1. It should be obvious that the road to employee motivation is not entirely cle
ID: 412617 • Letter: 1
Question
1. It should be obvious that the road to employee motivation is not entirely clear to Don's five first-line supervisors. List specific illustrations from the You Make the Call that support this observation:
2. Define motivation and explain how Don and his five direct reports can use it to get employee into the right game:
3. Why might some of the employees in today's economy not be willing to do the best job possible to preserve their job at Economy and Moving Storage:
is is the director of reloading operations for Econ Don Davis ng and Storage, a large international s Due to a corporate reorganization, over 1,300 hipping es had their jobs eliminated. Don was recently you expect people to perform in such extreme hea place is not air-conditioned and it is awful! d to the Dublin center, where he wo Ryan, the newest of the supervisors, added, "Most workers are part-time. Some of them hav nsferre e in of five front-line supervisors who direct the opera 90 employees. Don was thankful for the opportunity ooking forward to the challenge and responsibili osition, but he would miss the camaraderie previous loan on Marned:ning (ontact jobs or are working here while they attend school. They come here tired and with other things on their min Most of the injuries I see are directly related to a lack of oncentration. They make stupid mistakes. Even during our safety meetings, many a Face book and e-mail was not the same orkers seem bored and do not seem to pay attention." Steve complained, "The job the employees perform is very repetitious. They seem bored and lack enthusiasm. In fact, on several occasions pay n's first week on the job, it became obvious that the emplovees have pointed out that their work is mindless In ublin center had some serious problems that needed be corrected quickly. He became aware that many not satisfying, and needs changes. If you ask me, boredom rs were complaining that the packages shipped the main problem with employee performance. the Dublin center arrived at their destinations late Fer a company that prided itself on Steve said,"I think the performance of some of our employees is affected by a few'bad apples: Overall, most or in poo quality customer service and timely delivery, these con ditions were not acceptable, and it was Don's responsibil ity to correct the situation. of our pseple are gead workers They wamt ta a t job. I've seen them getting frustrated because of a poorly performing co-worker who needs to be reprimanded I can't do anything about it; we are often short staffed and if I discipline someone, he or she will probably quit. That's how it was last week when I leaned on Reuben about his job performance. He essentially said,'take this job and shove it!'Our employees know what to do, but they sometimes just don't feel they need to do i - The first thing Don did was gather information regarding the customer complaints. When he checked with Holly Henderson, the human resources director, to ather information on the employee characteristics at the Dublin center, Don discovered that his center had a high rate of employee turnover and lost time injury rates. Absenteeism and tardiness were running rampant, and the number of employee grievances had increased in the right way. Even when I plead wi th them to improve or threaten to write them up, it doesn't work. If I could only get the poor performers motivated, I think the rest would Last, Sue chimed in, "I have trouble motivating my workers. Just yesterday, one of my best workers left with a knee injury and the others failed to pick up the slack. If we don't find a way to motivate our people and improve performance, none of us will have a job. the past six months Realizing that unhappy employees fail in line and overall perfommance wouid equal poor customer service, Don decided to meet with the supervisors to understand why employees were per forming below expectations During the meeting, Don illustrated the last three The real question is:"What can Don do to help his front-line supervisors do a better job of motivating their workers to perform better?" He knew that pay increases were Steve, Joe, Sue months' performance results to Amy and Ryan and asked for their input. Amy, a long-term supervisor, pointed out that the conditions in which the employees work were sometimes terrible."We have had record high temperatures during the month of June" she not possible. He knows he will have to do some thing quickly. What should he do? poses. The identitie aid. " Last week, it was over 100 degrees in here. How can tinn based on real events to be used for educational purExplanation / Answer
(1)
The five supervisors mention different observations as a part of their analysis the present situation. The first one makes the working condition responsible for the problems. The second supervisor's realization is that the problem is occurring due to the fact that most of the employees are working part-time. Some were mentioning that the real reason was the boredom of the employees or the nature of their repetitive job. One of them is sure that most of the employees are good at their work and the damage is caused by some 'Bad Apples' who are the main reasons for the demotivation. These observations evidenced that the reason for demotivation is not clear to them and thus the road to motivation is also lacking clarity.
(2)
Motivation is the willingness to exert effort in order to achieve a goal, stimulated by the effort's ability to fulfill an individual need. In other words, when the employees believe that doing what the organization wants will result in a meaningful reward then they will do the same.
This means that Don and his supervisors must first make the employees understand the expected outcome attainable with the efforts made by the employees as desired by the company. Don should bring out examples of his past experience and from other work sites that how performing as per the organization's expectation has led to the mutual success of the employees. Then he should start working on employees visualizing the desired state of theirs in the company so that they can attach a desired valence to the expected outcome. In order to substantiate his claim, Don, with the help of his supervisors, should devise a performance management system which assists the employees regarding their present state, desired state, and the path to success.
(3)
The competition is responsible for such behaviors of the employees. The Economy and Moving Storage is a company which does not have a unique presence in the market and as a result, there are many other competitors in the market. In the job market, the talent pool is limited and the people can freely move from one company to the other. Added to this is the lack of job security (due to part-time nature of work) which leads to major dissatisfaction and lack of desire to work properly. The most important issues that are valued by the employees in today's economy are base pay, better job security, pension plans and benefits, work-life balance, and health benefits are lacking in this company.
Related Questions
Navigate
Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.