Workforce Motivation and Culture - Essay Example

?Improving workers’ motivation and culture: The case study of Star Construction Company (SCC Executive Summary: Motivation plays a fundamental role in improving the work behaviour of the workers in any work environment and organizational culture. Workers do the assigned tasks because they are motivated to do so by their intrinsic thoughts and attitudes that shape their personalities. Without motivation, no productivity is possible. It is therefore, extremely important for the managers to ensure that the work environment has all the capacity to keep the workers motivated for work. A lot of projects conventionally suffer because of lack of productivity of workers, and motivation is more often than not, the key reason behind that. Also, workers belonging to different cultures may have different reasons for lack of motivation and may require different measures to be motivated. In fact, every individual has his/her own needs that need to be satisfied to motivate him/her. In this paper, one such project has been discussed as a case study, which suffers from a lack of motivation in the workers. This multi-billion project involves construction of a condominium. Star Construction Company (SCC) has been hired by Unique Lead Builders (ULB) to construct the condominium. In this paper, I have proposed a framework to SCC which it can apply in its organization to improve the workers’ motivation and hence productivity so as to finish the project within the deadline, and avoid imposition of liquidated damages. 2. Terms of Reference – state clearly: Who am I? I am a Business Consultant. I have formerly done Masters in Business Administration (MBA). I have my own firm that offers consultancy to the clients and/or contractors for a fee. I have provided my services on a number of projects, and have done good business. My firm is quite popular in the market, and I am considered as one of the top business consultants in my region. Who is my client? My client is Star Construction Company (SCC). SCC is a Contractor that takes building contracts. Currently, SCC is busy constructing a condominium in the centre of the city. It is a multi-billion project, which requires SCC to retain a minimum of 2000 workers for the whole period of construction. Currently, SCC is lagging 5 months behind the schedule it was given by ULB in the start of the project. In order to identify the root cause of delay, SCC has conducted a self-audit of its performance. The biggest issue that the auditing team has come up with is lack of motivation in the workforce. Workforce’s reluctance to take interest in the work has declined its productivity, which has directly affected the schedule. The auditing team has suggested the General Manager (GM) of SCC to take measures to improve the workforce’s motivation so that their productivity may be enhanced and the project can be sped up. Why has SCC consulted me? In order to devise a strategy to improve the workers’ productivity, it is imperative that the issues workforce commonly encounters are identified. Unless the workers’ concerns are satisfied, they can not be made to work hard. SCC has, therefore, asked me to prepare a briefing paper which SCC may consult in order to solve its workforce related problems and increase their productivity. 3. Overview of the situation: SCC was given a work schedule by the client at the start of the project. The whole project schedule covers a period of 3 years. As of now, eight months have passed since the commencement date, and the productivity has been considerably lower than what was the demand of the original schedule. SCC lags behind the schedule to such an extent that the goal of no more than 3 months has been achieved in 8 months. The client has stipulated very strict rules against the delay. The liquidated damages will be charged at the rate of 1 per cent of the project’s cost per week of delay. Therefore, SCC can not afford to delay the project as a delay of only a month will consume 20 per cent of its profit. Accordingly, a delay of 5 months will leave SCC with no profit at all after a hard work of continuous three years. In order to realize the ground issues, the management of SCC made an auditing committee that would investigate the workers’ problems by conducting focus groups with them. Workers were encouraged to speak up their issues as this would pave way for the management to address them. Therefore, the workers actively participated in the survey. When investigated by the auditing team, the workers revealed a large number of factors that declined their motivation, and hence their performance and productivity. A vast majority of the workforce in SCC works in an informal manner. They are recruited by SCC on daily basis and are provided with no permanent association or link. The company does not own them. They are hired daily, and are dismissed daily. The workforce is not provided with sufficient social protection such as leave, workers’ compensation, housing or other health and safety benefits. There is no sick leave, weekends or annual leaves. Also, the construction workers are not provided with any health insurances. Hence, their competence declines even further as they fall sick or near old age. They have no retirement compensations. They are not provided with accommodation and transport to the site. Workers are recruited as casual workers and they are made to work under dangerous and complicated conditions with little to no benefits. Workers working in such informal way have no formal contracts with their employers, and are employed on daily wages. 