Lived Experience Interacting with Organizations - Essay Example

Lived Experience Interacting with Organizations Over the summer holiday, I had an excellent opportunity to experience interactions with employees of an organization where I analyzed motivation among employees. For three months, I had worked as an intern in a supermarket situated in our local area. It is from my working relationship with my fellow employees and the management of the supermarket that I experienced serious motivation challenges among the employees. It is factual that motivation in the workplace is one of the fundamental aspects that determine the level of performance in any organization. The impact of motivation manifests in the supermarket, which equally faces the challenge of ensuring that the employees are motivated to perform well. Motivation is not only a personal urge to perform but also a fundamental necessity for one’s success in life, and individuals must therefore know how to motivate themselves. This is so because the workplace has many challenges required to be overcome by individual employees, and hence the need for motivation. In light of this, the management of reference organizations bears the responsibility of knowing how to motivate the employees though the management unfortunately lacks control of the derived motivation. As a result, the employees have a duty to derive personal motivation and to control the motivation generated by the management with a view of boosting the overall performance of the organization. Motivation may refer to a psychological force that stimulates or reinforces action geared towards a specified direction for purposes of attaining a certain goal. Motivation aims at controlling and ensuring persistence in all goal-directed behaviors. As seen above, motivation is an employee’s quest to satisfy or fulfill their personal need. Various theories seek to address motivation, but in this context, McClelland's Need Theory stands out. McClelland's Need Theory of motivation asserts that unsatisfied needs are the motivators of human actions. McClelland's Need Theory further acknowledges the different levels of needs that derive human motivation where individuals must satisfy specific lower needs before satisfying higher ones. Nevertheless, the theory notes that individuals must bear the will and get the opportunity to satisfy such needs for them to derive motivation. Employment in different organizations acts as a better opportunity and measure for motivation among individuals. Indeed, through my interactions with the employees and management at the supermarket, I got the opportunity to experience various needs and the resultant motivation among the employees. My experience allowed me to confirm the complexity of the motivation phenomenon and the needs of individuals, which form a good base to address motivation in an organization. Just as the needs theory highlights, only the unsatisfied needs influence behavior among employees working for different organizations. At the supermarket, I experienced individuals with different levels of motivation based on their unsatisfied needs and other factors. The low-paid employees and junior employees seemingly manifested very low levels of motivation probably because they had very many unsatisfied needs. An interview and consistent observation of the employees, during and after work, established that low pay and low job levels demotivate reference employees from performing better. On the other hand, the management, high-paid workers, and the senior employees of the supermarket had very high levels of motivation based on the comfort of their work status. The management, high-paid workers, and the senior employees kept urging, pressuring, and encouraging the seemingly poor motivated employees to perform better. It is arguably true that the need for higher pay, promotions, better working conditions, and recognition acted as a motivation for the employees to perform better at the supermarket. The need to be in control and influence other employees, search for a competitive position, and the need to perform better in more challenging positions also motivated employees to perform. In addition, the quest for a personal responsibility and the ability to solve problems were also a motivator. Upon motivation, the employees worked fairly hard for the supermarket to yield a substantial and effective output. However, the disparity between the different levels of motivation among employees significantly affected the overall performance of the supermarket. Individuals have a number of variables that derive motivation. Individuals prioritize their needs differently as I experienced in the supermarket. At the same time, individuals have different work preferences, where some did not like to work in the supermarket while others did not want to work at higher job levels there. These variables derived different levels of motivation. Additionally, the levels of desire to do things better, and the need for independence also resulted in motivation. Various needs for achievement, power, and affiliation equally played a great role in deriving motivation among the employees at the supermarket. On a fair note, some employees motivated themselves by establishing a cause for their work, developing an urge to pursue their goals, taking a personal initiative, having a big dream, leaving the past, and forging ahead. On the other hand, other employees did not know how to derive motivation in the challenging work place at the supermarket, and hence found it hard to work there and registered poor performance levels. In fact, some employees usually came late for work, lacked the gusto to work, manifested laxity, lacked the will power to offer efficient and effective services, and did not adhere to the organization’s objectives. Fortunately, the supermarket had an organizational policy that sought to motivate all employees with a view of encouraging their performance. In ensuring this, the management seeks to perform an effective recruitment process to ensure that qualified personnel works for the supermarket. After recruitment, the management matched the qualifications of the employees with their job descriptions to ensure effectiveness, professionalism, and motivation in the work place. The management equally offered frequent training, support, and resources necessary for use by the employees. This helped the employees to work efficiently, solve problems, and enjoy their working experience. The management equally addressed underperformance where it encouraged the reference employees to perform better or face dismissal. In the same breadth, the management appreciated and rewarded good performance through promotions and financial rewards, thus motivating the employees to perform well. The management also accorded fair treatment to all employees, hence eliminating inequality, discrimination, and oppression in the workplace with an aim of creating an enabling environment for motivated performance. Nevertheless, although the management is clearly taking significant measures to ensure the motivation of employees, a considerable number of employees still lacked motivation in working for the supermarket, and my stint at this organization enabled me to experience the challenges of the demotivated employees. Indeed, this leads to stress in the work place as the employees lack the motivation and skills to meet the demands of their roles. In such a case, individuals had the mandate to derive their personal motivation while working at the supermarket. Indeed, only the combined efforts of the individuals and management will reduce the motivation disparity among employees in the supermarket. In conclusion, I think that under the circumstances I would have done things differently to address the motivation disparity in the organization. Indeed, I would really organize motivational talks and seminars for all employees with a hope of educating them on how to derive personal motivation. This would complement the motivation that the organizations provide for the employees. More so, I would initiate a social trust fund that will address most of the social issues affecting the employees, thus raising their motivational levels. Moreover, I would recommend counseling lessons for the employees to enable them to handle some of the challenges at the supermarket. In addition, I would ensure that employees take a central position in the formulation of the organization’s policy, thus making them feel part of the organization. This will in a big way help in addressing their needs and motivating them to perform better. I would also propose induction courses for all employees to ensure that they understand the organization’s policy, their responsibilities, and their rights and privileges. Ultimately, I would establish a motivation assessment policy that would help me to gauge and address the different levels of motivation among employees. Read More