MOTIVATIONAL TECHNIQUES
In making sense of motivational techniques, the forces must converge in order to form a closed-loop process. It must be two way either top-down or bottom-up. The paper will present three existing motivational techniques: alternative work schedules, stress management and leadership styles. As intended, the paper will address the strengths and weaknesses of the three and recommend other motivational strategies in the latter part.
Greatly affecting an employee’s ability to balance work and family responsibilities, alternative work schedules (AWS) programs allow employees to work several types of work schedules other than the traditional schedule for the purpose of improving operations, enhancing personnel recruitment and retention, reducing absenteeism and overtime expenses and allowing the employees the opportunity to improve job satisfaction and quality of work life. The benefits are immense as it can ensure the strong commitment of corporate management to the process and the associated changes, review the organization’s strategic plan, identify positions that are suitable for flexible work arrangements, make effective communication between employees and supervisors a priority while also ensuring cooperation and establishing trust (McCampbell, 1996).
According to the majority of AWS users, the strategy allows both employees and employers to fulfill their respective objectives without sacrificing quality. On the other hand, there are category-specific drawbacks of the AWS and that their effects on job attitudes, behaviours and organizational effectiveness are unclear. We can only assume that the tasks and KSAs are not fully utilized as the changes for effective job performance change with the changes in the job schedule. There are also specific areas of organizations that are tended to decline when it comes to efficiency such as teamworking, selecting person-team fit, multi-sourcing of performance evaluation and cross-functional proficiency (Hammer and Barbera, 1997). Despite the satisfactory record, professionals continue to doubt the credibility of AWS as a viable option for serious, career-minded individuals. For instance, from the same survey conducted by Karen Hooks 37% of employees who embraces the practice of AWS believed that their careers were damaged as employers see them as uncompetitive to some degree or being less than upwardly mobile (77%). As such, there had been the crisis of confidence when it comes to the system (1990).
If work schedules are not properly managed as exacerbated by other areas poorly functioning, these could lead to stress and other health issues in the workplace. As such, stress is a major problem for people belonging in fast-paced industries causing severe health conditions. Technically, all businesses have people who suffer from stress which could also mean that the organization would suffer in the long run and the employees’ families as well. Evidently, the downsides of stress have trickledown effects whereby the organization is just a portion. Stress is often driven by employee workload that jeopardizes the employee’s productivity in return. Managing stress in the business must be a priority then in order to boost the process’ strength towards participation in meaningful experiences, enjoy changes in routine, meet new people, realize own self interests build new skills, prove their worth, be part of the team effort with disruptions and receive internal satisfaction from work well done (Smith and Green, 1993).
Leadership styles, further, could either contribute to employees’ burden or performance. Leadership can be a source of motivation as it can influence a certain degree of motivation though motivation can also be influenced by changing ambitions and the degree of socialization with the leaders. The strong points differ for individual leadership style and mixed styles of leadership. For instance, limited supervision directs self motivation whereas worker with decision-making responsibilities deal with team motivation. Both can be based on creativity and workplace inventiveness leading to independence, achievement and thriving on proactive changes. On the other hand, when leadership is tended to be contradicting with individual needs, the motivation of the people will by and large depend on the skills of the leaders and the work environment he created. High levels of supervision and command-and-control are intrinsically motivated by goals, reward and recognition that are based on opportunity, materialism and social status which may lead to challenging status quo, high levels of dependency and resistance to changes (Bass, 2000).
There are themes unique to the three motivational techniques: individual performance and productivity as vehicle for organizational performance and productivity; the role of the workplace environment and that organizations are ever-changing and dynamic by nature. Nonetheless, the weaknesses of the three techniques are unique to the kind yet it can be reconciled when the three are integrated. Work experience, physical work conditions, lack of control over work content and processes, unrealistic demands and lack of understanding by the management are the underlying conditions. These resulted in alteration of working conditions and processes and strong control from the management.
Realizing the matter, there are basic motivational technique that leaders, managers and supervisors tend to overlook but may have significant impact to employees’ performance and productivity. In helping people reach their full potential, whenever you catch them doing something ‘approximately’ right, it would only be great to give them the one-minute praise until they can eventually learn to do it exactly. The ‘one-minute reprimand that motivates would be also applicable to eliminate the wrong behaviour. Cautiously though the focus must be on the performance and/or behaviour and not the person. In taking effective disciplinary actions, it would be plausible to describe specific situation, let the individual give reasons, listen and respond to feelings, indicate the disciplinary action to take, explain rationale, agree on solution and time table on improvement, discuss consequences of improvement or continued lack of it and express confidence that situation will improve.
References
Bass, B. M. (2000). The Future of Leadership in Learning Organizations. Journal of Leadership Studies, 7(3), 18.
Hammer, L. B. & Barbera, K. M. (1997). Toward an Integration of Alternative Work. Human Resource Planning, 20(2), 28.
Hooks, K. L. (1990). Let’s Give Alternatiev Work Schedules a Chance. Journal of Accountancy, 170(1), 81.
McCampbell, A. S. (1996). Benefits Achieved through Alternative Work Schedules. Human Resource Planning, 19.
Motivations and Leadership Styles. Retrieved on 26 May 2008 from http://www.motivation-tools.com/workplace/leadership_styles.htm.
Smith, A. C. & Green, F. B. (1993). Managing Employees as If They Were Volunteers. SAM Advanced Management Journal, 58(3), 42.
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