HRM and Employee Motivation - Essay Example

We have the drive to defend, whose fulfillment leads to a feeling of confidence and security with the opposite conjuring up resentment and fear. All drives are independent and cannot be substituted or ordered hierarchically. While fulfilling these drives is essential, each drive is best fulfilled through organizational levers. The drive to acquire is satisfied best by a reward system, and the drive to bond is best fulfilled by creating a culture of friendship, openness, collaboration, and teamwork. The drive to comprehend is best satisfied by job designs that are challenging, interesting, and meaningful, while the drive to defend is best covered with transparent, trustworthy, and fair processes for resource allocation and performance management.

            Performance management allows the HR profession to engage in, as well as a lead, debate at the business core (Hendry et al, 2005: p58). However, this debate and its ownership are fragmented, with most organizations that conduct it, usually doing it, superficially with little appreciation of its power. The problem is part mindset and part company organization, with no department taking ownership in a strict sense. To help this process along, a diagnostic tool for performance management is necessary. This tool should enforce a more systematic approach that puts performance management into a more focused context of the corporate, business strategy and attempts to constrain the tendency to jump at bonus schemes and incentives as a vital part of performance management. Performance management, therefore, should be governed by a few key principles. First, performance management should concern itself with increasing performance. The focus needs to be on only a few vital activities that make a difference, and thus, the amount of measurements should be limited. Performance management should also be a goal-driven process; therefore, measurement should not be a central machete to communication and clarity. This means that attaching specific rewards to fulfillment activities is not necessary. Finally, performance management should be viewed as a management process that concerns relationships between the manager and the employees. Therefore, systems for its management can foul it up.

            While HR departments have long been believed to enhance employee performance, this has been met with skepticism. However, studies have shown that it adds value to organizations, especially when it emphasizes systems rather than individual practices (Liu et al, 2003: p505). Theoretically, an organization’s performance can be affected by HRM practices via 3 channels; increasing employee ability, skills, and knowledge motivating the employees to use their KSAs to benefit the organization, and empowering the employees to accomplish this.  The practices, which essentially enhance an employee’s KSA include systematically designed systems for the identification of employees with the right abilities, skills, and knowledge for the job. Another is compensation levels with attractive levels building the firm’s reputation as an employer. Finally, training should be instituted to give formal instructions to the employees. For motivational enhancing practices, the organization can use internal promotions and incentive compensation. Finally, for empowerment-enhancing practices, the organization could institute grievance procedures, employment security, and flexitime and participation programs. The three factors that influence the effectiveness of the mentioned practices are work context, vertical alignment of firm strategy and HRM, and horizontal alignment between HRM practices.

            To understand employee motivation recommendations, seek Ek to advance knowledge. The first is using results from meta-analysis for the integration of valid aspects of extant theories (Latham & Locke, 2004: p389). Second, the organization should create a work motivation schedule that has no boundaries. Third, the organization should identify how general variables like personality are mediated by mediated the fact situational structuring, and choice. Fourth, they should study conscious and sub-conscious motivation and their interrelation. Fifth, they need to use introspection as a way to study and comprehend motivation. Finally, the firm needs to acknowledge volition’s role in human action during theory formulation.