Essays on Alternative options of employees’ motivation

Under current uneasy conditions of strong competitive environment managers have to find alternative methods to become more effective and financially prosperous. It goes without saying that the results of production to a great extent depend on the productivity of workforce. To be productive, the latter needs to be motivated and satisfied. These options are thoroughly studied by Gitman and McDaniel (2007, 320). The first newly adopted strategy is the compressed week. It is rather comfortable for those who wish to be freer in planning leisure activities, to avoid rush hours and other discomforts of traditional 40 hours per week. In 2006, for example, about 30 percent of the U. S. companies provided their employees with the option of 4-40 schedules (10 working hours a week), as the Society for Human Resource Management reports.

While compressed workweek is still a fixed schedule, many employees receive the opportunity to enjoy flextime (provided in 55 percent of the U. S. companies). This option means that the employees decide themselves when to work, just to fulfill some rate of working hours per week.

One more option is telecommuting. This is a widely used strategy today, as the information technologies are developing rapidly and provide a lot of new opportunities for working at home on a personal computer, communicating with the managers, colleagues and clients via special programs like Skype, taking part in online conferences and chats, and travelling with a laptop or even IPhone. This option is especially beneficial for women who want to combine career and family or for those people who have other kinds of engagement or are restricted in other ways. It goes without saying that all these technologies make the working process easier and more comfortable, but still they bring some problems with management and supporting corporative culture.

Another scheduling option is job sharing, “a sensible way to accommodate part-time workers and yield full-time results” (Gitman and McDaniel 321). It means that two employees decide together when and in what way they can substitute one another during a conventional 40-hour-per-week. Although “the company can draw on two sets of skills and abilities to accomplish one set of job objectives,” this strategy is not as popular as others. This is a good way out when a person wants to enjoy the benefits of part-time employment, but the job he is responsible for needs full-time execution.

For increasing job satisfaction and for reduction of absenteeism and turnover, organizational managers often apply the so-called job enrichment which means vertical expansion of one’s job. As Gitman and McDaniel (320) underline, job enrichment “attempts to increase job depth by providing the employee with more autonomy, responsibility, and decision-making authority.” It means that this program includes more intensive application of employee’s talents and skills and more freedom as for planning and control.

Another curious option is known as cross-training, or job rotation. This term stands for shifting an employee from one position to another in order to broaden his skill scope or in order to satisfy his own interests and ambitions. “The organization may benefit from job rotation because it increases flexibility in scheduling and production, because employees can be shifted to cover for absent workers or changes in production or operations” (Gitman and McDaniel 320). What is more, that is a good way out to provide training for lower-level managers in different functional spheres. However, this option takes a lot of efforts and financial costs, and also time to teach new tasks.

Conclusions

As we have seen, the main task for a manager at any organization of any size and model is to create and to support a productive work place. Motivation is obviously a means to reduce and manipulate the gap between the current state of an employee and the state he desires to reach. It means to provoke them in some specific way towards goal achievement – the goal specifically stated by the motivator, by manager. You can take a horse to the water but you cannot force it to drink; it will drink only if it’s thirsty, an old saying says. If we face the problem of incompetent workers, we should ask ourselves why this fact takes place. Maybe the job opportunities are not enough to attract truly competent specialists to take the position. Maybe the people you hire are just unaware they do not fit the position and see no reasons to improve their results. In any event, the problem is very often laying in the lack of motivation. Even if a person is skilled and well-educated, you won’t be able to receive good results from him if he is not interested in these results. Curiosity and recognition at least are something each person needs to push forward and not to stay passive. The task of a manager is to find a key to each employee to open the door to his motivation realm, and a talented manager has a wide range of opportunities here.

We have studied different theories of motivation as well as their practical advantage within different organizational and managerial programs and projects. The best way out is the so-called effortless achievement, when a well-motivated employee is eager to deliver good results and achieves the goal with the minimum of effort in a calm, balanced, gentle way. It goes without saying that well motivated employees are more productive and more creative.

All in all, to stay competitive and productive, much effort should be taken and much time contributed. Still, the good news is that it is not obligatory to make huge financial contribution in order to keep good employees working effectively. If you are aware of what the employee needs and expects, you will easily cope with lack of his motivation and achieve results through his work. So, incompetence as a widely spread problem of today organizations is not to frightening as it may seem, just if you know what to do and where you want to go, to lead the organization. Therefore, it is advisable to consider all the existing theories and follow the recommendations we have extracted and presented further.