The Challenges of Motivating Employees

The managers in a company are challenged continuously for motivating the workforce to perform activities. The major challenge is to motivate the employees for working towards helping the organization for achieving the goals. Meeting the needs and then achieving the desired goals is difficult for the managers. In the company like Walmart, the employees need to work in a collaborative manner with delivering and paying for care. The motivation is a set of force that initiate, direct and makes the people persistent to make efforts. The intrinsic rewards are achieved by motivation that is driven by interests or enjoyment in a particular task.

Vroom works on higher points which are related to inferences, motivation that is considered an invisible process. The managers are seen to come and be able to motivate the people for controlling the circumstances. The industry needs to work on handling the people with skills and abilities to offer prospects that are considered important needs for satisfying the people (Rollinson, 2008). The main aim is to focus on the processes which are for the external and internal development of an individual. The consequences of the organization operating without any purpose of motivation leads towards its employees with catastrophic outlook. In the companies like Walmart, there is a need to focus on driving employees towards achieving the goals and the organizational development. Walmart focus on the motivation with proper outcomes that requires to ensure about the job satisfaction. This includes the content, contemporary and the process theories which are for working towards explaining the expectancy theory by Vroom (Lloyd & Mertens, 2018). Walmart deals in retail industry sector was started in 1962, with operations in 11200 stores in 27 countries. There are more than 2.2 million associates in different parts of the world and they are increasing every year (Walmart, 2018).

Walmart has been working on defining the goals with motivating employees effectively. The company needs to take care of the hygiene factors with working conditions, salary and the incentive payments for the employees. The self-motivated workforce help in emphasizing the job content or motivation factors effectively. Here, the rewards are considered to be a major factor for motivation that help in encouraging the retention in the organization. The idea is about providing the employees with complete security at job and also better working conditions, loyalty and the belongings for the enterprise.

Motivation: This is about handling the positive emotional state with appraisal of one’s job experience. It is considered important for Walmart to bring the change through self-concept, social norms and the past experiences. There is a need to understand about strengthening and weakening processes by company through training (Boxall, Guthrie & Paauwe, 2016). As per the analysis, the workplaces reviews are done through the appraisals which have pre-determined standards, and their outcome can impact the emotional reaction for the employees as well.

Theories of Motivation: Vroom, Maslow, McClelland

Maslow hierarchy of needs could be determined through analyzing the basic needs and then focusing on self-actualization. The pyramid is to describe the levels of the needs with the examples that are related to the self-esteem and self-actualization. They are important for a better simplicity and logical growth. Here, the digital disruption of the theories where my organization has been able to handle the issue of working with 3000 words across the different countries (Wahba, 2015). The digital tools are for handling the basic needs which are mined of the employees and how the workers need to work on growth and advancement.

The job satisfaction: There is a need to understand about the underpinnings with motivation that comes with exploring what job satisfaction means with motivated employees. It is the responsibility of Walmart to support their employees to bring about the loyalty at work and improve the retention process. This could be done through varying qualifications or experiences. Some of the theories that could be used are:

Maslow Theory of Needs: The theory is about working on motivational programs for the employees to match with the theory of need for affiliation. The strategy of Walmart is to work on the workforce as associates where the sense of belongingness is to the company employees with creating a family-oriented business. The theory includes:

1. Physiological Needs: They are for enabling the employees for accessing the shares of the company with selling stocks at a much-discounted price. Walmart holds the cash incentive plans which are for the additional income which is depending upon the performance of company (Walmart Stores, 2015).
2. Safety: the motivation comes through the healthy and the well-being benefits where the employees are seen to be involved in getting a proper health insurance at a very low price. It includes the primary doctors and the visions along with giving them free confidential counselling.
3. Belongingness: Walmart has been working on treating the associates by calling them through the first name. The company is initiated by calling the others’ first name as this can create a better and a family-oriented business.
4. Esteem: Walmart has been able to expand the gender antidiscrimination policy with families working on same-sex partners. There is a need to solve the gender imbalance in management along with making sure about motivating the female employees as they feel respected by the other people as well. This is an effective way for motivating the female employees as they are respected by the others in the workplace.
5. Self-actualization: Walmart is generally targeting the graduates and then offer the leadership development program. There are opportunities for the people who work through the mentoring programs, sponsorship and the courses. The standards of diversity is set through the company with performance evaluation scores that is tied to diversity goals achievement.

Another example is McClelland Three Motive theory which is about focusing on the needs of achievement, power and the affectability. Here, Walmart is involved in working through training and improving the effectiveness through enhancing the different needs as per the development of personality (Pearson, 2016).

Need for Achievement: They are for reaching the goals and taking complete responsibility of the task. The employees with the higher needs for achievement tends to avoid the lower or the higher situations of risks, which is mainly to attain success and that is not considered as a good challenge. There are motivations by challenging goals with able to work effectively with the group of people.

Need for Affiliation: The employees look for the people’s approval and then avoid the conflicts as well. There are affiliation motivated with higher needs to have a good harmony relationship that will help in feeling accepted and approved by other people. The employees who are generally seen to be motivated by the affiliation generally want to be liked by the other people as well (Kanfer & Chen, 2016). They do not like to take any risks which could lead to uncertainty at the time of providing a feedback.

The Importance of Job Satisfaction

Need for Power: This is when the employees hold a higher need for the power with desire of controlling environment and is considered to be power motivated. The controlling people and the influences on others makes the people to work with charge of group. The self-motivation is about understanding and seeking ways to win a competition with ability to be recognized by the others (Ryan, 2017). The effectiveness is in the negotiation situation which is mainly due to the ability to control and influence the people as well. The feedback for the people is good to be directed to them, where they keep on motivating by giving them opportunity for managing the other people.

