Perspectives of Employee Motivation and Pay-Plans - Essay Example

Employee Motivation and Pay Plans Introduction It is a common thing that people make impressions on others every dayof their lives. This happens in businesses, private life, in offices, in farms, in government and learning institutions among others. These impressions happen either consciously or unconsciously and with an objective. Managers in the service industry have the responsibility of creating a good impression on their companies. This is affected by the relationship between the staff and the stakeholders which in turn affects employees’ attitude, alertness and the way they do their work. The success of an organization depends mainly on the ability of the managers and other top executives to build these impressions. A family of workers is an important asset of any business hence increasing staffs’ capabilities and productivity is paramount. The manager’s role in a company is to get things done through the employees hence they should be able to motivate them. In spite of enormous basic and applied research, most managers do not understand clearly the subject of motivation hence it is poorly practiced in many organizations (Knouse, 2000). Perspectives of Motivation and Pay-plans The basic research on motivation and pay-plans indicate that there are various perspectives on the subject. The subject has been analyzed and criticized from process point of view. Process perspective on motivation reveals how an organization can use this in an effective and efficient manner. According to perspective theory, employees in an organization become motivated if they believe that their efforts in production and service provision will lead to high performance i.e. performance which will lead to good rewards and that the merit aspects of the results outweigh the negative aspects. Process perspective of motivation is also discussed in the equity theory. This theory is based on the fact that employees or workers are motivated to achieve and maintain social equity. Maintenance of motivation has been subjected to a great deal of scrutiny. Reinforcement perspective analyzes how an organization can build and maintain the aspect of motivation amongst its employees. Under this perspective, it is assumed that employees’ behavior which results in rewarding consequences will be repeated over time. On the other hand, employee behavior which results in negative consequences will not be repeated. Managers should be able to implement reinforcement contingencies and be able to execute in form of positive reinforcement, avoidance, extinction and punishment. These should be provided on fixed-ratio, variable-ratio, fixed-interval and variable interval schedules (Knouse, 2000). Pay-for-Performance programs have been used extensively by many organizations as a way of rewarding and motivating employees. Organizational perspective on these programs is concerned with how an organization uses the program and it is incorporated into the strategies. Organizations have expanded their strategies into explicitly designing Pay-for-Performance that are effective and consistent with the purpose and objectives. The design of these programs should be consistent with the values and cultures of the organization as well as remaining within the individual motivation policies concerned (Mitra, 2005). Managers are forced to be very careful when specifying the purpose in order to develop PFP programs that are aligned to employee motivation as a way forward of attainment of these specified objectives. In the realm of organization practice, managers should be able to develop tailor-made PFP programs for different departments and employee groups. They should adopt sophisticated constructed performance measures that are associated with goals for the specified units and employee groups. The usage of PFP programs has to be experimented in order to ascertain their potential motivational effectiveness in conjunction with strategies of the organization. The potential effectiveness of motivational programs has suffered environmental shocks in the legal environment due to deregulation. Business climate such as foreign competition has impact on the implementation of PFP plans. In addressing matters concerning motivational programs, managers should pay great attention to objectives of the organization so as to harmonize them strategically with productivity. From organizational perspective these pay-plans have been implemented by many institutions in order to focus on improving capabilities of rewarding employees so as to motivate them to work hard toward the specified goals (Maslow, 2001). Skill-Based Pay is an alternative to PFP programs. This plan entails compensation of employees for the depth and the breadth of skills they acquire that create value to the organization. Contrary to the PFP programs, skill mastery is much emphasized rather than job-performance. This pay programs are commonly found in organizations where employees are much involved in most operations. Organization’s staff work in teams and they should manage different process actively. From organizational perspective, a typical skill-based program requires that managers and employees should work as a team and they should first identify skills and knowledge that are crucial to the organization. Employees should be trained on how to acquire these important skills. It is important for organizations to allow employees to nominate those who will undergo skills training because they do understand the strength and weaknesses of one another than the management. When they nominate themselves for the training programs, they broaden their career base. It is imperative for the management to control skills and training costs by restricting the number of slots which are supposed to be trained. According to Dierdorff (2008), organizations typically evaluate skill mastery by testing employees who have undergone specified skill training. In some firms, annual and semi-annual skills audit is done so as to ensure that employees are alert and are able to maintain skill mastery. These plans take form of employee pay increase or one-time bonus for initial skill training. Some organizations give employees permanent raises in their normal pay after realizing that they have acquired substantial skills that are necessary in accomplishing the duties delegated to them (Mitra, 2005). Under Skill-Based Pay, employees are in a position to perform multiple tasks hence organizations can increase their workforce flexibility by adopting these motivational plans. The negative impacts of absenteeism of employees are reduced because employees can stand for one another and can easily rotate into other jobs. The additional training skills are very relevant to modern and changing technology since employees can come up in speeding up the changes in the production process. From organizational point of view, skill based plans lead to multi-skilled employees who have more technical expertise and broader perspective of solving problems (Maslow, 2001). Recommendations Motivational programs have been subjected to theoretical and empirical scrutiny from both individual and organizational perspectives. These ultimate complementary perspectives have given rise to different emphasis on the motivational aspect in organizations. PFP programs have been widely used by most managers of many organizations to influence the attitude and alertness of individual employees. Expectancy theory of motivation illustrates that the design and usage of rewarding systems adopted by an organization should have an impact the way employees perform their work (Mitra, 2005). This motivational plan is very crucial to organizations as revealed by the expectancy theory. From the perspective of expectancy theory, employees should perceive and understand the relationship between one’s effort and one’s subsequent job performance. They should understand that their performance leads to rewards such as pay raise and sense of recognition. This coincides with the Maslow Motivation theory which suggests that all employees’ needs should be satisfied so that they can work effectively. Under the Pay-For-Performance motivational plan, employees must find desirable outcomes that they must attain. This concept is referred to as valence according to the expectancy theory of motivation. Valence and instrumental perceptions of employees matter a great deal in their performance level (Jason, 2004). Conclusion PFP programs are better as compared to skill-based pay plans because it has positive impacts on employees’ attitude since it enables them to develop good perceptions concerning the relationship among effort, performance and outcomes. This is the driving factor which makes them put more efforts in their work so as to achieve better outcomes which give rise to better rewards (Dierdorff, 2008). References Dierdorff, C. (2008). If you pay for skills, will they learn? Skill change and maintenance under a skill-based pay system. Journal of management, 34(4), 720-743. Knouse, S. (2000). Variations on Skill-Based Pay for Total Quality Management. Advanced management journal, 60(2), 231-342. Maslow, H. (2001). A theory of human motivation. Psychological review, July 2001. 370-396. Jason, D. (2004). Success and survival of skill-based pay plans. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 187-265. Mitra. A. (2005). Success of pay-for-performance plans. 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