Motivation Theories: the Behaviour of Human Resources at Workplace - Essay Example

___________ ____________ ____August 2006 Individual reflection Introduction I am a qualified MBA with a background of baccalaureate in physicalsciences. I had my MBA from a reputed European business school about three years back and since then I have been in two jobs. First was that of a merchandiser at a leading fashion house in New York and the second one is the present job which I have in Esprit Holdings Ltd.Quite contrary to my earlier experience as a merchandiser my immediate boss at Esprit leveraged upon my major in Human Resources Management in my MBA and required me to design group wide employee motivation assessment studies so as to devise strategies to improve overall employee morale in the group. I have been assigned two HRM consultants who are busy designing the motivation questionnaire to be administered to all the group employees. However this also gave me an opportunity to reflect over my personal strengths and weaknesses as I would soon have the most responsible task of convincing the top management about the contents of the questionnaire and the finalization of motivation report and its possible uses in the group in formulation of exact policies and tactics to improve employee morale. My immediate boss gave me this entire assignment breaking the line structure and formalized it by getting it ratified by the board. He also built in an incentive and bonus deal for me to be awarded on successful completion of the assignment. In addition he has been hinting at a possible promotion round the corner. Thus given the critical importance which this task has for me it is time that I assessed myself dispassionately not only for the task at hand but for my entire future stay at Esprit. I have entered a very challenging phase of my professional life , it is not only the environment of the new assignment but also new way of life to get even with the assignment. A successful accomplishment of the above assignment depends on what kind of goals wills I create and what kind of strategy will I follow. So I need to create a set of goals because with these goals, I will be motivated to be disciplined on time dimension. Goals would also help me create work plans between goals. I can also organize schedules to goal achievement and link various goals. The wide vision, knowledge, soft-skills, and hard-skills about business and communication with others which I obtained during my MBA and experience at first job would come in handy.However.it may be surprising to know that it is in all these areas that I want to augment further given the high profile target that I have in hand. In the personal development plan, I am going to explain various steps to achieve my goals. Personal Developmental Plan (a)Wide vision: I need to develop a contextual wide vision of the working environment. I have a very wide and geographically spread out group. It is multinational and quite high profile indulging in several activities simultaneously. Employees are permanent as well as temporary and come from multiple ethnic backgrounds and nationalities. I intend to develop my vision by cataloguing all published literature of the company and personnel records to get a clear idea about the employee profiles. I am going to browse intensively all the websites of all subsidiaries in a time bound fashion to know in detail the activities of various subsidiaries. In addition I am going to plan week long study visits to some of the major locations of our group. I would have the assistance of two persons in these activities and we would maintain records of all visits and studies by means of articles filed electronically in chronological fashion. (b) In knowledge I am going to research various company products and technologies that support their offering till they reach markets. I am also going to do a peer analysis on group basis and study at least two groups in same lines of business as mine for employee relations and policies. I intend taking up intensive literature search and website browsing of these two peer groups in order to make critical notes on them. (c) In soft skills I need to develop my language skills in English as I am from a Latin American background and this is one area where I need inputs. I believe smooth English would help me communicate across nationalities and ethnicities within my group. Based on my organizational values survey (OVS) (Miskiman. 2004), my "person orientation" shows I am not good in communicating with other people. However I need to communicate better because a manager should have ability to express their word in a better way and be capable to communicate with others. OHair et al.