“Nobody wants to work like they did in the good old days.” “Half the problems we have around here are due to a lack of personal motivation.” “Workers just don’t seem to care.” Such sentiments are often expressed by many of today’s managers. However, motivating employees is not a new problem. Much of the pioneering work in the field of management, which took place early in the twentieth century, was concerned with motivation. One can even find examples showing motivation problems existed back in biblical times. One reason why leading is such an important management activity is that it entails ensuring that each member of a team is motivated to perform highly and help the organization achieve its goals. When managers are effective, the outcome of the leading process is a highly motivated workforce. Managers frequently ask the following questions: (1) what does it take to motivate my direct reports? (2) How do I get people to do things? (3) Why is motivation so complicated and difficult to understand? (4) Can basic principles of motivation apply to today’s individual employees and teams? (5) Am I motivated?
No two managers will answer these questions in exactly the same manner. Motivation is an individual phenomenon affecting each person in a different way. Although motivation continues to be a popular word, it is extremely difficult to define. Yet its importance cannot be overemphasized. In reality, managers are not evaluated on what they do, but, instead, on what they cause their direct reports to do. The mark of a successful manager is to be able to motivate people, causing them to advance their best efforts to accomplish and possibly exceed organizational goals and objectives.
Most knowledgeable observers in the field of human resource management (HRM) would agree that its major development as a profession came during the half century or so between the end of World War II and the early 1990s. As organizations employing as many as hundreds of thousands became dominant influences in the world of work and as questions about selection, training, work motivation, and compensation practices became more challenging in a growing, dynamic society, the need for professionally trained, skilled personnel became great. Also, despite occasional downturns in the economy, the professional growth of HRM took place against a general culture of prosperity, a belief that such good patterns would continue and even improve, and an assumption that work organizations should and would share in such growth.
Important too as HRM developed during this era was that the policies and practices developed and implemented were based in large part on the assumption that a desire for personal growth was the most important motivational characteristic of the workforce, along with the belief that more of everything (particularly economic outcomes) is better. Authors has referred to this pattern as self-enhancing motivation and has cited as illustrative of this type of motivation such actions as making choices that match and fulfill one’s personal needs, engaging in activities that foster self-growth, attempting to attain high levels of work performance, and working for goals that legitimately enhance oneself in one’s own eyes and those of others. Given the cultural context and the assumption of the dominance of this type of motivational pattern, it was a relatively short step for HRM professionals during this era to develop a perspective that reflected them. Characteristic programs of this type included job enrichment, career management and career development, self-appraisals and peer performance appraisals, and income incentives of various kinds.
Less significant as an influence on HRM during this era but still of some importance were programs were called self-protective motivation, defined as the desire to defend oneself from perceived threatening environmental and personal forces that might affect one’s sense of identity. Despite its importance, however, this need was generally viewed as less important than employee needs for growth, development, and achievement during the years of prosperity.
There were, then, these two patterns of HR practice. One, the more influential, assumed that the more important motivational patterns were desires for growth, development, achievement, and self-enhancement. The second, less significant as an influence, assumed desires for job security and self-protection. Both were recognized, and both influenced HRM practices. Less recognized was that the disparity in influence of these patterns of practice encouraged another important underlying assumption. This assumption was that HRM policies and practices could be developed in a manner that would enable the attainment of two goals. The first of these goals was to help organizations obtain their objectives. The second was that HRM could help employees meet their most important needs because the employees’ desire to attain positive outcomes (both intrinsic and extrinsic), that is, self-enhancement, and their willingness to work for them were congruent with organizational needs for effective performance. Furthermore, this congruence could be maintained and encouraged because of the continuing expected affluence. In contrast, rarely if ever discussed was that these practices and policies and the assumed congruence between employer and employee depended on these assumptions of continued prosperity and that other approaches would become necessary if the situation changed.
Human Resource Management System:
An organisation’s human resource development (HRD) system is a key mechanism for enabling the achievement of business goals through what has been argued to be one of the few remaining sources of competitive advantage ( 1988) – namely, people. It is also closely linked to national contextual factors. As such, the political and educational system play an important role in determining the types and levels of skills available in the labour market as well as in shaping national values and approaches to training and development issues. National context can therefore be considered a key predictor of organisational HRD practice. However, globalisation has introduced many changes, one of which has been the increasing presence of foreign multinationals (or MNEs) in host countries. Under such conditions, there is a need to compare the role of the host–national context to that of the parent in shaping MNE management practice.
