Long-Term Care Hospital Workplace Motivation - Essay Example

 Workplace Motivation Introduction In this essay, the researcher seeks to probe, uncover and report the various motivational strategies Long-Term Care Hospital (LTCH) embrace and collapse my discussion to demonstrate how such motivational strategies affect the Hospital’s productivity. In order to effectively unearth my goalmouths, I will also illustrate the organizational efforts to improve performance, employees' resistance to increasing productivity as well as the management's philosophy of motivation and its practices. In addition, I will examine the implications of applying any two motivational theories not currently in practice at the workplace by sufficiently demonstrating how such theories would affect management and employees. Motivation is the force that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. Motivation causes the employees to take action and can be influenced by emotional, social, biological as well as cognitive factors. Different theories have been developed to illustrate the motivation and each theory tends to be rather limited in scope. Such theories enable as gain a better understanding of motivation, and it impacts on LTCHs. Body LTCHs furnish extended medical and rehabilitative care to individuals with clinically complex challenges such as chronic conditions, multiple acute that require hospital level care for relatively extended periods. The qualification for LTCH in order to benefit from Medicare Payment, it is a prerequisite for that particular institution to meet Medicare’s conditions of engaging and participating in acute care hospitals and have an average inpatient length of stay greater than 25 days. Medicare recognized 436LTCHs in 2011.BodyLong Term Care Hospital embraces a range of motivational strategies in their aim to enhance productivity in the workplace (Schulz & Johnson, 2003). Individual workers are naturally motivated by varying factors. Just like various management strategy, not every approach is pertinent to every situation. It is critical to consider the individual employee involved in each situation before determining the applicable motivation strategy. Long Term Care Hospital employs both internal and external motivators. Internal motivators are based on the fact that each by both extrinsic and intrinsic aspects. Some staff is naturally more motivated by internal factors than others. It is critical to fathom each in Long Term Care workplace to determine how best to motivate employees from all walks of life to maintain productivity levels. An individual who is highly self-motivated will benefit most when managers successfully convey that productivity goalmouths that must be me are of use to them. In addition, an extremely motivated individual might be more easily encouraged to raise production when he has a say in the goals that must be accomplished. Conversely, external motivators are also an essential strategy noted in Long Term Care Hospital setting. The workers who are never naturally self-motivated need a higher degree of external motivation from managers. Such motivational strategies often take the form of rewards and recognition. Nonetheless, employees who are intrinsically motivated or easily motivated by satisfaction the obtain from a job well performed, at times experience diminish motivation and productivity when external motivational strategies are overused, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal. Incentive Strategies Analysis of the LTCHs workplace unearths the use of incentive strategies to attain varying degrees of success in improving their productivity based on the workplace environment and the respective staff. LTCHs workplace is appropriate for the use of incentives as employee complete mundane duties. Caring for both multiple acute and chronic patient conditions can be tiresome and hence a higher levels of motivational incentives to workforce is feasible. Conversely, according to the PBS 2010 interview, research has pointed towards a decreased motivation following incentives in such LTCHs where employees must accomplish creative conceptual tasks while caring for such acute and chronic patients. Reinforcement theory LTCHs also try to improve their performance through recognizing that managing behavior is essential to managing productivity rather than personality management. Reinforcement is key to such behavioral psychologist who developed the theory of operant conditioning. Such psychologist as Skinner, Watson and Edward cites consequences, negative or positive as a critical simulator of behavioral learning and thus managers increase productivity by rewarding such behavior. However, the LTCHs managers must employ negative reinforcement or punishment to employees who do not accomplish productivity goals. Managers must ensure that productive workers do not feel they are being punished for being productive. For instance, a productive employee who receives rewards and recognition for outstanding work will probably continue to be productive than a productive employee who is rewarded only with extra work. Career Development LTCHs provides training for ongoing career development that is a critical strategy for performance management process as it influences productivity in the workplace. Assisting workers to accomplish their personal career development goals not only enhance the job skills needed to be productive in their current jobs, but also increase job satisfaction and employee engagement. Such key elements are necessary for optimal productivity and can be greatly influenced by the successful implementation of career development programs within the workplace. Performance Management Effective implementation of an overall performance management program is a critical and most efficient strategy employed by LTHCs to increase their productivity at workplace. Such management programs incorporate a number of strategies that are framed to motivate on an individual level. Performance management entails strategies designed to develop a plan of accomplishments for the individual worker. In this aspect, managers and staff work as a team to create a Roadmap to the employees’ success. Employees who can see a clear path to meeting their personal career goals within the organization are more highly motivated to improve productivity than those employees who see no future for themselves within the LTCHs. Two Theories Not Currently Used The LTCHs should employ Equity theory and two-factor theory. Equity theory proposes that it is not the actual reward that motivates but the perception that is based not on the reward in isolation, but in comparison with the efforts that went into getting it and the rewards and efforts of others. Such a theory is appropriate to LTCHs as a person compares the ratio of reward to effort with the comparable ratio of reward to effort that they contemplate others are obtaining. According to two-factor theory, motivation is affected by hygienic factors and motivators. Hygiene factors are those whose absence motivates, but their absence has no perceived effect. When such factors are deprived, employees become dissatisfied and act to acquire them back such as decent working condition, security, pay, and benefits like health insurance. Motivators are factors whose presence motivates, and their absence does not cause any specific dissatisfaction but just fail to motivate. Such theories influence the employee and managers in that the firm productivity is increased. Unmotivated employee is likely to spend little or no effort on their tasks, avoid the workplace, exit the organization given chances and produce low-quality work. A motivated employee feels motivated to work and are likely to be persistent, productive, creative and quality work. Managers, on the other hand, will understand the need to motivate workers in order to create a cooperate culture that recognizes and rewards the employees’ inputs. Employees' resistance to increasing productivity Increasing productivity is one of essential goals in business. Regrettably, it is an activity seldom accepted by Human Resource professionals as a legitimate mandate. Accordingly, employees will tend to resist increasing productivity when they are uncertain of how the increasing productivity will affect them. Workers are fearful for their positions will as well resist the change. Employees expect the increasing productivity to be accompanied by rewards for their increased performance (Pink, & 3M Company, 2011). Workplaces that do not recognize the benefits of motivating the employee are frequently faced with such fierce resistance to increasing productivity. A motivated employee will be able to offer his best in the service delivery for caring for those acute and chronic conditions thus increasing productivity. The Long-Term Care Hospitals workplaces must adopt a culture of effective motivation in order to capture the effort of employees. In so doing, each employee will work towards accomplishing their task in time, and this culminates in increased acceptance for increasing productivity. Conclusion Managers must be leaders and create a positive organizational culture to encourage workers to be productive. While managers can enforce productivity levels simply by applying authority of their positions, leaders seek positive motivators to encourage optimal levels of productivity. Employees are more productive when working in an atmosphere of respect where leaders keep the lines of communication open and keep workers informed of long-term goals rather than simply controlling and managing workers in their daily activities. In order to understand the impact of motivation on the workplace, LTCHs top management must first examine the possible sources of motivation. Workers are motivated by both internal and external factors. Internal factors include an individual worker’s personal thought process and experiences. External factors refer to those factors as the organizational cultures that either inspires workers to be productive through the use of rewards or by instilling a sense of fear in workers. It is critical to understand that a worker who is highly self-motivated can be greatly impacted by an external environment that discourages employees to demonstrate high levels of motivation. Reference Schulz, R., & Johnson, A. C. (2003). Management of hospitals and health services: Strategic issues and performance. Washington, D.C: Beard Books. Pink, D. H., & 3M Company. (2011). Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. S.l.: Penguin Group US. Read More