(2004, p.2) wrote that :"The ability to speak confidently and convincingly in public is an asset to anyone who wants to take an active role in his or her classroom, workplace, or community." I plan to develop my language skills in speaking by viewing TV every two days and also initiating myself to speak more often to other people for 4 months starting coming weekend. In order to speak English fluently, I will discipline myself to speak whenever I speak, learn how to express myself and idea in a proper way, and also communicate more with my peers. I would observe others who do speak English fluently and adopt their ways. Since my writing skills also need some inputs. I will increase my writing ability by studying grammar and expanding my vocabulary to improve my writing. This ability is important as I have many reports, articles and notes to compile during the assignment. My reading skills are well developed already. Another soft skill which I require is listening. I still cannot understand English speakers if they speak rapidly with slangs.To improve this I intend to listen to the radio twice a week in four months, especially about news shows or talk shows to improve my listening ability. I would also replicate patient listening behaviour at work place to augment this skill. Another soft skill I intend developing is collaborative skills. Most managers in multi-national companies all over the world usually work in multi-cultural environment and it has been a trend among the professionals. According to self assessment exercise (Langton, 2006), my personality tends to already have collaborative strategy in a team. I would work to improve it all the more. (d) The most critical of hard skills which I need to develop is knowledge of computerized environment in organizational settings at least at the level of professionals. I already had ERP as one of my electives in MBA and I intend on pursuing a course on CRM in next three months and in parallel fashion study the features of CRM being run by some major subsidiaries of the group. I would also study the current practices in management of employee databases in the group and would try to make them comprehensive, online and relational and collapsible. Equipped with above personal inputs I expect to be a worthy resource person for my immediate environment and for that matter any environment. Business Report Esprit is a global youthful lifestyle brand offering smart, affordable luxury and bringing newness and style to life. The Group offers 11 product lines encompassing women's wear, men's wear, kids wear as well as shoes and accessories through over 630 directly managed retail stores and over 9,700 wholesale point-of-sales worldwide. Esprit licenses its logo to third party licensees that offer products bearing the same Esprit quality and essence to consumers. Esprit also operates the Red Earth cosmetic brand which includes cosmetics, skin care and body care products. Esprit is listed on the Hong Kong and London stock exchanges and is a constituent stock in the Hang Seng Index, MSCI Hong Kong Index, FTSE All-World Index for Hong Kong and S&P/HKEx LargeCap Index and S&P Asia 50 Index. The Board has ten Directors, including the Chairman of the Board, five of them being executive and the other five being non-executive Directors, of the latter three are independent. Of the five executive directors one is Chairman and in charge of the overall corporate direction and strategy of the Group; another is Deputy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Group and looks after a variety of areas, including production, organization, marketing, strategy and brand positioning; third is the Deputy Chairman, Group Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary and is primarily responsible for managing the Group's financial and legal functions, including strategic planning and corporate finance, investor relations, accounting and tax, treasury management as well as company secretarial affairs; fourth is the joint Chief Operating Officer of the Esprit brand and the global head of wholesale operations of the Group and fifth is the joint Chief Operating Officer of the Esprit brand and the global head of retail operations of the Group. Thus, Esprit has a functionally divided organizational design at the top management rungs. Its senior management comprises of a Head of Global Licensing, an International Product Director Women of the Group, a Group Financial Controller, a Global Chief Organization Officer and a Global Image Director. The operational bias in the design of senior management is apparent. The Group employs both full-time and part-time employees and has approximately 8,000 positions worldwide after converting the part-time positions into full-time positions based on working hours (Esprit AR, 2004-05). As on June 30, 2005 there were 47 subsidiaries under the control of the parent holding company Esprit Holdings Ltd which had the main business listed as investment. Subsidiaries were formed and incorporated in various jurisdictions such as Germany,Belgium,Canada,France,Hong Kong, British Virgin Islands,Denmark, Malaysia,Spain,UK,USA,Australia,Macau,Italy,Singapore etc.The principal businesses of these subsidiaries were organized according to the group strategic focus. These broadly comprised of provision of services; wholesale distribution of cosmetics, skin and body care products; retail distribution of cosmetics, skin and body care products; sample development; holding and licensing of trademarks; investment holding; retail distribution of apparel and accessories; wholesale distribution of apparel and accessories; Financial services; sourcing, purchase and sale of merchandise, distribution of merchandise and other logistic functions; design and image directions; conceptualization and development of global uniform image and management and control function. These are all entities over which the Group has control. Control is comprised in the power to govern the financial and operating policies and generally accompanies a shareholding of more than one half of the voting rights. Organization's environment Three groups of people form the environment of Esprit.Esprit ensures complete fulfillment of its Social Responsibilities