60 per cent of the workforce reported having worked without any contract with SCC, while the rest of the 22 per cent reported having some sort of contract with SCC, but those contracts are actually nothing more than “gentlemen’s agreements”, only 18 per cent of the workforce had had standard written contract form with SCC. Workers said that in good companies, workers have one off day every week and they are also entitled to about a month’s leave on annual basis. However, workers in SCC are denied these benefits. The constant and never ending work demotivates them and declines their productivity in the work. Workers are never appreciated. Their work groups keep being changed by the supervisors. When inquired about the causes of lack of productivity, the workers revealed that they often waste time because of laziness, relaxation, breaks and lack of skill. According to the research conducted by Alwi (1995, p. 1559) on the Indonesian construction industry, lack of skills in workforce exaggerates the project cost by 3.2%. Apart from that, work is delayed while they wait for their supervisor, co-workers, machines or materials. Lack of material, tools and equipment, rework, absenteeism and interference are common causes of productivity decline. Design and instructional changes generate need for rework. Lack of material can, in most of the cases, be fundamentally attributed to difficulties in on-site transportation, inadequate site layout and material storage, inadequate planning and excessive paper work. Poor quality of work declines productivity. Many of the quality issues arise from inadequate design and faulty construction techniques. This also results in enlargement of the cost incurred by the contractor. In addition to that, there are many cultural issues in the field. Construction workforce is commonly very diverse with respect to race, religion, origin and culture. The construction work requires the workers to work together in groups. Quite often, members of the same group belong to different cultures with many conflicting traits. There are linguistic, political and cultural issues that give rise to interpersonal conflicts. The conflicts decline productivity. These are some of the issues that have caused a lot of decline in SCC’s productivity. In order to combat the issue, I need to study motivational and cultural theories and suggest a comprehensive and practicable solution to the problems that decline workers’ motivation. 4. Analysis of the situation: Prior to looking out for ways to improve the current conditions, I did a SWOT analysis of SCC. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats I discovered were as follows: Strengths: The company owns a contract of multi-billion project. It is a big project for SCC and the company can make a big name in the contemporary market scenario if it delivers the project to ULB successfully. ULB has also consented to make several more contracts with SCC in case the current project completes on time. ULB is a renowned client and working for ULB is indeed, a matter of great honour for SCC. ULB has paid SCC sufficient sum to maintain a heavy workforce on permanent basis. Weaknesses: SCC is a relatively new contractor in the construction industry with little to no experience prior to this project. The firm owner is a young lad who is himself a fresh graduate and has no deep understanding of the technical field issues. He assumes the posts of GM in SCC. He is eager to make money and does not realize how hiring the workers on daily basis is actually incurring him more cost than what he might have incurred if he maintained a permanent workforce. He has assumed full decision making power and does not involve lower level experienced managers into the decision making process. Opportunities: The project is located in a city where there is rapid availability of consultancy services including my firm. Also, the project site offers sufficient room for constructing temporary residence for the permanent workforce. The building is a condominium that does not consume much space horizontally, and protrudes vertically instead. The site is quite large and wide, and the whole workforce can be adequately accommodated in it for the period of construction. Threats: The current hiring practices and the organizational culture has raised many threats fro SCC. The company is quite likely to loose all profit in case the existing trend goes on for a few more months. The damage will be unrecoverable and the company will never be able to keep pace with the client’s schedule after that. Therefore, there is dire need to take measures in order to satisfy the needs of workers and motivate them to increase their productivity. 5. Review of literature: Before recommending the necessary course of action, I need to review several theories of motivation and culture so that the problems may be addressed through universally acknowledged theoretical knowledge. Motivation is “a zest and determination with a kind of excitement that leads one to persevere to reach greater heights” (Sarvesh, n.d.). Some of the most well-known theories of motivation are discussed below: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory: Maslow recognized five fundamental needs that every human being possesses. An individual’s willingness to work hard and develop professionally depends upon his/her fulfilment of the basic needs. Maslow categorized his five needs in a hierarchical order and asserted that an individual can not develop his/her personality according to a higher need unless the lower level needs are completely satisfied. The five needs recognized by Maslow are shown in the hierarchical order below: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Chapman, 2010). Owing to a lack of written contract with SCC of a majority of workers, they are not guaranteed any health safety and security benefits by SCC. Thus, their safety needs that only form the level 2 remained unmet, what to talk of higher level meets! Likewise, when the workers are not appreciated, their belongingness and love needs remain unmet. So they feel no motivation for work. Herzberg’s Motivational Theory: Herzberg has made a very unique contribution to the body of literature about motivation through his theory. A lot of