Motivational strategies used in organizations
Many different scholars have agreed and disagreed on the ways employees should be motivated. Some of them assert that in order to motivate an individual, a financial benefit has to be foregone by the motivator whereas others believe that money is not a true motivator hence both financial and nonfinancial incentives are considered in the discussion below:
Financial incentives are rewards or payments that employees get in consideration of their contribution towards the organization. He adds that these are payments for labor as a factor of production (Cole, 1998).
Wages and Salaries
Lindner (1995) notes that, though monetary methods of motivation have little value, many firms still use money as a major incentive. She adds that wages are normally paid per hour worked and workers receive money at the end of the week and overtime paid for any additional hours worked for whereas salaries are based on a year’s work and are paid at the end of each month.
Piece Rate payment system
Chien-Chung (2003), noted that piece rate is the paying of a worker per item produced in a certain period of time. Chien-Chung (2003), asserts that this increases speed of work and therefore productivity. This is in agreement with the earlier revelations made (Taylor, 1993), who notes that though the employees will care less about the quality of their work; their speed improves with the piece rate practice of motivation.
Fringe Benefits Payment Systems
Doellgast (2006) advanced that fringe benefits are often known as “perks” and are items an employee receives in addition to their normal wage and salary. These include company cars, health insurance, free meals and education. He asserts that these encourage loyalty to the company such employees may stay longer with the company.
Performance related Pay
This is paid to those employees who meet certain targets. The targets are often evaluated and reviewed in regular appraisals with managers. Doellgast (2006), discourages the use of this practice of motivation. He asserts that it can be very difficult to measure employee performance more especially those in the service industry and that the practice does not promote teamwork.
Bonuses
Marler (2000), indicated that when your employees function as a team, you ought to think like a coach; reward the whole group for a job well done. He says this will boost morale both personally and collectively. He adds that employee incentive programs such as small bonuses serve to better the morale of an individual employee and that of a group as a whole by making them more satisfied. This is in agreement with Likert, (2004), study which concluded that since everybody wants to feel appreciated and special, for the work done, they can therefore be motivated by appreciating them and making them feel special. He adds that the more satisfied the employee is, the better he/she will perform. Mwanje (2000) believes that non-financial incentives are the most important motivators of human behavior in terms of the needs of human beings. He refers non-financial incentives to non-monetary ways of rewarding employees. They are opportunities that help employees in the accomplishments of the set goals. They include;
Training Opportunities
Hammer (2000), asserts that an individual will be motivated to do something if they have the mental ability and skills to accomplish it. He writes that when employees are trained, they get the knowledge of performing tasks and challenges and thereby feel less intimidated by their jobs/tasks.
Variable Pay
Marin (2006), states that variable pay or pay-for-performance is a compensation program in which a portion of a person’s pay is considered “at risk.” Variable pay can be tied to the performance of the company, the results of a business unit, an individual’s accomplishments, or any combination of these. It can take many forms, including bonus programs, stock options, and one-time awards for significant accomplishments. Some companies choose to pay their employees less than competitors but attempt to motivate and reward employees using a variable pay program instead. According to Shawn (2007), , the test of a good pay-for-performance plan is simple therefore it must motivate managers to produce earnings growth that far exceeds the extra cost of the program though employees should be made to stretch the goals must be within reach.
Stock Options
Previously the territory of upper management and large companies stock options had become an increasingly popular method in recent years of rewarding middle management and other employees in both mature companies and start-ups (Jones. 2001). According to Porter (2007), employee stock-option programs give employees the right to buy a specified number of a company’s shares at a fixed price for a specified period of time (usually around ten years). They are generally authorized by a company’s board of directors and approved by its shareholders. The number of options a company can award to employees is usually equal to a certain percentage of the company’s shares outstanding.
Factors affecting Employee Performance
Goal Clarity
Wilmot (2007), asserts that people must have in mind a clear picture of any end or goal they are to achieve. If this picture does not exist, they cannot tell if they are making progress or when they have completed the task or assignment, let alone if it has been completed properly. Knight (2008), agrees and adds that keeping the end in view has been sage advice for almost two thousand years. The time a manager spends in developing, communicating and clarifying the goals or ends to be achieved is time well spent.
Knowledge of Structures
Fred (2003), noted that figuring out what to do in a particular situation require knowledge of the structure of that situation. People must understand the elements that make up the situation, how those elements are connected to one another and the relationships that exist between and among these elements. Sara (2004), agreed and added that employees can only perform to the best of their knowledge and therefore those with good knowledge about the structures will perform better.
Feedback
Gerhart (2004), wrote that without information about actual conditions in relation to intended goals or results, no one can perform to standard. Such information is known as feedback. It informs progress, enables corrections and, eventually, signals attainment of the objective. For most hard tasks (that is, tasks involving tangible products or other immediate and readily measured effects of one’s actions), feedback is generally available without much effort on any-one’s part. We are aware of our actions and their effects. But, for soft tasks (that is, tasks where the effects of our actions are not tangible, immediate nor readily measured), the feedback loop is essentially open. This is especially true when the main effects of a person’s actions are the reactions of other people. Therefore, lack of good feedback leads to lack of correction and hence poor performance.
Mental Models
Sara (2004), asserts that absent feedback, people have no choice except to act in ways that are consistent with internally-held views or mental models of what is appropriate or what should work instead of externally-based information about what is and isn’t actually working. For this reason, it is worthwhile spending time working with people to identify the mental models they currently use in situations where feedback isn’t readily available. In some cases, this will surface mental models that are inappropriate or inadequate. In other cases, it might surface mental models that are superior to those held by most people. This means that employee performance does not only depend on the information provided to the employees but also to their mental models.
