Work Motivation and Reward System

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Introduction

Organizations and companies experience a lot of challenges in attracting and retaining quality productive work force. They are faced with the problem of wanting to maintain and to make their employees satisfied to tap their optimum productivity and their ideas while at the same time make them creative and satisfied while keeping them motivated and satisfied.

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations have been widely studied and there has been an understanding that they can bring change in organizations. There are various forms of motivation techniques that are employed by companies like motivational salary and fewer hours of working.

Other factors such as strong communication in the organization, recognition, added responsibility and achievement are also factors that can motivate employees (Reeve, 2009).

Workplace environment impacts on the engagement, productivity, and morale of employees positively and negatively. In the modern work environment, companies cannot afford to waste their potential workforce. The primary factors in the workplace that can impact on the performance and the productivity of the employees are rewards and motivation.

These affect the productivity, morale and engagement. In order to motivate employees, various companies have implemented several practices like performance-based employment and salary increase as the primary incentives. The workplace factors that affect performance are illustrated in the following diagram.

The workplace factors that affect performance.

(Oyedele, 2011)

Assessment of a department according to goal setting, performance evaluation and reward

My analysis of my company or organization will be focused on the sales department: sales department and its staff are mainly responsible for the public relations of the company, customer services, client relationship as well as sales and promotion of the company.

Working in the sales department requires candidates who are highly skilled, particularly in the areas of communication, understanding of various concepts and ability of an individual to interact and network. It also demands for enthusiasm and sales and marketing skills.

The organization utilizes the one-on-one oriented reward system whereby the manager rewards a person or individual team member for achieving the sales target. Other reward incentives for the company are the rewarding of the sales team of the month which serves to motivate employees who work well as a team and who realize their sales target.

In the organization, goals are set by individuals as opposed to the team members’ or the team leaders. The goals set should be operational, realistic and applicable. Individual sales members can collaborate and decide on the relevant goals that are appropriate for their work function.

The organization’s reward system is effective but there is a problem of enforcing the rules and the regulation that are needed in the promotion of prosperity and reward system.

The managers in the organization should move beyond the reward system and reinforcement, and instead they should find out as what can intrinsically motivate employees. Extrinsic rewards are an indication that personal gain is imminent and the situations taken are considered to be a turn for the better (Reeve, 2009).

Major tasks of the department of the job: does it cultivate intrinsic motivation

Motivation is a process that can arouse, energize, stimulate and sustain a behavior as well as performance. It is considered as a way of stimulating people to action and work towards the realization of a particular goal. Effective motivation is the best way of stimulating people, and money is considered to be an unmatched motivator together with other incentives.

One of the greatest aspects of intrinsic rewards is job satisfaction and if an individual is not satisfied with his job then the performance will drop and get affected hence damaging and impacting negatively on-the-job performance of the team and the organization.

Praise and recognition are given to an employee for any task or job that is well and positively done, but it should be noted that the existence of an autonomy and responsibility is a form of extrinsic motivation and reward. Consequently, individual development both at the career and personal levels is considered to be a form of intrinsic reward (Reeve, 2009).

Employees engage in certain behaviors in order to receive rewards and people expect rewards when they take part in a particular behavior; when people expect rewards, then it undermines their intrinsic motivation but unexpected rewards do not undermine intrinsic motivation.

Rewards have the ability to interfere with the quality of performance, but it can affect the flexibility of the work since when rewards are stopped, the employees quit after attaining the criterion. Incentives, rewards and consequences have benefits but extrinsic rewards do not have any impact or facilitating effect. Intrinsic motivation has the effect of making uninteresting task interesting.

When the employees are motivated, they get to have a conceptual understanding of what they are expected to do, this is because intrinsic motivation enhances flexibility in the thinking of the employees. When employees are extrinsically motivated they get to learn how to integrate information in a flexible and conceptual manner (Reeve, 2009).

There is the believe that intrinsic motivators have a high psychological cost and impact in terms of intrinsic motivation, process of learning, self-regulation and quality of learning.

Motivation in the workplace may be realized by maintaining a strong reward system. Every individual or employee demands a particular degree of motivation in order to perform their tasks in the workplace environment.

Absence of motivation makes procrastination worse and reduces employee morale, and it might cause conflict. Motivation enables workers to work efficiently and productively (Grant & Shin, 2011).

The company-wide rewards like bonus or profit sharing, praise or recognition

Motivation is a necessity in life situation, in a workplace; motivation plays a critical role in leadership performance and success. Salary and promotion have been considered as the main two ways of motivating employees. Employees also get motivated when they are treated well.

Loyalty and recognition are the key element in the motivation of workers in order to motivate productivity. Employees are also motivated through praise. Motivation is a psychological process, and it is therefore, an important element of behavior, and it can be used to predict or regulate or model a behavior (Reeve, 2009).

