How to Improve Workers Competency - Literature review Example

?How to improve workers’ competency? Literature Review: Competent workforce has always been the key driving factor of a successful business. Owners of the business can not do much more than financing the project and setting the pattern. It is the workers that work on the grass root level and make things happen in an organizational context. Therefore, workforce’s competency means a lot to the owners and everybody who is involved in the organizational setup. In order to improve the competency of workforce, it is imperative that workers are given the right kind of atmosphere to work in and their needs are adequately addressed by the top management. This paper tends to identify factors that limit the competency of workforce in an organization and suggests ways in which the competency of workers can be enhanced. The needs of workers, if fully met, can play a fundamental role in improving their competency at work. Competency is a very broad term and has been interpreted by philosophers in different ways. Some people have categorized competency into different types; “The competences required of an occupation include both conceptual (cognitive, knowledge and understanding) and operational (functional, psycho-motor and applied skill) competences” (Deist and Winterton, 2005). Others have resorted to defining the competency itself without any reference to its types. There is little to no consensus upon a unique definition of competency, and people generally vary in their interpretation of competency. Nonetheless, for the scope of this literature review, one definition of competency needs to be chosen from among a vast majority of sources. In their book, Stern and Kemp (2004) have referred to competency as a product of three traits, which are an individual’s skill or knowledge, motivation and qualities in the personality. For the scope of this research, this definition will be taken forward and factors affecting workers’ competency will be analyzed with respect to their skill, motivation and personality traits. Workers develop their skill as a result of their years of schooling and training that they receive upon a specific field of their choice, that later becomes their profession. Different students get educated in the same educational setup but vary in their knowledge of the subject. This essentially tells that there are one or more than one factors in addition to the years of schooling and training that play a decisive role in the development of skill in an individual. Such factors include but are not limited to a student’s interest in the studies, conflict between the environment of school and that of the home, willingness of the parents to get their child educated, affordability of parents, the extent of time a student can dedicate to studies given the responsibilities towards family, and the psychology of the student. All of these factors and many more mutually shape a student’s level of association with studies. In order to make sure that a company benefits from the services of a highly knowledgeable and skilled workforce, the first step management can take is to be very critical in the selection of employees. This requires great contribution of the human resource department in the organization. The selection procedure needs to be very well developed so that a highly skilled workforce is made part of the organization at the outset. Once the workers have been hired, managers can improve their skill by providing them with on-job education and training. This practice has become common in a vast majority of world class enterprises. Development of the employees’ skill is considered vital in order to gain competitive advantage over contemporaries in the market. A lot of companies make their employees undergo regular training session on the job. Although it does incur the owners some cost in the start, yet the loss is made up in the long run as workers’ competency in work is enhanced and they are able to perform in a better way. Motivation, like competency is also a very broad term. It can be defined as, “forces acting on or within a person that cause the arousal, direction, and persistence of goal-directed, voluntary effort” (Barnet, 2011). Different theories have historically surfaced to explain the concept of motivation. These theories identify factors that inculcate motivation in an individual so that he/she is able to deliver his/her best. On such theory is discussed below: Abraham Maslow presented the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory that is frequently referred to for the illustration of the process of development of motivation in the workers. The theory presents a very coherent explanation of the needs of a worker and sets the needs in an orderly fashion so that they get classified according to their importance for an employee. This is one theory that people can relate to as it tends to put both of their identifiable and unidentifiable behaviors into black and white. Being a humanistic psychologist, Maslow believed that certain mechanical forces control human beings which may either be of “stimuli and reinforcements (behaviorism) or of unconscious instinctual impulses (psychoanalysis)” (Simons, Irwin, and Drinnien, 1987). Humanistic psychologists commonly think that ll people tend to achieve higher and higher level of skills. In his theory, Maslow has characterized human needs into five types and has placed them in a hierarchical order. They are visible in the figure below: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Chapman, 2010). At the base of the triangle are the physiological needs. These needs include the basic necessities of life like food, air and water etc. Life is not possible without these. Accordingly, unless the physiological and biological needs are met, an individual can not survive. Safety needs come after them, which include protection and security etc. These days, because of economic recession, a lot of employees fear being withdrawn from service as more and more companies are downsizing in order to maximize the profits and minimize the expenses. Lack of job security is a potential cause of lack of motivation among workers in the workplace in the contemporary age. Once the safety needs are met, an individual looks for love and affiliation. This need of workers is also not fulfilled always as many companies require workers to work at distant stations far from their homes and families. After these needs, a worker looks for status and achievement. Many workers feel that they are not rewarded in accordance with the level of effort they put into the work. Thus, when they feel under-rewarded, they tend to lose motivation for work. According to