Personal Resourcing and Development - Essay Example

Work motivation involves the energetic forces that come about from within and beyond a personal being, to set the work related behaviour and find out the direction, form, intensity, and work duration. Getting to know the motivation factor of the employees of an organization is a basic study in psychology. Motivation is known as an internal personal disposition concerning an individual, which approaches positive incentives while avoiding the negative incentives (Pinder, 2008). In this respect, an incentive involves the reward that is anticipated or an event that is aversive in the given environment. Even though, motivation could be used as a tool for predicting behaviour, it is a trait that varies extensively in individuals and should always be put together with the potential and factors of the environment to influence the performance and behaviour of an individual. In many organisations, the role of motivation in affecting the performance, and behaviour of the workplace is vital for all companies; different organisations structure the environment of work to motivate the behaviours of production while discouraging the unproductive behaviours (Pinder, 2008). This paper compares contrasts and assesses the effectiveness of the approaches used by Ginsters and Nampak companies to increase motivation and enhance employee performance and engagement amongst the whole workforce. The paper also explains the approach that would have a most long-term impact for the company and its employees. Ginsters company is a winner of the World Leisure 2008 innovation award and the company’s active workplace employee programme wellness has experienced significant results (Hudson, 2010). However, the company failed to have a firm a stand on its employer. Despite the fact that this company provides a significant amount of career opportunity for individuals, the company experiences various challenges. About 18 % of the 450-workforce strongholds were obtained from individuals with minority backgrounds. These people were constantly resisting the chances to be integrated into the company team. The day and night shifts did not mix and the different production areas mistrusted each other (Hudson, 2010). Additionally, an annual survey study established that the morale of the workers was low. After the implementation of active workplace programme at Ginsters, a survey highlighted that the workers in the organisation engage with the company and assume pride in doing their work. This is an indication of increased motivation in comparison to the prior years. Despite the fact that the employees of Ginsters stood and worked for long hours, a fitness test conducted by the Caradon Council found them to be unfit (Hudson, 2010). This made the company employ a fitness coordinator on fulltime basis and purchased a gym in an existing building. This was an incentive or reward to the workers. The manager of Ginsters acknowledged that the workers had been convinced to participate in the different activities within the organization. At Ginsters, the motivational theory that can be applied to the situation of employees is the expectancy theory. According to this theory, the employees perform their work in a hard and smart way whenever they believe that their additional efforts would result into rewards that are valuable (Pinder, 2008). This is evidenced at Ginsters when a gym is introduced in the existing building of the organisation to offer exercises to the workers. The expectancy theory of motivation highlights that increased output would be given by the equation; Motivational or effort force = Expectancy (Instrumentality x Valence) (Pinder, 2008). In this case effort force implies the force expended by the employees in achieving the performance that is desired. Expectancy is the belief that any force or effort would lead to a required performance level (Mitchell, 2003). On the other hand, instrumentality implies the thought that the needed performance will lead to an outcome that is desired and valence is the employees outcome value. The active workplace programme implementation at Ginsters, was an aspect of expectancy theory. This theory is vital in establishing a system of reward for the workers. Whenever the policies are consistence, fairly and clearly implemented, the instrumentality would increase (Mitchell, 2003). Whenever the rewards are massive enough to be relevant to the employees, the valence would increase. In this situation, the employees will be attracted to the reward hence their motivation increases. In other situations, the outcome or reward could be unattractive, like increased work load and standing upright for long hours, which is observed at Ginsters. This makes the valence low for those workers who find the work-life balance as vital. This means that, expectancy theory generally posits the satisfaction of employees to be a performance outcome instead of the performance cause (Pinder, 2008). If the pattern were made in, which employees get to know that their performance will result into certain rewards that are desirable, the motivation of the employees would be strengthened in respect to anticipation. The situation at Nampak is extremely different from that at Ginsters. In Nampak,Wright Smith introduced a dictatorial form of leadership within the company. This is evidenced when she banned the free engagement of employees with the management, which had been set by the prior leadership. Different from Ginsters, In Nampak, there was a poor communication concerning