Motivation, Stress and Communication - Essay Example

? Motivation, Stress and Communication Motivation, Stress and Communication Job for a Position within the Company The Home Depot Home Depot is a company, which was founded in 1978 by Arthur Blank, Bernie Marcus, an investment banker Ken Langone and a merchandiser Pat Farrah, whereby they opened the first two Home Depot stores on June 22 1979, in Atlanta, Georgia. The business covered sixty thousand square feet with spacious warehouse, which dwarfed the competition with more than average hardware store during that period, where they used empty boxes piled high on their selves in order to give an illusion of availability. Later they revolutionized the home improvement industry by offering their products in discounted prices that enabled their customer to save money (The Home Depot, 2012). Job Design Considerations as Human Resources Manager As a human resource manager in Home Depot, the a job design involves, which planning directing, and coordinating human resource management activities in the organization in order to increase the strategic use of human resource and maintenance of function like employee recruitment, compensation, personnel policies and regulatory compliance. The human resource manager has been charged with the responsibility of identifying staff vacancies and recruiting, interviewing and selecting applicants, allocating human resource, ensuring appropriate matches between personnel and providing current and prospective information to the employee concerning job duties, working conditions, wages, opportunities for promotion and benefits. Moreover, the HRM performs the duties of staffing, which include understaffing, refereeing, firing, administering disciplinary procedures, advising managers on matters related to equality in employee opportunity and recommending changes. Use of Goal Setting to Motivate Performance Goal setting can be applied for motivating performance through the Goal-setting theory of motivation, which was developed in 1960’s Edwin Locke, whereby it states that setting of goals is related to task performance (Lunenburg, 2001). The theory explains the specific and challenging goals and appropriate feedback that facilitates improvement in performance, since the goals offer guidance to employees concerning their needs, and the efforts that are required to achieve these objectives. These goals increase the willingness to work, thus making them a source of motivation, though there is a need for clear, particular and sophisticated goal as a motivating factor, instead of general, basic and vague goals. Therefore, the specific and clarification in the goals results to an increased performance, and goals are associated with deadlines for completion in order to avoid delays and misunderstanding. On the other hand, the goals are expected to be realistic and challenging, and it gives individuals a feeling of pride and triumph after attaining the set objectives, thus setting them up to achieve the next goal. In this case, a challenging goal is a substantial reward, and there is a passion associated with achieving, through appropriate feedback that guides the employees behaviors and contribute to increased performance is needed. Clarification, regulation of difficulties and attaining reputation are the purposes of feedback, and these assists the employees to work to facilitates more job satisfaction. There is a need to reinforce the increased performance through facilitates the sustenance of desired behaviors, thus creating the need for borrowing ideas from the Reinforcement theory of motivation that was proposed by BF Skinner and his associate. The theory states that the individual’s behaviors are functions their consequences and this is based on law of effect, whereby there are behaviors with positive consequence that are repeated others have negative effects, and they tend not to be repeated. The positive behaviors contribute to achievement of organizational goals while the negative behaviors reduce the efforts towards achievement of these goals. Therefore, in order to manage performance of the employees in the organization, the HRM uses the positive reinforcement, which involves giving a positive response to an individual depicting the desired behaviors, which are contributing to achievement of organizational goal. For, instance the manager can praise the employee for achieving a certain organizational goal in order to increase the frequency for the occurrence of the behaviors that led to this achievement. In this case, reward is deemed as a positive reinforcement, which stimulate the behaviors and the effect increased are due to being spontaneous. On the other hand, the negative reinforcement is used to for rewarding the employees involved in negative behaviors that result to hindrances in achievement of organizational goal. Therefore, it is a way of decreasing undesirable behaviors by administering a punishment through removal of positive consequences. For instance, in situations where employees break rule of the organization, the HRM can suspend them, thought the punishment can be equalized through a positive reinforcement from another source. The other option relates to extension, which implies the absence of reinforcement through reduction of the chances of undesired behaviors by removing reward for the behaviors. Analysis of Reactions to Stressful Situations and Steps to Manage the Stress Stress is a terms referring to a behavioral and biological science that related to a condition, which