Employee working Environment
In his studies on performance, (Rynes, 2004) found out that performance might not occur if the environmental conditions are so unsuitable as to present insurmountable barriers to performance. He writes that most of us can successfully drive our cars on windy days but none of us can drive through a tornado. In less dramatic terms, missing tools and equipment, competing priorities, a repressive climate and other factors can interfere with our ability to perform as expected, regardless of our motives or our repertoire, the presence or absence of feedback and the quality of the mental models that guide our thinking and actions. In short, the task environment must support the desired performance; at the very least, it must be manageable.
Technology strength of the organization
Samuel (2010), was of the view that technology is primary tool that can be used to boost employee performance. Ha writes that improvement in technology accompanied by training of the employees can significantly increase their levels of performance because it reduces the stress that comes with doing the job manually. An organization which is in relatively stable conditions both internally and externally is able to implement its pay policy in relative ease yet an organization which is undergoing massive will probably find that it has to completely restructure its way system due to market pressure (Cole 1997).
Abilities, Training and Experience
Scott (2000), defined ability as the capacity to learn and perform the tasks required. He revealed that a good mixture of ability, training and experience is the root cause best performances. He asserts that best performing employees at least have two of the three factors. Cole (1997), suggests that its important to recognize the training fact since sometimes trained employees are asked to meet needs which ought to be met or to be dealt with in some other way that is replacing machinery. The main purpose of training in an organization is to equip the employees within skills to enable them deliver well their jobs and this keeps employees updated in the modern way of doing things (Hippo, 2002).
Work-Home Balance
Berman (2001), wrote that as much as an employer may not want to be affected by the personal life of his employees, personal problems can sometimes affect employee performance. Managers need to be sensitive to employee personal problems, and be prepared to discuss the issues with employees when necessary. If an employee requires time off to deal with a personal problem, then granting that time off will help to show all of your employees that the company values its employees.
Harsh Supervision
Fear is a great motivator for very short time, that is why a lot of yelling from the boss will not seem to light a spark under employees for a very long time. In turn, this implies that some employees are threatened from work hence having a lot of fear that make them not to effectively perform their required tasks at the required time (Gary, 2003).
The Relationship between Motivation and Employee Performance
Sanderson (2003), believed that empowerment creates motivation and energy in workforce to do their work efficiently and effectively (Amin. et al, 2010). Kuo et al. (2010), recommended that together the job characteristics of career revamp and employee empowerment are imperative characteristics in giving greater employee dedication and trustworthiness toward the organization and increased level of motivation (Reena et al, 2009). More the loyalty towards the organization and higher the motivation works best for the effectiveness and growth of a business.
In the long run, the effects of compensation and benefits diminish as employees begin to feel a sense of loyalty and organizational commitment. When employees begin to feel they are an indispensable part of the organization, they often become dissatisfied with their compensation and benefits. Finally, when employees feel they are a superior part of an organization, they typically believe that the organization owes them much more than what they are already receiving (MacDonald and Gabriel, 2013). At this point, compensation is simply the glue which holds many dissatisfied employees in place. Furthermore, it does not mean that there is a positive correlation between better compensation and better performance.
Posti (2005), inclines that people need motivation just as pieces of equipment need fuel and operators. This is highly demanded to ensure that they are always at their optimum working condition. In turn, this will absolutely lead to optimum productivity. People are one of the most important assets in business. They have unlimited potential to contribute in the achievement of objectives. Their aggregate productivity propels the operations of the company. It dictates the overall performance, which creates an attractive corporate culture.
Employers and owners need to create organizations where excellent performance leads to competitive compensation for people throughout the organization. Without rewards, a company is planting seeds for high turnover, low productivity and long-term failure. However, to reward employees that are not performing saddles an organization with higher payroll costs and encourages poor performers to stay while discouraging the employees that go above and beyond expectations (steers et al 2012). The impact of compensation and benefits on employee performance and organizational effectiveness depends on the existing compensation and performance management programs at an individual company. Typically, most employees respond to increases in pay and benefits with a positive and more productive attitude. However, the opposite is true as well. Sometimes, employees only notice rewards of a salary increase the day the increase is communicated to them, and the day they receive the first paycheck that includes the salary increase.
Dems (2010), said that the value of human resource productivity is a managerial concern. Employee motivation is the classic response on this matter. This has been utilized for ages by many different entities, small- and large-scale businesses alike. It fosters mutual growth in an employer-employee relationship. Indeed, motivation increases productivity. In the study (Wood, 2000), he examined the role of active exploration in an adult training program. Their results indicated that participants who were trained to actively explore the environment during training had higher intrinsic motivation levels, as well as higher performance on transfer tasks.
Compensation is one of the primary reasons for employees to seek employment. They are rewarded for their services and efforts that they exert for their organizations. They can be compensated in many ways for example salaries, holidays, bonuses etc. There are two basic compensation models; performance based pay and components based pay. In the former paradigm, employee’s compensation is either tied to the way he performs; if he performs better he would be rewarded accordingly (performance based pay) and on the other hand, non performance based pay; where, employee’s performance is not tied to getting rewards, rather the employee is paid or rewarded even if its performance is not up to the mark for example fixed pay and salaries (Taylor, 2005).
The relative importance of various factors used to measure the performance of employees should be related to how well each measure informs the principal about the employee`s actual performance (Lambert and Larcker, 1987; Banker and Datar, 2013). For decade`s employees measure have been used as primary indicators of managerial performance with prior research documenting a significant relation between employees based performance and financial compensation (Antic and Smith, 1986, Ittner, et at., 2013). Moreover, both the annual cash bonus and the sum of the cash bonus plus stock based compensation have been linked to employees based performance as well as numerous other attributes of the firm’s governance structure (Core, et al, 2011).
