• Takes all views into account when making the decision, and explains how they have been taken into account - even those that have been rejected

When done intelligently, consultation helps to boost team-working and morale in the business. People want to be able to share their opinions with their managers, and sometimes this can help make huge contributions to improvements within the business. When done effectively, consultation is a sign of high-quality paternalistic leadership.

Team Working

This is the attempt to maximise employee satisfaction and involvement by organising employees into relatively small teams that can be either functional (they work together as a collective team to get the job done) or geographic. The key features of these groups include being:

• Multi-skilled so everyone can do everyone else's job 
• Working as a group to meet shared objectives
• Encouraged to think of the future in the process of Kaizen

Managers like team working because it offers high flexibility within the workplace, as if one worker is absent another worker would be able to fill in for them. Team working is also gives scope for motivating influences, such as job enrichment and quality circles. However, the business will not benefit if social norms within the team discourage effort, but despite this team working has still proven to be successful in many companies. 

Flexible Working

Parts of the workforce flexibility that could help improve staff performance include those that make it possible for talented staff to work effectively, even though they have other issues or responsibilities affecting them. An example would be flexitime, which allows those with small children or disabilities the flexibility to arrive and leave work whenever they want to. 

Job Enlargement

Research into workplace engagement shows that workers often feel trapped within the limitations of their job. To avoid this researchers and management have been looking into ways to increase the scope of the job - this is job enlargement. There are 2 main ways that jobs can be enlarged by managers:

1. Job Rotation

This involves encouraging a worker to switch between tasks of a similar level of difficulty in order to increase their activity. This doesn't make the job more challenging, but it gives variety to the job, which can reduce employee boredom. 

2. Job Enrichment

This involves giving the employees extra responsibilities and challenges on their job, as well as extra work and additional workloads. To provide job enrichment the employee must have a complete unit of work and a new sense of responsibility in order to give extra responsibility.