Motivating the WORKFORCE

7/30/2019 Motivating the WORKFORCE

1/3

Motivating the Workforce:

Special groups present unique motivational challenges. In this section we look at some of the unique

problems faced in trying to motivate professional employees, contingent workers, and low-Motivating

Professionals skilled, minimum-wage employees

Motivating Professionals

In contrast to a generation ago, the typical employee today is more likely to be a highly trained

professional with a college degree than a blue-collar factory worker. These professionals receive a great

deal of intrinsic satisfaction from their work. They tend to be well paid. What special concerns should

managers be aware of when trying to motivate a team of engineers at Intel, software designers at SAS

Institute, or a group of consultants at Accenture?

Professionals are typically different from nonprofessionals.63 They have a strong and long-term

commitment to their field of expertise. Their loyalty is more often to their profession than to their

employer. To keep current in their field, they need to regularly update their knowledge, and because of

their commitment to their profession they rarely define their workweek as 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. five days a

week.

What motivates professionals? Money and promotions typically are low on their priority list. Why? They

tend to be well paid and they enjoy what they do. In contrast, job challenge tends to be ranked high.They like to tackle problems and find solutions. Their chief reward in their job is the work itself.

Professionals also value support. They want others to think that what they are working on is important.

That may be true for all employees, but professionals tend to be focused on their work as their central

life interest, whereas nonprofessionals typically have other interests outside of work that can

compensate for needs not met on the job.

The preceding description implies a few guidelines to keep in mind when motivating professionals.

Provide them with ongoing, challenging projects. Give them autonomy to follow their interests, and

allow them to structure their work in ways they find productive. Reward them with educational

opportunitiesadditional training, workshops, attending conferencesthat allow them to keep current

in their field. Also reward them with recognition, and ask questions and use other actions that

demonstrate to them that you're sincerely interested in what they're doing and value it.

Motivating Contingent Workers

The elimination of jobs through downsizing and other organizational restructurings has increased the

number of openings for part-time, contract, and other types of temporary workers. Contingent workers

don't have the security or stability that permanent employees have, and they don't identify with the

organization or display the commitment that other employees do. Temporary workers also typically get

little or no benefits such as health care or pensions.64

There's no simple solution for motivating contingent employees. For that small set of temps who prefer

the freedom of their temporary statusfor instance, some students, working mothers, retireesthe

lack of stability may not be an issue. In addition, temporariness might be preferred by highly

compensated physicians, engineers, accountants, or financial planners who don't want the demands of afull-time job. But these are the exceptions. For the most part, temporary employees are not temporary

by choice.

What will motivate involuntarily temporary employees? An obvious answer is the opportunity to

become a permanent employee. In cases in which permanent employees are selected from a pool of

temps, the temps will often work hard in hopes of becoming permanent. A less obvious answer is the

opportunity for training. The ability of a temporary employee to find a new job is largely dependent on

his or her skills. If the employee sees that the job he or she is doing can help develop marketable skills,

then motivation is increased. From an equity standpoint, you should


2/3

also consider the repercussions of mixing permanent and temporary workers when pay differentials are

significant. When temps work alongside permanent employees who earn more, and get benefits, too,

for doing the same job, the performance of temps is likely to suffer. Separating such employees or

perhaps converting all employees to a variable-pay or skill-based pay plan might help minimize the

problems.

Motivating Low-Skilled, Minimum-Wage Employees

Suppose that in your first managerial position after graduating, you're responsible for managing a work

group composed of low-skilled, minimum-wage employees. Offering more pay to these employees for

high levels of performance is out of the question: Your company just can't afford it. In addition, these

employees have limited educa-tion and skills. What are your motivational options at this point? One of

the toughest motivational challenges a manager faces is how to achieve and keep high-performance

levels among these types of workers.65

One trap we often fall into is thinking that people are motivated only by money. Although money is

important as a motivator, it's not the only reward that people seek and that managers can use. In

motivating minimum-wage employees, managers should look at other types of rewards that help

motivate employee performance. What are some other rewards managers might use? One that many

companies use is employee recognition programs such as employee of the month, quarterly employee

performance awards ceremonies, or other celebrations of employees' accomplishments. For instance,at many fast-food restaurants or retail stores, you'll often see plaques hanging in prominent places

featuring the names of "Employee of the Month." These types of programs serve the purpose of

highlighting employees whose work performance has been of the type and level the organization wants

to encourage in all its employees. Many managers also recognize the power of praise. However, you

need to be sure that these "pats on the back" are sincere and given for the right reasons.