managers think that if they remove the factors that demotivate the workers and reduce their efficiency in work, they can increase the workers’ productivity. Herzberg’s motivational theory negates this idea and asserts that the factors that demotivate the workers are completely different from other factors that actually motivate the workers to do their best on job. Hence, a manager can not expect the workers to feel motivated if he/she identifies and removes the factors that demotivate them. In order to motivate the workers in real sense, their psychology should be studied and ways and means should be identified and taken that may serve as motivational factors for the workers. This makes the cultural improvement of the organization a bipolar process, where strategies should be formulated to lessen demotivation and improve motivation separately. Equity theory: Equity theory of motivation assumes that workers improve, maintain or lower their performance as a result of comparing them with others that are in the same position as they. When a worker feels that the worker he/she compares himself/herself with exerts the same amount of effort and earns the same benefits, there is equity and the performance is maintained. On the other hand, when the reference person exerts more or less and is rewarded more or less than the worker, the worker lowers or improves his/her performance to achieve the state of balance. Also, if the reference person exerts the same amount of effort but is rewarded more, there is inequity. In such a case, the comparing worker either asks the management to improve his reward or lowers his/her performance because of demotivation of under-reward. Reinforcement theory: Workers display various behaviours in different work situations depending upon the conditions and influence of both internal and external factors. The Reinforcement theory of motivation emphasizes that behaviour that is reinforced i.e. appreciated is likely to be repeated by the worker. The Reinforcement theory of motivation suggests managers never to forget to appreciate a worker when he/she displays a behaviour that they deem good. Similarly, managers should always remember to abstain the workers from doing something that they do not consider good. Thus, a worker’s display of behaviour is influenced by whether it is appreciated or condemned by the manager. If the workers are praised for their good act, they will retain good traits in their behaviour and there will be a gradual improvement in performance. David McClelland’s needs based motivational model: McClelland has identified three basic needs that every worker possesses. The needs identified by McClelland are the need of power and authority, need of achievement and the need of affiliation (Gazzotto, n.d.). McClelland is of the view that every individual possesses each of these needs to some degree. Every individual possesses a combination of the three needs. Therefore, some require to be given power and authority to be motivated to work hard, some need to be affiliated and some require to be rewarded in order to gain motivation for work. In fact, the preference of need among individuals is influenced by the culture they belong to. Some cultures prefer authority over affiliation, while others value achievement more than authority. McClelland’s theory identified three needs unlike Maslow, who named five basic human needs for motivation. Theories of culture: Culture was perceived by many anthropologists in the past as a combination of many features. Many of them actually tried to study the mechanism of the diffusion of traits between different cultures. It was found that some, and not all, traits of one culture are diffusible into another. “Cultural evolution theory holds that traits have a certain meaning in the context of evolutionary stages, and they look for relationships between material culture and social institutions and beliefs” (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2007). 6. Solutions and recommendations: In view of the above mentioned cultural and motivational theories, SCC should take actions to meet the needs of workers in order to modify them. SCC should hire sufficient number of workers after careful testing procedure. Once competent workers have been identified and hired, they should be maintained as a permanent staff. SCC should use the space on site prudently. The site is spacious enough to accommodate the workers. This would satisfy their love and belongingness needs, safety needs and affiliation needs that are some of the most fundamental needs identified in all motivational models. Workers should be offered training courses so as to get education on how to behave in a culturally diverse work environment. The GM should seek advice from experienced managers working under him and involve him in the decision making process at least for this project so that he may learn and benefit from their experience. As a starter, he should focus upon learning than directing the learned. 7. Forecasts and outcomes: When workers will be hired permanently and they will be offered accommodation, most of the factors causing lack of motivation will be removed. Through gaining training, they will be able to avoid inter-cultural conflicts. As a result, their productivity will increase and SCC will catch up with the original work schedule. References: Alwi, S 1995, Factors influencing construction productivity in the Indonesian context. Proceedings of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, vol. 4. pp. 1557-1571, viewed 17 January, 2011, . Chapman, A 2010, Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs motivational model, viewed 17 January, 2011, . Gazzotto, SR n.d., David McClelland: Motivational needs theory, viewed 17 January, 2011, . Sarvesh, n.d., Motivation, viewed 17 January, 2011, . The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2007, Theories of Culture, viewed 17 January, 2011, . Read More