Делистьянова Юлия

Надежда Федоровна

Motivating Employees as the way to Great work for the company

Knowing the principles and theories of the Motivation meaning every supervisor and every manager first of all looks for a special principle and a fullest answer to the question, it is: “How Supervisors Can Motivate?”, and “What they really can do for this?”

According to some theories, there are some practical ways supervisors can motivate. And at this article we are going to disclose them all.

First of all it needs to say, about the making the work more interesting. When employees find their work interesting, they are more likely to give it their full attention and enthusiasm. In general, work is interesting when it has variety and allows employees some control over what they do. Work can be made more interesting through job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment, and increased customer contact.

Job rotation involves moving employees from job to job to give them more variety. For example, the employees in a production department may take turns operating all the machines in the factory. Job rotation requires that employees have relatively broad skills. As a result, the supervisor or company must provide for cross-training, or training in the skills required to perform more than one job. The opportunity to learn new skills through cross-training can in itself motivate employees. The management of Highland Park Hospital in Highland Park, Illinois, developed a cross-training plan with the initial goal of cutting costs for nursing personnel. However, the response to the program was so positive that management realized that the nurses saw cross-training as a meaning to make their work more interesting.

Job enlargement is an effort to make a job more interesting by adding more duties to it. Thus, a machine operator might be responsible not only for running a particular machine, but also for performing maintenance on the machine and inspecting the quality of the parts produced with the machine. As with job rotation, this approach assumes that variety in a job makes it more satisfying, with the result that employees are more motivated.

Job enrichment is the incorporation of motivating factors into a job. Herzberg called the factory that enriches job motivators. Generally, an enriched job gives employees more responsibility to make decisions and more recognition for good performance. Thus, enriched jobs are more challenging and, presumably, more rewarding. For example, instead of requiring salespeople in a department store to call a supervisor whenever a customer has a complaint, the store might authorize them to handle complaints as they see fit. They would have to call a supervisor only if solving the problem would cost the store more than some set amount, say, $500.

When, modifying jobs to make them more interesting, the organization and supervisor must remember that not all employees are motivated by the same things at the same time. Thus, while some employees may eagerly accept the new variety in their jobs, others are likely to be less enthusiastic. Some workers may think jobs are being redesigned simply to be more work out of people for the same amount of money. A supervisor must be careful to emphasize the advantages of the new arrangement and to listen to employee reactions.

Work also can be made more meaningful by giving employees some contact with the people who receive and use their products (goods or services). Nurses and salespeople are routinely in contact with the people they serve, but production workers and accounting personnel have less customer contact. Sometimes a supervisor can arrange to have workers might be sent to visit a customer who is having trouble operating a machine the company manufactures. The workers not only would be able to help the customer, but they might meet the people in the company who use their reports to make sure they understand and satisfied with the reports.

Second stage it is about a having high expectations of the people who we tring to motivate.

Effective motivation can lead to performance beyond employees’ own expectations of themselves. When someone expects a lot of us, we often find that we can do a lot. When little is expected, we tend to provide little. In either case, the expectations are self-fulfilling.

The direct relationship between expectations and performance is known as the Pygmalion effect. The name comes from the Greek myth of Pygmalion, a king of Cyprus who carved a statue of a beautiful maiden and then fell in love with her. He so wished she were real that she became real.

According to the Pygmalion effect, a supervisor who says to an employee, “You’re so dense, you never get the procedures right”, will not motivate effectively. Instead, the employee will decide that understanding procedures is beyond his or her capacity. Therefore, a supervisor who wishes employees to set high standards for themselves must think and speak with the assumption that the employees are capable of meeting high standards. A supervisor might say, “These procedures are complicated, but I’m sure that if you study them regularly and ask questions, you can learn to follow them.”

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who came to prominence during the Persian Gulf War, described how he put the Pygmalion effect to work earlier in his career when e was in charge of helicopter maintenance. He asked how much of the helicopter fleet could fly on any given day, and the answer was 75 percent. Schwarzkopf recalled, “People didn’t come in at 74 or 76, but always at 75, because that had been set for them. I said, ‘I don’t know anything about helicopter maintenance, but I’m establishing a new standard: 85 percent”. Before long, 85 percent of fleet could fly each day.

Third one is consist in providing rewards that are valued.

That means the content theories of motivation indicate that a variety of rewards may motivate, but that not all employees will value the same rewards at the same time. The supervisor’s challenge is to determine what rewards will work for particular employees at particular times. This involves appreciating the needs people are trying to meet and the variety of ways a supervisor can provide rewards.