cannot be controlled by organisms, and it strains them beyond their powers of adaptability (Bourne & Yaroush, 2003). Nevertheless, there are numerous physiological responses, which are associated with the experience of stress and the stressful physical stimuli, whereby, the range of responses has a substantial role of preparing individuals to deal with the supposed internal and external stimuli, which is threatening the well-being of the individual. In fact, there are situations that are capable to establishing a physiological response, which are varied and sophisticated. In this case, human beings are stressed by psychological and psychosocial situations that require a significant cognitive processing of their interpretation. There are common challenges in situations, which are encountered by these situations, and emotionally related issues are linked with the strongest physiological stress response. The reaction to a stressful situation depends on the extent of the effect of the stressor that is involved in the degradation of the human performance. In some situations, such as emergency, there is a dynamism determines the environment in which various subsequent decisions can be made depending on the prior action. For instance, in the workplace the task environment can change independently due to employees’ action while the emergencies depend on time since they are made on a moment depending on the environmental demands. Therefore, the complexity of an emergency can be a form of a stressor in the sense that variables are not directly associated each other. Furthermore, emergencies are stressful due to the creation of the psychological pressures on the participants, and this creates acute conditions of stress, which subsides after the end of the emergency. The initial steps of managing stress involve an evaluation of the changes on behavioral performance efficiency, which are crucial in reflecting the human response to stress. Therefore, seeking ways of ensuring error-free performance is a fundamental criterion of work efficiency in a technological system. The other step involves formulating ways to avoid or control exposure to stressors after the beginning of work performance efficiency, whereby before attaining physiological limits, safety and productive system. The final step entails an evaluation of the behavioral performance, which supersede physiological evaluation or self-report concerning primary exposure criterion, though these measures offer significant supplementary information. Addressing nonverbal and cultural barriers to communication There is a substantial problem associated with recreation of a work environment, through the change of the organizational culture, in a situation where employees are not focusing on the opinions. However, there is a need to develop and environment that facilitates communication before the problem arises since different cultures have varying degrees of social acceptance in contradicting opinions from their employers. On the other hand, employees can have a feeling of not contradicting opinions from their management, or the management be involved actively in the process of making opinions being heard, thus establishing difficulty of eliciting reduced performance of the employees. In this case, clear communication in writing or verbally, between the employees and employers is needed in order to eliminate the challenges created by cultural barriers. The first step of solving a problem related to a long-term lack of clear communication is the creation of awareness, which is preceded by active steps aimed at improving communication that is initiated for the benefits of the employees and operations in the organization (Olynk & Widmar, 2004). On the other hand, non-verbal language, which entails the way a person, stands or carries themselves, holding of their hands and arms during a conversation and facial expressions have a significant effect on the communication. For instance, there are difficulties involved in a conversation where someone has their arms closed across the chest signifying a defensive pose. Therefore, in order to solve these problems associated with cultural and non-verbal barriers, there is a need to use several mediums of communicating with employees. Furthermore, there is a need to focus on the medium used in communication used while communicating with employees since each situation suits a certain medium such as face-to-face, over the phone, through text messaging or emails. Therefore, the management has the role of determining the medium, which suits a certain message in a given situation, for instance, a manager should not avoid face-to-face communication by using text messages or emails; instead, they should focus on selecting the medium that suits every situation. References Bourne, L & Yaroush, R. (2003). Stress and Cognition: A Cognitive Psychological Perspective. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Grant Number NAG2-1561. Retrieved on 15 November 2012 from: Lunenburg, F. (2001). Goal-Setting Theory of Motivation. International Journal of Management, Business and Administration. 15(1), Retrieved on 15 November 2012 from:< http://www.nationalforum.com/Electronic%20Journal%20Volumes/Lunenburg,%20Fred%20C.%20Goal-Setting%20Theoryof%20Motivation%20IJMBA%20V15%20N1%202011.pdf> Olynk, N. & Widmar, D. (2004). Identifying and Addressing Barriers to Communication. Fact Sheet. Retrieved on 15 November 2012 from:   The Home Depot. (2012). Our History. Retrieved on 15 November 2012 from:   Read More