Considering the changes, the learned needs theory of Walmart will require to focus on evaluating the different perspectives. This includes the proper evaluation of the designing and then working over preventing the employees who feel dissatisfied over the evaluation results. Walmart needs to pay attention to make use of the strategies which are relevant to the attitudes of new employees. The problem is about the current strategy of Walmart which is related to the need for power which is the time needed for the promotion set from one to the other level (Kuvaas, Buch, Gagne, Dysvik & Forest, 2016). Here, the corporation holds its associates to be promoted with the capability to properly handle the poses and new generation of workforce. There are forms and structures related to handling the meeting of needs and the requirements of the employees. The employees prefer a higher minimum wage with payments done for the overtime hours as well. The employees who are involved in the anti-discrimination campaign will have to strive for esteem needs more. The satisfaction on the job is when the employees are treated equally, and their suggestions are considered important.

The study determines how one can help the organization to cultivate the conducive atmosphere and the relationship for the employees to foster positive attitudes for the work. The motivation is as per the critical processes that are linked which leads to the serving of satisfaction for the employees as well (Ritholtz, 2015). The content and process theories need to practice about motivating the employees in effective manner. The employees need to work on the achievement processes, with affiliation and power. It is important to understand that there are goals which are about highlighting the needs for achievement to avoid the lower or the higher risks situations.

Effective Leadership and Management

The advantage of the theories are that they are easy to understand which takes into account human nature. Here, the consideration is about understanding the options which is for food and then addressing the nature of greed as well (Argyris, 2017). The relevance is about the problems where not all the individuals work think in a same manner, with individuals working on social affect and respect that is more important than the safety standards. The cultural differences is another limitation which is considered for different nations with focusing on difficulty to measure the satisfaction. The subjective approach is to deal with the human minds where the people gets satisfied after fulfillment of physiological and safety needs. The team work is about operating the same authority and the responsibility with good training, educating and setting new technologies (Rollinson, 2008). The motivation can change is done at the lifetime of individual, where the young employees sees job security as a major hygiene factor.

Wal-Mart can work on using the theories with improving the efficiency at work. Here, there is a need to make sure of innating drives for acquiring, bonding, learning and then defending in the corporate with emotions and rationality (Miner, 2015). The models are defined with attitude where the responsibilities are defined for achievements of their employees. The four-drive theory could help in forming the social relationship with mutual caring that is when there are evaluation procedures as well. One can work on solving the problem of new employee attitude and then driving the operations at the workplace among other employees. Hence, to solve the problems of promotion, Walmart needs to evaluate and work on the workplace development from lower to the upper management level.

Conclusion

Motivation is needed for the employees in the productivity and the management with leadership styles that are considered to be major role to play (Shields et al., 2015). The individuals have the expectations with leadership responsibility to properly develop and then align with theories that are related to bring the job satisfaction to employees. With the empowering of the workforce, the employees need to be encouraged with giving a platform for voice out the concerns and how one can be motivated.

References 

Boxall, P., Guthrie, J.P. and Paauwe, J., (2016). Editorial introduction: Progressing our understanding of the mediating variables linking HRM, employee well?being and organisational performance. Human Resource Management Journal, 26(2), pp.103-111.

Kanfer, R., & Chen, G. (2016). Motivation in organizational behavior: History, advances and prospects. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 136, 6-19.

Kuvaas, B., Buch, R., Gagné, M., Dysvik, A., & Forest, J. (2016). Do you get what you pay for? Sales incentives and implications for motivation and changes in turnover intention and work effort. Motivation and Emotion, 40(5), 667-680.

Lloyd, R., & Mertens, D. (2018). Expecting More Out of Expectancy Theory: History Urges Inclusion of the Social Context. International Management Review, 14(1).

Pearson B., (2016)., 5 Priceless Ways Walmart’s Investment In Workers Is Paying Off. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpearson/2016/11/01/5-priceless-ways-walmarts-investment-in-workers-is-paying-off/#3a95135d45d5>

Ritholtz B., (2015). Walmart finds motivation to change: Bloomberg View. Available at:< https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/06/walmart_finds_motivation_to_ch.html>

Ryan T (2017)., Walmart balances motivation across pay levels. Available at:<https://www.retailwire.com/discussion/walmart-balances-motivation-across-pay-levels/>

Wahba, P. (2015). One way Walmart is motivating workers: Less Celine Dion on the PA system. Available at:<https://fortune.com/2015/06/03/walmart-employees/>

Walmart (2018)., Walmart story. Available at: <https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story> Accessed on 1st December, 2018.

Walmart Stores (2015). WAL-MART STORES, INC. STOCK INCENTIVE PLAN OF 2015. Available at:<https://boluicdn.benefits.ml.com/CDN/ATGDocs/Production/contentRepository/BOL0037247/WalMartStoresIncStockIncentivePlanof2015effectiveasofFeb1.pdf> Accessed on 1st December, 2018. 

Books

Argyris, C. (2017). Integrating the Individual and the Organization. Routledge.

Güss, C. D., Burger, M. L., & Dörner, D. (2017). The role of motivation in complex problem solving. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 851.

Miner, J. B. (2015). Organizational behavior 1: Essential theories of motivation and leadership. Routledge.

Rollinson, D., (2008). Organisational behaviour and analysis: An integrated approach. Pearson Education.

Shields, J., Brown, M., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P., Johns, R., O’Leary, P., Robinson, J. and Plimmer, G., (2015). Managing employee performance & reward: Concepts, practices, strategies. Cambridge University Press.

Stoyanov, S. (2017). A theory of human motivation. Macat Library.