Employee Motivation & Performance

• Phil Jackson, after winning his 7th NBA title as a coach with players like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neil, says that he cannot motivate someone, but he can provide a motivating environment so that the players will motivate themselves.
• Focus groups at Intermountain Healthcare revealed that most front-line workers would not leave their jobs unless offered 20% more in pay and 30% more in benefits.
• Highly motivated and committed employees can help organizations compete.
• Employee commitment is difficult to achieve and is a distinctive competence.

Learning Objectives

• To understand what contributes to task performance.
• To foster high performance.
• To identify and correct the causes of unacceptable performance.
• Managers should supervise to help employees perform at high levels.

Formula for Performance

• Performance = Ability × Motivation (Effort)
• Ability = Aptitude × Training × Resources
• Motivation = Desire × Commitment

Diagnosing Poor Performance

• Questions to ask:
• How difficult are the tasks?
• How capable is the individual?
• How hard is the individual trying to succeed at the job?
• How much improvement is the individual making?
• Was the right decision made in hiring the person?

Motivation

• There is Performance and Motivation questions to consider when seeing if it is an issue
• Is the problem with Ability or Motivation?
• Old view of Motivation
• Satisfaction leads to Motivation Leads to Performance
• New view of Motivation
• Motivation leads to Performance leads to Outcomes leads to Satisfaction

Motivation and Performance

• Motivation begins with establishing moderately difficult goals that are understood and accepted
• Performance expectations set the standard for acceptable performance and hold the promise of rewards
• Performance goals should not be limited to sales expectations
• One approach is to establish appropriate performance expectations for individuals, and that is from the work unit’s performance expectations.

Goal Setting

• Good goal setting increases individual effort
• Goal-setting theory suggests that goals enhance performance because they mobilize efforts, direct attention, and encourage both persistence and strategy development
• Participative goal setting should consider individual and shared team goals
• Characteristics of good goals are to be:
• specific
• consistent
• appropriately challenging
• provide feedback

Components of Ability

• Ability includes:
• Aptitude
• Training
• Resources
• There are 5 tools for improving ability using:

1. Resupply
2. Retrain
3. Refit
4. Reassign
5. Release

Path Goal Theory

• Elements include leader's involvement, subordinates' expectations, task characteristics, and organizational structure to achieve subordinates' performance.

Performance and Outcomes

• Using rewards and discipline encourages exceptional behaviors and extinguish unacceptable behavior
• Performance is predicated on the use of objective, relevant, agreed-upon measures of performance
• Managers should improve performance with clear communication that “performance matters'

Motivation and Performance (4 of 4)

• Extrinsic Outcomes are outside the individual's control.
• Examples are money, fame, praise, and desire to avoid punishment
• Intrinsic Outcomes are experienced by the individual as a result of successful performance
• There are universal and individual intrinsic outcomes to consider

Best Awards Programs

• Give awards publicly
• Use awards infrequently
• Embed awards in a credible reward process
• Acknowledge past recipients in awards presentations
• Match the award with the culture
• Understand the importance of immediate, spontaneous rewards

Managers' Actions as Reinforcers

• Managers get what they reinforce, not what they want
• People do what is inspected, not what is expected
• The best way to change an individual's behavior in a work setting is to change the manager’s behavior
• Intrinsic motivation associates with higher performance, stronger persistence, and greater creativity

Management Tool Strategies For Motivation

• Disciplining involves responding negatively to discourage future occurrences of the behavior
• Rewarding links desired behaviors with employee-valued outcomes.
• Disciplining and rewarding are useful tools for fostering performance, and each is useful in the manager’s motivational repertoire

Considerations

• Management may be too soft on those not pulling their weight.
• Management keeps expectations at a higher group level rather than addressing an individual.
• Management is always blaming employees, even those that are exceeding expectations.
• Management reinforces behaviors that are being ignored in everyday practice

Interpersonal Skills

• Interpersonal skills contribute to fulfillment of employees
• These include:
• competence/mastery
• autonomy
• supportive relationships
• a sense of purpose

Work Design Strategies

• Combine tasks
• Form identifiable work units
• Establish client relationships
• Increase authority
• Open feedback channels

Personal Satisfaction Considerations

• Managers are to develop a sound understanding of the employees’ personal needs and motivations before adopting particular incentives
• Focus on reward salience by addressing individual needs
• Focus on perceived equity through social comparison

Hierarchical Needs Theories

• Considers a comparison of needs theories using Maslow and Alderfer
• Maslow's Hierarchy goes from Physiological, Safety, Belongingness, Esteem and Self-actualization
• Alderfer's Hierarchy goes from Existence, Relatedness, and Growth

McClelland’s Manifest Needs

• Need for achievement focuses on behavior towards competition with a standard of excellence
• Need for affiliation is the desire to feel reassured and acceptable to others
• Need for power is the desire to influence others and control one’s environment

Needs and Attribution Mistakes

• Assuming all employees' value the same reward.
• Assuming the manager’s preference for a reward is the same as the employee’s

Cafeteria Style Systems

• Allows employees to select from a “menu” of benefits, i.e., health benefits, insurance, etc.

Fairness and Equity

• Workers evaluate what they get from the relationship (outcomes) to what they put in (inputs) and compare this ratio to others in a comparison group.
• Workers who perceive inequity are motivated to adjust their own or other worker’s inputs and/or outcomes

Employees Expectations

• If I work hard, how likely is it that I will achieve the intended level of performance?
• If I perform at that level, how likely is it that I will receive the anticipated rewards?
• How likely is it that these rewards will be personally satisfying?

Behavioral Guidelines

• Clearly define an acceptable level of performance or specific goals
• Remove obstacles to reaching goals and give assistance and support with appropriate resources
• Make rewards contingent on performance
• Treat discipline as a learning experience for the individual

Behavioral Guidelines

• Transform acceptable behaviors into exceptional ones
• Identify rewards that appeal to the individual
• Check subordinates' perceptions of reward equity
• Provide timely rewards and feedback