Suggestions for Motivating Employees

1) Briefly outline the ‘Suggestions for Motivating Employees’, as presented by the authors in the text.

Employee motivation is always considered to be an important element for any business. It helps to keep the employees satisfied with their job and not looking for any other jobs. Each and every employer must consider it be of utmost importance (Lu & Gursoy, 2016). The unmotivated employees that are unhappy with their work and organisation in which they work could result in common work complaints from the employees and this creates many problems. Some of the suggestions provided by the book ‘Suggestions for Motivating Employees’ are promoting employee career path development, giving the employees thank you notes, offering some sort of employee fun events, giving respect to the employees, holding quarterly company meetings with the employees, providing them constructive feedbacks and providing them rewards and recognitions. Furthermore, it is also to mention that the employer solutions for the increasing the motivation level of employees must include both the monetary as well as nonmonetary solutions like providing them with time offs.

2) Trust is a crucial element in leadership. Define trust, explain why it is so important, and explain the five dimensions of trust.

It is to note that leaders play a very important part in the smooth and effective running as well as in the ultimate success of each and every organisation. They are the ones that unite the employees as well as motivate them for working towards the organisational vision (Bortolotti, Boscari & Danese, 2015). The leaders get engage with their co-workers and it is their duty to ensure that none of them are left behind. An effective leader is the one who has the potential to build up morale, initiate the actions as well as encourage the level of confidence among the employees. However, it is also to mention that a leader could never be inspiring and effective in true terms in the absence of quality which is taken for granted on a regular basis. According to Chen et al. (2014), cultivation of high culture of trust among the leaders are not any sort of soft skills, they in fact are the necessity that each and every leader must cultivate. It is also to note that about 45% of the employees working in different sectors have stated that the lack of trust in the leadership is been the biggest most issue that do effect their performance of work. (Lidenn et al., 2014) It is to note that trust is very critical to success, relationships as well as leadership in every organisation (Regan, Laschinger & Wong, 2016). Furthermore, the five dimensions of trust are that of openness, loyalty, consistency, integrity and competence. They are also regarded to be the dimension of trustworthy leadership.

Trust and Its Five Dimensions

Openness- Openness depends on the leaders to give their employees the full truth.

Loyalty- This is the willingness to save face for another person and advocate for their success; trusting a person is not going to take advantage of us or leave us disappointed when we are vulnerable.

Consistency- This relates to an individual’s reliability, predictability, and good judgement in handling situations. ‘Do as I say not as I do’ will definitely not work here in developing trust.

Integrity- Honesty and truthfulness are at the heart of trustworthiness and all other dimensions are insignificant without it.

Competence- This includes the technical and interpersonal knowledge and skills a person may have. Walking the talk is a must for trustworthiness.

3) Vroom’s expectancy theory is perhaps the most useful and practical theory of motivation. However, the language it uses is very difficult to understand. Explain in your own words what this  expectancy theory is all about. Do you agree with the theory? Why or why not? 

The Vroom’s expectancy theory assumes that the behaviour of the leaders results from the conscious choices that are made among the different alternatives which have the purpose of maximising the pleasure and minimizing the pain. It suggests that the relationship in between the behaviour of the individuals at their work as and in their goals are based on several factors like that of skills, experiences, abilities and knowledge (Parijat & Bagga, 2014). This theory also suggests the fact that although people might have different goals and aspiration, but they could be motivated if they belief that there is always a constructive and positive relation in between the performance and the efforts, the desire of satisfying the needs and requirements is very strong enough for making the efforts worthwhile, that the favourable performance are likely to result in their intended rewards and the rewards are likely to satisfy the important needs. Furthermore, this theory is completely based upon several beliefs and they are of instrumentality, valence and expectancy. I agree with this theory because if it can be applied in proper manner, the employees working the organisation are likely to work happily and willingly and they will also willingly participate in all the work related projects as because of the fact that the management team of the organisation has planned the participation depending on the employees being motivate by the chance of performing and getting rewards, that, according to the employees, are meaningful.

4) Discuss the reasons why people resist change. Explain how employers/organizations can help employees accept change. 

Vroom’s Expectancy Theory

Expecting the resistance to change as well as planning for it from the very beginning of the change management programs often allows people to effectively manage the objections. However, it is often seen that people resist change and this can be due to several different perspectives of theirs and for several different reasons. The first is that there can be often seen some sort of misunderstanding about the needs for the change when it is not clear for the employees that why the change is taking place in the first place (Canning & Found, 2015). This is a vital reason to consider due to the fact that if the employees do not get a clear understanding about the need for change then they are likely to resist it. This is particularly done by the ones who thinks that the prevailing way of doing the things are working well.

5) Outline and explain the types of control presented in the chapter on Foundations of Control.

In the chapter Foundation of Control, the process of control refers to a three-step process of measuring the actual performance, taking the managerial actions for correcting the deviations, addressing the sufficient standards and comparing the true performance against the standard. However, the types of control mentioned in this chapter are feed forward control, feedback control and concurrent control (Borman, 2017). The feedback control takes place after the very activity is done. In this type of control, the problems might already take place and have already caused some sort of waste or damage. It is considered to be the popular type of control. It has two advantaged and they are- it can enhance the motivation level of the employees and provide a meaningful information on the planning effectiveness. The feed forward control on the other hand helps in preventing the anticipated issues and it is one of the most desirable control (Sinclair et al., 2014). However, it needs accurate and timely information which often is very difficult to achieve. Lastly, the concurrent control happens when the activity are in progress. They corrects the issues prior to its conversion to very costly. Also, it is one of the best known form of control.

References:

Borman, W. C. (2017). Implications of Personality Theory and Research for the Rating of. Performance measurement and theory, 25, 127.

Bortolotti, T., Boscari, S., & Danese, P. (2015). Successful lean implementation: Organizational culture and soft lean practices. International Journal of Production Economics, 160, 182-201.

Canning, J., & Found, P. A. (2015). The effect of resistance in organizational change programmes: A study of a lean transformation. International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences, 7(2/3), 274-295.

Chen, X. P., Eberly, M. B., Chiang, T. J., Farh, J. L., & Cheng, B. S. (2014). Affective trust in Chinese leaders: Linking paternalistic leadership to employee performance. Journal of management, 40(3), 796-819.

Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Liao, C., & Meuser, J. D. (2014). Servant leadership and serving culture: Influence on individual and unit performance. Academy of Management Journal, 57(5), 1434-1452.

Lu, A. C. C., & Gursoy, D. (2016). Impact of job burnout on satisfaction and turnover intention: Do generational differences matter?. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 40(2), 210-235.

Parijat, P., & Bagga, S. (2014). Victor Vroom’s expectancy theory of motivation–An evaluation. International Research Journal of Business and Management, 7(9), 1-8.

Regan, S., Laschinger, H. K., & Wong, C. A. (2016). The influence of empowerment, authentic leadership, and professional practice environments on nurses’ perceived interprofessional collaboration. Journal of nursing management, 24(1), E54-E61.

Sinclair, N., Saglamyurek, E., Mallahzadeh, H., Slater, J. A., George, M., Ricken, R., … & Tittel, W. (2014). Spectral multiplexing for scalable quantum photonics using an atomic frequency comb quantum memory and feed-forward control. Physical review letters, 113(5), 053603.