Self-Career Management:
Self-career management programs are designed primarily for those individuals who view themselves as relatively independent professionals or “businesses,” rather than as organizationally dependent job holders. These are individuals who can and do make their own decisions about their careers, know their capabilities, and understand where they can find the types of work opportunities where they can “sell” themselves as a business or service. Self-career management is a different way of looking at oneself and one’s work capabilities. It is a mechanism for declaring oneself independent of an organizational control system but at the same time being willing to negotiate mutual terms of acceptability concerning work contributions to that system. Self-career management—thus defined as the giving up of relatively permanent organizational relationships in favor of more self-controlled career decision making—has become increasingly recommended to and by HRM professionals as a possible approach to dealing with challenges presented by the emerging world of work, a world still dominated in great degree by the use of downsizing as a management strategy despite continuing questions about its outcomes ( 1993; 1997).
Clearly, there are reasons for such positive evaluation. Self career management recognizes the tentative nature of a specific employment relationship while also emphasizing the need for employee skills and meaningful contributions and the opportunity to fulfill the desire for self-enhancement that is so important in the work setting. In addition, for the appropriate individual and the appropriate situation, self-career management also provides an approach to meeting the need for self-protection, because this can be negotiated by the individual involved. The key, however, is in the word appropriate. Self-career management is appropriate when the individual has or can develop both meaningful self-knowledge and the types of skills and abilities that are in demand. In addition,
Human Resource Management on Career Development:
A career is a pattern of work-related experiences that spans the course of a person’s tenure in an organization or their life. The two elements in a career are the objective element and the subjective element. The objective element of the career is an observable, concrete environment. For example, you can manage a career by getting training to improve your skills. In contrast, the subjective element involves your perception of the situation. Rather than getting training (an objective element), you might change your aspirations (a subjective element). Thus, both objective events and the individual’s perception of those elements are important in defining a career.
Effective career development is integrated with the existing HRM functions and structures in the organization. Integrating career development with other HRM programs creates synergies in which all aspects of HRM reinforce one another. For example, in planning careers, employees need organizational information on strategic planning, HRM planning. Skills inventories can provide this information. Similarly, as they obtain information about themselves and use it in career planning, employees need to know the career paths within the organization and how management views their performance.
Career management is a lifelong process of learning about self, jobs, and organizations; setting personal career goals; developing strategies for achieving the goals; and revising the goals based on work and life experiences. Whose responsibility is career development and management? It is tempting to place the responsibility on individuals, and it is appropriate. However, it is also the organization’s duty to form partnerships with individuals in managing their careers. Careers are made up of exchanges between individuals and organizations. Inherent in these exchanges is the idea of reciprocity, or give and take.
In this hyper-competitive economy increasingly driven by knowledge work, competitive success is often dependent upon the talents, knowledge, and skills of the workforce. Firms need more than mere flexibility in the deployment of the workforce; they need each employee to be continually adaptable on the job. In light of the demands for adaptability and responsiveness associated with the complex work and competitive environments of contemporary organizations, we would argue that a strong commitment to career development is one of the most important levers available to organizations for developing and maintaining competitive advantage. Where employees’ capabilities are most strategically important for the firm (e.g., knowledge-based businesses), career development becomes evermore strategically critical.
From a strategic perspective, Organizational Career Development (OCD) is not merely a tool for enhancing employee capabilities and performance; it is also a powerful retention mechanism. Organizations can simultaneously engage employees in the pursuit of organizational goals and outcomes and encourage ongoing commitment to the firm by creating conditions for them to develop valuable skills and competencies that will enhance their employability. Despite firms’ concerns about investing in the development of employees who have the potential to act as self-interested “free agents, ” research has actually found that individuals are more committed to firms when they “believe that they are being treated as resources to be developed rather than as commodities to buy and sell” (1989). For example, (2000) showed that an insurance firm’s investments in insurance agents’ general development were associated with greater agent commitment to the firm. Where firms provide valuable opportunities for development, employees, rather than opportunistically “taking the training and running,” are likely to be more committed to the firm than where such opportunities are lacking.