What else can managers do to motivate high levels of performance from minimum-wage employees?

Again, we can look to job design and expectancy theories for some answers. In service industries such

as travel and hospitality, retail sales, child care, and maintenance in which pay for frontline employees

generally does not exceed the minimum-wage level, successful companies are empowering these

frontline employees with more authority to address customers' problems. If we use the JCM to examine

this change, we can see that this type of job redesign provides enhanced motivation because

employees now experience increased skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and

feedback. For instance, almost every job at Marriott International has been redesigned to place more

workers in contact with more guests more of the time.66 These employees are now able to take care of

customer complaints and requests that formerly were referred to a manager or another department. In

addition, employees have at least part of their pay tied to customer satisfaction, so there's a clear link

between level of performance and reward (instrumentality linkage from expectancy theory). So, even

though motivating minimum-wage workers may be a challenge, we can still use what we know about

employee motivation to help us find some answers.

From Theory to Practice: Suggestions for Motivating Employees

In this chapter, we've covered a lot of information about motivation. If you're a manager concerned

with motivating your employees, what specific recommendations can you draw from the theories and

issues presented in this chapter? Although there's no simple, all-encompassing set of guidelines, the

following suggestions draw on the essence of what we know about motivating employees.

Recognize individual differences. Almost every contemporary motivation theory recognizes that

employees aren't identical. They have different needs, attitudes, personality, and other important

individual variables.

Match people to jobs. There's a great deal of evidence showing the motivational benefits of carefully


3/3

matching people to jobs. For example, high achievers should have jobs that allow them to participate in

setting moderately challenging goals and that involve autonomy and feedback. Also keep in mind that

not everybody is motivated by jobs that are high in autonomy, variety, and responsibility.

Use goals. The literature on goal-setting theory suggests that managers should ensure that employees

have hard, specific goals and feedback on how well they're doing in achieving those goals. Should the

goals be assigned by the manager or should employees participate in setting them? The answer

depends on your perception of goal acceptance and the organization's culture. If you expect resistance

to goals, participation should increase acceptance. If participation is inconsistent with the culture, use

assigned goals.

Ensure that goals are perceived as attainable. Regardless of whether goals are actually attainable,

employees who see goals as unattainable will reduce their effort because they'll be thinking "why

bother." Managers must be sure, therefore, that employees feel confident that increased efforts can

lead to achieving performance goals.

Individualize rewards. Because employees have different needs, what acts as a reinforcer for one may

not for another. Managers should use their knowledge of employee differences to individualize the

rewards they control, such as pay, promotions, recognition, desirable work assignments, autonomy,

and participation.

Link rewards to performance. Managers need to make rewards contingent on performance. Rewarding

factors other than performance will only reinforce those other factors. Important rewards such as pay

increases and promotions should be given for the attainment of specific goals. Managers should also

look for ways to increase the visibility of rewards, making them potentially more motivating.

Check the system for equity. Employees should perceive that rewards or outcomes are equal to the

inputs. On a simple level, experience, ability, effort, and other obvious inputs should explain

differences in pay, responsibility, and other obvious outcomes. And remember that one person's equity

is another's inequity, so an ideal reward system should probably weigh inputs differently in arriving at

the proper rewards for each job.

Don't ignore money. It's easy to get so caught up in setting goals, creating interesting jobs, and

providing opportunities for participation that you forget that money is a major reason why most people

work. Thus, the allocation of performance-based wage increases, piecework bonuses, and other pay

incentives is important in determining employee motivation. A review of 80 studies evaluating

motivational methods and their impact on employee productivity supports this point.67 Goal setting

alone produced, on average, a 16 percent increase in productivity; job redesign efforts to enrich jobs

yielded 8 to 16 percent increases; employee participation in decision making produced a median

increase of less than 1 percent; and monetary incentives led to an average increase of 30 percent.

We're not saying that managers should focus solely on money as a motivational tool. Rather, we're

simply stating the obviousthat is, if money is removed as an incentive, people aren't going to show up

for work. The same can't be said for removing goals, enriched work, or participation.

Documents

Motivating the WORKFORCE