in order to make a perfect gel with its environment. As a global company, Esprit believes in developing and maintaining sustainable relationships with all stakeholders. It exhibits this commitment by acting imaginatively and consistently in the communities where its employees, business partners and customers live and work (Esprit AR, 2004-05). Responsibilities to Business Partners At Esprit, aim is to develop and nurture long-term relationships with business partners based primarily on openness, honesty and trust. Esprit always makes concerted efforts to understand their business needs and provides mutual support to ensure that sustainable business partnerships are established. This ensures that the conduct of the business is in a responsible and suitable manner. Esprit conducts regular social audits to ascertain if its suppliers maintained and abided by these standards. Esprit has enrolled as a member of the Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI) established by the Foreign Trade Association (FTA) in the year 2004-05 and has communicated to its vendors the significance of BSCI certifications as the appropriate accreditation to signify their compliance with human rights and minimum social standards (Esprit AR, 2004-05). Responsibilities to the Community Esprit and its employees, having numerous global presences, respond responsibly and with pride to community needs by making contributions in the form of grants, donations in kind and volunteering activities. During the financial year 2004-05, Esprit employees responded enthusiastically to a number of relief initiatives organized by charitable organizations. These included the participation of Hong Kong staff in "Walks for a Million" organized by the Community Chest, ribbons selling in stores to raise funds for the National Breast Cancer Foundation and financial support to charitable organizations. In response to the South Asian tsunami, Esprit launched a global fund raising campaign during FY2004/2005 calling for employee donations to help victims affected by the disaster. The Company also made matching donations to support and promote active anticipation in the campaign. Approximately HK million was jointly donated to local and international relief agencies, including the Red Cross and UNICEF, to help relieve suffering and to reconstruct permanent housing for tsunami victims(Esprit AR,2004-05). The last group of stakeholders is the most important one in the business environment of Esprit.They are the employees of Esprit.A recent preliminary survey revealed that motivational levels amongst the employees were recorded at the lowest levels since last decade. There were varied factors responsible for it as was revealed by this preliminary survey. However this survey was limited to a few locations that had been affected by natural disasters. There was also a trend of large temporary employees' turnover in most of these locations and given the fact that fashion accessories industry was experiencing an overall recession globally pay hikes and bonuses were also not coming as regularly as in the past. A whole scale and group wide project to measure employee motivation level is to be taken up recently through an administration of a comprehensive questionnaire survey to be administered to all categories of employees in the group. This survey would collect data on various facets of employee motivation. This paper would report on the importance of employee motivation for organizational success and current status of employee orientation of the organization. Essential life and blood of any organization resides in its human resources who represent a volatile pool of distinct feelings and emotions. These emotions and feelings work to critically determine the output, productivity and efficiency of work of the human resources while they are at their jobs. Management of any organization has the critical task of sufficiently enthusing, molding and shaping the human resources in order to get assurance that such human resources would work in consonance with organizational goals and objectives. Motivation theories provide ready and general constructs to analyze the behavior of human resources at work place. Using these constructs it is possible to analyze and reduce employee dissonance, adverse work relations and blurring of organizational objectives so as to target improved work environment. Thus this analysis can distinctly exhibit the possible solutions to motivational problems at work place. There are several motivational theories that have evolved over the past century. Most popular among such old theories are behavioral theories of Abraham Maslow, Frederick Herzberg, Elton Mayo and Douglas McGregor. The chief features of these theories needs to be understood before applying thoughts on their practical implementation. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there are five categories of needs viz. (1) physiological, (2) safety, (3) social, (4) esteem, and (5) self-actualization. They form a pyramid structure with the lowest and broadest physiological need at the base. Pyramid structure also illustrates the fact that breadth of needs, as we graduate up the pyramid, gets reduced indicating that the higher order needs get finely tuned and well defined and perhaps are fewer in number as well. In order to have fully satiated and motivated workers, each lower level needs to be satisfied before one can graduate to higher level needs. Maslow made a complementary hypothesis that physiological, safety, social, and esteem needs on satisfaction, ceased to motivate, while the self-actualization needs motivated an individual more and more as they got satisfied. Maslow's premise was that it is the growth choice that propels any individual toward self-actualization - that of individual growth or "filling one's potential."