A survey of more than 400 mid-level executives in a wide range of industries around the globe revealed that those who were satisfied with opportunities to enhance their employability in their current firms were much more committed and intended to stay with their companies longer than executives who were less satisfied with these opportunities ( 2002). Further, the more executives saw opportunities within the company to realize their career aspirations, the more committed they were to their firms and the longer they intended to stay. Most interestingly, development opportunities were more strongly associated with commitment and intentions to stay than the provision of employment security and employment stability ( 2004).
(2001) examined these issues in the context of managers in expatriate assignments. In the highly competitive market for global managers, there is a reason why some companies in the current protean, “free agent” economy are unwilling to make these investments in the development of their employees: they are afraid that investing in the employees’ human capital will make them more attractive targets to other employers, who might hire them away. Isn’t there a risk of betrayals and unhappy endings if the firm invests in keeping its employees employable and marketable? response was that there is a paradox at work here: for the best development and retention of your people, you have to be willing to let them go. That is, you have to accept the fact that if you invest in employees’ development, not only will that make them more effective for your firm, but the visibility that comes from their success in high-profile developmental assignments will also put them on the “radar screen” of recruiters.
The psychological contract between employees and workers has changed. Yesterday, employees “exchanged loyalty for job security.” Today, employees instead exchange performance for the sort of training and learning and development that will allow them to remain marketable. This, in turn, means that the somewhat unidirectional nature of HRM activities like selection and training is starting to change; in addition to serving the organization’s needs, these activities must now be designed so that the employees’ long-run interests are served, and that, in particular, the employee is encouraged to grow and realize her or his potential. Like performance appraisal, training and development is an equally important element in managing organizational behavior and the enhancement of motivation and performance is the set of activities and processes that constitute career development and planning.
HRM on Training:
The technology of effective training evaluation is built largely on the knowledge of what and how to measure. The art of training evaluation springs from knowing why. There are a limited number of ways in which to address questions of training success. This fact sometimes leaves training practitioners feeling frustrated with both the state of evaluation research and the lack of guidance for implementing evaluation programs.
(1992) outlined a series of strategies for managing the transfer of training that focused on three time periods—before, during, and after training—and on the responsibilities of three separate organizational roles—the role of the manager, the role of the trainer, and the role of the trainee. (1994) also presented a model for the transfer of training that included pertaining strategies, strategies to use during training, and post training strategies. The strategies suggested by these authors highlighted the importance of viewing the transfer of training as a process rather than an outcome. This chapter will divide the transfer process into the same three time frames and describe strategies that can be implemented at each stage.
Other authors have developed theoretical models that examine the impact of different training input variables, such as trainee characteristics, training design variables, and work environment factors, on the transfer process (1988). Successful transfer of training to the workplace is not solely determined by any one factor—such as performance in the training program. The employee’s level of motivation and ability to understand and benefit from training are important determinants of the learning outcomes. There are also organizational and contextual requirements for the effective transfer of training. (1997) proposed a three-level model incorporating the individual level, the team or unit level, and the organizational level, which expanded how the transfer process was conceptualized. They suggested that at each level there are complex processes involved in transfer of training and also processes by which outcomes at one level combine to emerge as higher-level (that is, unit or team, or organizational) outcomes. Therefore, it is proposed that an integrated model of the transfer process should examine strategies that can be applied before, during, and after training at the individual, unit or team, and organizational levels.
Managers all over the world are making capital investment decisions. They are, for the most part, taking great care and putting a lot of thought and time into gathering detailed information regarding their alternative purchasing possibilities. Consider equipment purchasing in a production situation. Managers are considering which machine Is going to be able to do the job required and be the most durable. They are, after all, considering investing thousands, even tens of thousands, or even millions of dollars in the machine, and the decision has to be the right one because an employee’s down time costs the company plenty in terms of lost productivity; and replacement and retraining are also expensive and time-consuming. Investment in people needs to be viewed in the broad sense.
Conclusion:
Smart managers are becoming increasingly aware of the nature of their investments in people. People are the best investment. Chosen carefully, maintained thoughtfully, and fueled with adequate wages, fair hours, and a committed concern to nurture their emotional and career oriented growth needs, the people that make up the labor force will respond better than a well-maintained machine. Labor will produce efficiently, effectively, enthusiastically and will respond with dedication, loyalty, and a commitment to the company and the product.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment