Employee Motivation, Involvement, and Recognition

Requirements For Today’s Managers In alignment (to be on the team) Thinking out the box (be creative) Empowering employees Maintaining core competencies Managing change

Requirements For Today’s Employees (1 of 2) Flexibility - accept change readily Clock speed - move faster, think faster Accept ambiguity & uncertainty Stay current - commit to life-long learning Contribute - add more value than you take

Requirements For Today’s Employees (2 of 2) Manage yourself - fixer not finger pointer Don’t get a job, make a job

How Does the Workforce Affect Productivity?

Composition of the workforce Characteristics of life off the job Personal well-being of workers Job characteristics Workplace characteristics Employee satisfaction and motivation

How Can An Organization Motivate Its Employees?

Strategies for Improving Motivation Implement effective performance evaluation systems Implement individual rewards & recognition systems Improve work design and job design Promote employee involvement Solicit employee feedback systematically

Work Design Techniques for Improving Productivity Streamline work processes Adopt team (group) concepts Deploy Quality of Work Life (QWL) practices Implement group reward & recognition systems Design effective layouts and work cells

Job Design Techniques for Improving Productivity Job simplification Job rotation Job enlargement Job enrichment Job sharing

Teams and Productivity Content (goals and outcomes) and process (how the team accomplishes tasks) - productive teams pay attention to both. Cohesion - Team must be cohesive but must not want agreement more than accuracy (or quality of outcome).

Undercurrents in Team Dynamics Personal identity in the group Membership, inclusion Influence, control, mutual trust Getting along, mutual loyalty Identity with the work unit Effects on relationships with co-workers and loyalty to work unit

Undercurrents in Team Dynamics (Continued) Relationships between team members Effects on rank and positions Friendship and formality Openness Personality preferences

Employee Involvement Employee involvement means allowing employees to participate in work-related decisions and improvement activities that affect them. This doesn’t mean anarchy, but it means that management shares its responsibilities in decision-making with employees.

What Are the Potential Benefits of Employee Involvement?

Benefits of Employee Involvement Increases trust and commitment. Improves employee communications and attitudes. Involved employees are more likely to generate new ideas and achieve a higher quality of work life Reduce the workload of managers

Levels of Employee Involvement Information sharing Dialogue Individual problem solving Intra-group problem solving Inter-group problem solving Focused problem solving Limited self- direction Total self-direction

Approaches to Involving Employees Commitment from management Must be long-term, ongoing attempts Communications efforts feedback “bottom-up” communications employee surveys and suggestion systems Training and education

What Are Characteristics of An Effective Recognition System?

Characteristics of An Effective Recognition System Meaningful and fair Fun and non-threatening Publicize extensively Input from employees on the system Tied to performance evaluation system Allow nomination from employees and customers

Conclusions Productivity improvement (PI) is critical to every organization for survival Every employee should have basic knowledge and skills to contribute to PI Organizations need to have clear PI strategies Successful PI does not ensure long-term profitability nor competitiveness