(Maslow, 1954). Herzberg utilized Maslow's ideas as a foundation to build his own motivation-hygiene theory. According to him the hygiene elements relate to low level needs (physiological, safety, and social). For an individual, hygiene conditions include company policy and administration, control and supervision, relationships with peers and supervisors, work conditions, salary, status, and security (Markiewicz, 2002). Inadequate presence of hygiene factors can cause dissatisfaction or lack of motivation .Such hygiene factors account for 69% of the total factors which cause employee dissatisfaction or lack of motivation. The motivation conditions, which include achievement, the job itself, recognition, responsibilities, and personal growth, accounted for 81% of the factors which contributed to job satisfaction. The hygiene conditions were stated to be extrinsic factors while the motivation conditions were reckoned as intrinsic factors, and the only available method to sustain motivation toward organizational goals was through the achievement of intrinsic outcomes. Each of these theories contain concepts which are eminently consistent with human nature, however each theory faces limitations within organizational settings. Because lower order needs are generally satisfied in the workplace today, managers have to deal with how to provide esteem and self-actualization needs to their employees, and that can be a nebulous concept to a manager who demands results immediately. In order to do this the managerial layer has to be observant, patient and in full empathy with the workers. As Stolovitch and Keeps state," Another problem common to most work settings is the strong inclination of managers to avoid deep analysis of performance problems and to solve shallowly analyzed problems with training, even if the problem is not caused by a lack of knowledge (Stolovitch and Keeps, 1992). A manager relying exclusively on any of these theories alone would be unable to find a lasting solution to motivational problems.Graham & Weiner (1996) report a continuing concern with "the theoretical overlap between constructs" as is the case with Maslow and Herzberg theories. Weiner (1990) advocated for more general models and have voiced concerns about the construct validity of a number of motivation variables. Esprit's responsibilities to Employees Esprit recognizes the importance of human capital. It has the belief that its continued success depends on the commitment, enthusiasm and energy of its global staff. A positive and respectable working environment which enhances collaboration and cooperation between employees is sought to be developed at Esprit. Towards this end all internal communications channels are left free and open for ideas and feedback from staff. As an instance of this policy stance LIVE ESPRIT campaign was implemented in the year 2004-05 with the aim of promoting team spirit and creating a global culture for all employees located around the world. Group's quarterly newsletters and the global intranet help improve company-wide communications and connect employees around the world to the Esprit family. Culture is to be an attractive company for the talented and motivated. The Group places great emphasis on staff training and development in order to realize the potential of each employee. Esprit structures its remuneration packages around performance, taking into account business performance, market practices and competitive market conditions. Share options and discretionary bonuses are granted to outstanding staff. There is also an annual performance and salary review system to ensure staff members are rewarded on a clear and fair basis (Esprit AR, 2004-05). The proposed group wide motivation assessment, based on practical understanding of above theoretical precepts, would reveal the gap that exists between what management thinks it has done towards upgrading employee motivation and what employees think should have been done to take motivation to optimum levels. Work Cited OHair, D. et al. (2004) A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking. Boston, Bedford/St Martins. Miskiman and Miskiman.(2004). Organization Values Survey International. Langton, Nancy, and Robins, Stephen p.(2006). Organizational Behavior. Fourth Canadian Edition. Toronto, Pearson Prentice Hall. Esprit Holdings Limited, Annual Report (AR) 2004-05. 1 Maslow, A.H.(1954). Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper & Brothers. 2 Markiewicz, Dan.(2002). Been There Done That Yes, You Can Improve Job Satisfaction. Industrial Safety & Hygiene News: Vol. 36, No. 12; pg. 16. Dec. 2002. 3 Stolovitch, H. D. and Keeps, E. J. (1992).The handbook of human performance technology, San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers. 4 Graham, S. and Weiner, B. (1996).Theories and Principles of Motivation, in Berliner, D. and Calfee, R. C. (Eds.) Handbook of educational psychology. New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan. 5 Weiner, B. (1990).History of motivational research in education. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 616-622. 6 Read More