the business, there was a poor training and development within the company. This is evidenced when the employees felt that they did not have chances for having a career and their development within the company (Smedley, 2010). The employees at Nampak did not obtain any feedback concerning their performance as the manager could not communicate with them. In this respect, the motivation at Nampak was relatively low. After the implementation of a performance company-wide management system, Nampak trained all the managers, insisting on the conversation quality, which truly mattered. The company’s managers provided a message to the employees that they were the most influential individuals within the business (Lawler, 2002). This was a representation of a positive reinforcement within the organisation. With increased engagement and a number of obstacles removed, the company implemented new initiatives, which made half of the workers be trained to a NVQ level (Smedley, 2010). The new centres of assessment replaced the old recruitment methods. The management of Nampak argued out that the introduction of the new programme led to the enormous organisational impact in business. A survey conducted on Nampak employees indicated that ninety percent of the workers at Nampak were happy with their work, and about ninety eight percent believed that the management listened to them (Hudson, 2010). The motivational theory that can be applied in Nampak is the social, cognitive theory. This theory offers crucial concepts regarding self efficacy and explains the level of employee’s motivation in respect to the workplace goals and tasks. Self efficacy involves the individual belief in his potential to obtain results in a certain situation (Lawler, 2002). According to this theory, there is a massive correlation between performance of an organisation and self efficacy. These concepts are extended to the efficacy of a group, which involves the belief of a group that it could obtain success to a certain project or task. This is evidenced in Nampak when all the employees belief that, without conversation, they are like boxes in the organisation. In this case, self efficacy in an organisation is responsible in mediating vital aspects of the manner, in which employees perform their work, like the amount of persistence and effort (Locke, 2008). Employees with increased self efficacy are confident that the involved effort has a high chance of leading to success. This anticipation for success makes an employee to be willing to invest increased effort, persistence, focus on the work select effective task strategies and seek feedback for their performance (Kulik, 2009). This was the situation at Nampak since after training all the employees were convinced of their self efficacy hence improved the performance of the organisation. At Nampak, the line managers used their learnt skills to develop and motivate their teams. This is an indication of improved self efficacy for the line managers at Nampak company. The self efficacy antecedents could be influenced by training, expectations, or prior experience (Locke, 2008). For Nampak, increasing the training for the employees, increased the self efficacy of the workers thus increasing the motivation of the workers (Kulik, 2009). The utility of a mastery approach orientation was an effective way of boosting self efficacy. In this approach, the training goal was focused on mastering the tasks and skills instead of the outcome that is performance-related. Comparing the approach of motivation at Ginsters and at Nampak, it worth noting that Nampak motivational approach will last longer for the employees that that of Ginsters. This is so because Nampak’s approach focuses on the internal motivation instead of the external motivation that is seen in the Ginsters motivational approach. Internal motivation is responsible for increasing the internal drive of an individual towards a certain task (Deckers, 2010). This means that workers would be self motivated towards performing their roles thus increasing the performance of the company. On the other hand, the Ginsters approach focuses on improving the external motivation. In this case, the workers are motivated by outside factors such as physical activities (Britt, 2008). Despite the usefulness of external motivation, it is known to be short term since it will die away as the rewards are withdrawn or whenever the physical exercise becomes boring to the workers. This means that lack of the external rewards will reduce the motivation of the employees. References Britt, T., 2008. Organization Psychology. Hoboke, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Deckers, L., 2010. Motivational; Psychological, Biological, and Environmental. Boston, MA: Pearson. Hudson, K., 2010. Ginsters case study: Play together, stay together. Leisure Management, Issue 1, (10):52-54 Kulik, C., 2009. Old friend, new face: Motivation research. J of Management, 25(3), 231–92. Lawler, E., 2002. Strategic reward systems. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Pres Locke, E., 2008. A theory of goals setting and tasks performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Mitchell, T., 2003. Motivation: Industrial Organizational Psychology. New York: Wiley. McClelland, D., 2005. Toward theory of motivation acquisition. American Psychologist, 20, 321–33. Pinder, C., 2008. Workforce motivation in an organization behaviour. New York: Psychology Publishers. Smedley, T., 2010. Nampak case study: A Lot of Bottle. People Management, 4(11): 38-40 Read More