Of course, there are some limits to a supervisor’s discretion in giving rewards. Company policy or a union contract may dictate the size of raises employees get and the degree to which raises are linked to performance as opposed to seniority or some other measure. However, supervisor has great freedom in administrating rewards such as praise and recognition. Many supervisors have some discretion in job assignments. Employees who have a high need for achievement (McClelland’s theory) or are trying to meet esteem or self-actualization needs ( Maslow’s theory) may appreciate opportunities for additional training. Employees who have high need for affiliation or are seeking to meet social needs may appreciate being assigned to jobs where they work with other people.

Four’s step doing threat us how to relate rewards to performance.

The rewards that a supervisor uses should be linked to employee performance. Unfortunately, less than half of employees see a clear link between good job performance and higher pay, according to a survey of about 5,000 employees. If there is a connection, employees should be aware of it and understand it. Linking rewards to the achievement of realistic objectives is a way to help employees believe they can attain desired rewards. As Vroom’s expectancy-valence theory described, rewards are most likely to motivate employees when the employees view them as achievable.

The use of objectives is a basic way to link rewards to performance. For example, the management by objectives (MBO) system provides rewards when employees meet or exceed the objectives they have helped set for themselves. Thus, if a museum’s cafeteria workers are supposed to leave their work areas spotless at the end of each shift, they know whether they have what is necessary to receive their rewards, such a regular pay raises or extra time off.

Using clear objectives to help motivate employees is an important way to make sure that when employees try hard, they are trying to do the right things. Consultant and trainer Will Kaydos writes, “You only have to imagine a basketball court without baskets to realize that motivating someone without clear goals and measures is practically impossible”. In contrast, the Von Maur department store chain has built an outstanding reputation by linking challenging goals to rewards. Employees are expected to deliver exceptional customer service “for every single customer, every single day”. To reward such behavior, the stores hold weekly meetings at which thank – you notes from customers are read to employees. The subjects of those letters receive applause in addition to prize such as movie tickets or cash.

After this we should ask our selves treating employees as individuals

about Most of the theories of motivation emphasize that different things motivate individuals to different degrees. A supervisor who wishes to succeed at motivating has to remember that employees will respond in varying ways. A supervisor cannot expect that everyone will be excited equally about cross-training or overtime pay. Some employees might prefer an easy job or short hours, so that they have time and characteristics in a Gallup poll.

As much as possible, a supervisor should respond to individual differences. When a particular type of motivation does not seem to work with an employee, a supervisor should type some other motivator to see if it better matches the employee’s needs.

Table 11.5

Job Characteristics Rated Important by American Workers

Good Health insurance and other benefits 81%

Interesting work 78%

Job security 78%

The opportunity to learn new skills 68%

Annual vacations of a week or more 66%

Being able to work independently 64%

Recognition from co-workers 62%

Having a job in which you can help others 58%

Limited job stress 58%

Regular hours, no night or weekends 58%

High income 56%

Working close to home 55%

Work that is important to society 53%

Chances for promotion 53%

Contact with a lot of people 52%

Source for Table: Data from Gallup poll cited in Partricia Braus, “What Workers Want”, American Demographics, Aug. 1992, pp.30-3ff.

Encouraging employee participation is one of the important things to do too.

One way to learn about employee needs and to benefit from their ideas is to encourage employees to participate in planning and decision making. Employees tend to feel more committed when they can contribute to decisions and solutions. They also are likely to cooperate better when they feel like of a team.

Work or family directions established a task force of employees to develop its request form for flexible work arrangements, including which questions to use on the form. The company’s founders maintain that this employee involvement contributed to a widely shared belief that the process of granting requests is fair.

And the last one to talk about it is providing good feedback.

People want and need to know how well they are doing part of a supervisor’s job is to give employees feedback about their performance. When the supervisor tells employee that they are meeting or exceeding objectives, the employees know that they are doing something right. When a supervisor tells employees that they are falling short of objectives, the employees know that they need to improve. Most people will try to improve when given a chance to do so.

Praise is an important kind of feedback. In monitoring employees, a supervisor should look for sighs of excellent performance and let the employees know, in specific terms, that the good work is appreciated and that t benefits the organization. There are many ways to deliver praise. For example, a nursing supervisor might write a memo to a nurse, in which the supervisor comments on the nurse’s courteous manner with patients and how it gives patient a good impression of the hospital. Or, a police force supervisor might remark to an officer the officer’s paperwork is always complete and legible.

That is why it is really need to say, that what ever supervisor would you be, where never wouldn’t you work with your employees and subordinates, you should always remember to motivate yourself, then only motivate employee, and use for this all your own power, capacity and never spare with your time just to give for help to other next person, to have an friendly and the profitable firm for long.