Rewards are portrayed to have direct relationships and ability to attract, retain and motivate employees. Employee behavior should be reflected in work satisfaction and performance (Grant & Shin, 2011).

Praise functions as an extrinsic event that has the effect to motivate and motivate individual behavior and serve to inform the competence about a job well done. Any supervisor who uses praise to communicate to its workers and congratulate the employees for a job well done will act as a motivator.

Praise can be communicated in a controlled manner and will have the effect of tagging a tone of pressure among the employees. Praise itself does not have a motivational effect, but it is the way it is administered that brings the motivational effect (Reeve, 2009).

Bonus can instigate good performance. Employees are provided with bonus when they exceed expectations in order to motivate them to work higher (Oyedele, 2011). The very tangible way where the employers can motivate their employees is through the institutionalizing of the incentive and reward system. These serve to pay performance.

Monetary incentives are considered the best by managers since it reinforces performance and good ideas. With the incentives system, the employees can record high levels of performance and job satisfaction. Bonuses, for example, are made under the system and basis of employee output (Oyedele, 2011).

Using goals: what goals are set, how they are set and how effective can they be

Goals and the setting of goals is a very important task for the organization. People with goals outshine those without goals, and people perform better when they have goals that motivate them. There is always a need for goal specificity, which should guide the performer about what he intents to do.

Vague goals are irrelevant and there is a need to specify the goal in good and realistic numerical time frames. Goals should be specific because they draw attention to what needs to be done and at what time, it also helps in reducing the ambiguity in thought and the variability in employee performance. Goals are necessary because they inform the performer on what to do specifically and where and when to concentrate.

Goals are fundamental because they enable an individual to revise an already tested strategy through undertaking and creating an improved strategy. Goals motivate as well as increasing the ability and capability of the individual (Reeve, 2009).

Goal setting translates into an effective and increased performance based on the context of feedback; they enable the individual to keep track on what is happening and their progress towards the set goals. For an employee to perform better there is a need for feedback and a goal that will enable him to maximize performance.

Goal acceptance is a critical variable in the setting of goals, and it is undertaken in the context of interpersonal relationships where individual attempts to provide others to the goal. Goals improve performance only once they are internalized. Workplace leaders, for example, improve the capability of their employees by providing or drafting a compelling vision for the company’ future.

Goals can be realized when there are incentives or rewards that are extrinsic. Incentives like money, scholarship and public recognition have the power to influence the witness by assigning measurable goals.

Goals can be short-term or long term. The following are necessary considerations in the setting of goals: identify the goals to be established or accomplished and define goal difficulty.

One main aim of attaining objectives is to establishing goals or goal setting. Effective goal setting entails the following sequential procedure (Reeve, 2009). Mental simulation is not fantasies for success or wishful thinking. There is a difference between goal content and the process of attaining the goal.

Mental simulation focuses on the production of goal-oriented action. For any goal to be accomplished, a lot of time must be spent in planning how to attain them since planning is an integral part of a goal-oriented performance.

Several people fail to realize their goals because they do not establish the specific action plans on how to attain the goals, they also fail to specify on when to initiate the goal-oriented action as well as failing to specify how they can ensure their goal-oriented persistence in face and times of interruptions and disruptions.

Goals that are set should be implementable and there should be an implementation intention before they are established or set in order to bring them into fruition. There are goal setting and goal striving strategies and sequences that should be followed, the sequences in the realization of goal setting are: specifying the objectives, defining the difficulty, clarifying the goal specificity and specifying the time frame.

The steps on goal striving strategies are: check on the acceptance of the goal, discuss the goal, attainment strategies, create the implementation intentions and provide the performance feedback.

Regular tracking of goals provides an opportunity for immediate feedback and enables the workers to make adjustments in the performance plans and to tackle any emerging obstacles (Oyedele, 2011).

Conclusion

The performance of the employees is related to the degree of their motivation, and this has led to various employees’ management methods like the Gantt’s task and bonus wage. Motivation acts as a catalyst that can spur the eagerness of en employee to work.

Motivation can be positive or negative. Motivation can be effective to an employee or to a group of employees. It should be understood that work motivation is psychological, and it only serves to direct, to energize and to maintain action-oriented job, task or project.

Reward system should be designed in a manner that can be in conformity with the strategies of a company in question. A rewarded behavior is prone to be repeated.

References

Grant, A. M., & Shin, J. (2011). Work motivation: Directing, energizing, and maintaining effort (and research). Forthcoming in R. M. Ryan (Ed.), Oxford handbook of motivation. London, UK: Oxford University Press.

Oyedele, O. (2011). How Managers can motivate their Employees. Science Topics. Web.

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

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