Maslow, it is only after the fulfillment of each of the four lower level needs that a worker attains the right frame of mind that is conducive for his/her professional development and success in the workplace. Maslow Hierarchy of needs is objectionable for many reasons despite the fact that it sufficiently characterizes all basic human needs and puts them in order. Every human being owns a weak disposition in the start. With the passage of time, the human being matures in nature. The environment an individual is brought up in has a fundamental impact on his/her personality. A person can only actualize his/her in-born capabilities, if he/she is given the right kind of atmosphere to work in. Unless all lower level needs have been met, a worker is not in a position to explore his/her capabilities and make best use of them. Higher levels of needs do exist in addition to these five basic needs, like needs for appreciation, understanding and spiritual contentment, though Maslow limits the essential needs of an individual to five. The most important element of the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs is that no need is felt by an individual unless the immediately preceding need has been satisfied. However, this may not be true in real life. In real world, hardly an individual can be imagined who does not feel the need for love or association if his/her safety needs are not satisfied. Safety is a basic need of all human beings, though safety is not the sole determinant of an individual’s capacity to love. Indeed, there are many factors that come into play to make an individual feel the need for love even with little to no safety at all. Likewise, job provides an individual with financial safety. Nonetheless, there are not many people who need job in order to fall in love with someone. Motivation of an individual can not be standardized at a particular level. It does not have a standard reading that can be benchmarked for further reference. Motivation is inculcated in a worker by a set of different factors in an environment. The organizational culture undergoes a continuous change as more and more elements affect the business on a daily basis. The needs of business alter with the passage of time and so does the organizational culture. Change of the organizational culture is accompanied with a change in the set of factors that depict a worker’s level of motivation for work. Accordingly, motivation of a worker increases or decreases frequently and does not remain constant for a long period of time. People vary in their needs. Taking this into consideration, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory loses significance in practical terms. If an employer provides an employee with job security and site safety, it can not be said that the employer has sufficiently made the circumstances safe for the employee. An employee might not feel safe being part of the multicultural workforce in an organization. He/she may fear racism and the managers may not realize it, even if they did much to address the safety concerns of the employee. Likewise, anything can make an employee feel unsafe which essentially tells that he/she would never feel motivation for work, which is practically, not true. Managers need to be emotional players in order to be partly able to control the motivational level in the employees. Motivation in workers can be increased with a strong, carefully constructed and efficiently made speech in a meeting. Managers need to develop association with their employees at a psychological level in order to inculcate motivation for work in them. This requires managers to be watchful of their own dealing with the employees. Employees do not trust managers who do not fulfill their promises. Many employees are promised monetary or other benefits upon achievement of a certain task, though many managers tend to forget their promises when the task has been achieved. This does offer temporary benefits, but has serious consequences in the long run as workers lose motivation for work. Personality traits are indeed, the most important determinant of the competency of an individual in the workplace. Personality of an individual directly influences his/her relationships with peers and colleagues. The way an individual socializes plays a fundamental role in determining the speed and quality of work. In an organizational setup, employees are interconnected because of several mutual tasks that they are supposed to do with one another’s cooperation and collaboration. In such cases, when an employee can not develop good relationships with his colleagues in the workplaces, he/she is likely to be isolated and work is affected accordingly. The level of control an individual has upon his/her emotions, the extent to which he can engage others in his/her speech, his/her punctuality, clarity of expression and interest in the work all depict how competent the individual is in the work. Managers should preferably provide their employees with psychological counseling in addition to regular skill based training in order to make their behavior perfectly conducive for the display of high level of competency. Competent workforce is the most fundamental requirement of a successful business in the contemporary age of increased competition (Ismail and Abidin, 2010). An organization excels on the basis of competency of the workforce. Therefore, it is imperative that workers’ competency is enhanced in order to make them display their best capability in the work. Competency of workers is a product of their skill or knowledge, motivation and personality traits. These three key areas have a lot of subdivisions that have their own identity and also integrate well with one another. Managers should tend to address the individualistic and collective needs of the employees. Satisfaction of workers’ needs is the key to make them competent in work. References: Barnet, T. (2011). Motivation and motivation theory. Retrieved from http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Mar-No/Motivation-and-Motivation-Theory.html. Chapman, A. (2010). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Retrieved from http://www.businessballs.com/maslow.htm. Deist, F. D., and Winterton, J. What Is Competence? Human Resource Development International. 8(1): 27 – 46. Ismail, R., and Abidin, S. Z. (2010). Impact of workers’ competence on their performance in the Malaysian private service sector. Business and Economic Horizons. 2(2): 25-36. Simons, J. A., Irwin, D. B., and Drinnien, B. A. (1987). Psychology - The Search for Understanding. NY: West Publishing Company. Stern, D. J. K. and Kemp, L. K. (2004). Competency-based human resource management. USA: Davies-Black Publishing. Read More