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Compare And Contrast Different Theories Of Motivation
Compare And Contrast Different Theories Of Motivation
Different motivation theories with their limitations
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There is considerable debate over merit pay and the effect it has on employees within an organization. Psychologists believe merit pay is related to the incentive theory of psychology; people respond to rewards and with the proper motivation, it increases performance (Cherry). Employers consider merit pay an effective tool and a form of competition strategy for motivating employees to achieve positive performance outcomes. Many employers ignore the fact that incentive plans may motivate some individuals while others have high work ethics and do not need motivation. The intent of this paper is to discuss merit pay used by companies, the motivational factors on employees to reach high achievement, and the challenges that employees face due …show more content…
Merit pay is a vehicle for employers recognizing individual performance and motivating employees to reach higher achievement. Competition is a natural human instinct and healthy competition compels employees to perform at their highest level. Employees must have clear, attainable goals and supervisors must provide continuous feedback, publicly praising employees to motivate performance. Additionally, employers that recognize and reward individuals for their exceptional performance in tangible ways, ultimately increase employee’s self-esteem and encourage them to maintain a high level of commitment to the organization. Employees are more apt to stay with a company when they feel that their hard work is appreciated and compensated. When employees are highly driven, it decreases absenteeism, tardiness, and results in a positive work attitude. In fact, employers use merit pay not only to retain highly motivated performance individuals, but also to attract new employees who are motivated by monetary rewards cultivating a productive workforce. Personally, I think merit pay plans are a great incentive if they are implemented fairly, equitable, and based on individual performance. Furthermore, I feel nothing demoralizes a high performing employee faster than knowing that all employees who contribute less to performance will receive the exact pay increase. If merit pay programs are instituted, they must ensure that …show more content…
Many employees lose motivation if not considered deserving of merit rewards, which directly affect performance. Employee’s say the criteria used to measure performance is highly subjective and unfair. Consequently, favoritism when rating employees can create major problems within an organization. This makes other employees unmotivated; they feel insignificant, causing low morale, because no matter how high they perform, they never meet the standards. Unmotivated employees produce less and do not substantially contribute to the organization. The inconsistencies with the appraisal system used for merit pay causes a higher degree of employee conflict, which directly affects productivity. Often personal goals may become more important than team goals, which is not beneficial to the company and affects team unity. Developing an accurate performance appraisal system where assessors are properly trained and objectives are clearly spelled out and discussed with employees can alleviate many
Ever dreaded the annual performance review? Once a year companies try to evaluate their workforce with a standard form containing generalities that are supposed to define whether each employee was successful over the previous year. The grading systems, one-way communication, and lack of collaborative effort create a dreaded process for all parties involved. To combat this loathsome process, Michelle Neely Martinez, in her article “Rewards given the right way”, explores a new design for performance appraisals that promotes open conversation regarding company and personal goals, avoids the negative reactions caused by constructive criticism, and creates positive evaluation of employees’ strengths and weaknesses to inspire “development and improvement.” (p. 2)
Reasons being their job in an organization or a corporation is very crucial and not easy to replace. Due to this, companies often go to great lengths spending hundreds of thousands of dollars searching and recruiting for someone who is able to help their company grow in value and continue to be successful. In order to attract the best and highly skilled employees, companies cannot just focus on their salary offers anymore. Competitive hiring practices are now focusing on various compensation and benefit packages that will make potential employees favor them to other competitive companies (“Executive Benefits and Compensation”, 2016). Companies must offer benefits that will have a positive effect on the organization without being counterproductive, meaning offering benefits that employees will use appropriately and will consequently have a positive impact on their effectiveness at work. Some concerns about executive compensation include making business decisions in order to meet business goals under the premise of personal gain in order to receive their incentive (“Executive Benefits and Compensation”, 2016). In order to combat this concern companies should tie the employee’s incentives to the value of their firm
When employees were asked, what factors could be changed at USAA to help maintain employee motivation levels, a couple of them answered with, “higher wages” and “more money”. This response corroborates other studies regarding pay which state surveys will more likely under emphasize the importance of pay relative to other motivational factors. (Rynes, Gerhart & Minette, 2004). “Financial incentives had by far the largest effect on productivity of all interventions. For example, pay was four times more effective than interventions designed to make work more interesting.” (Rynes, 2004). One reason for this phenomenon is social desirable responding. It should be noted, that although pay may be under reported, the results indicate other factors are also important for employee
The performance assessment and appraisal forms are crucial within the performance management system (Aguinis, 2014). However, the appraisal form within the case study provided is designed for the supervisor’s use thus missing one vital factor throughout the entire process, employee participation. Thus, questioning the validity and reliability of the process. This is especially concerning as the bottom 10 per cent of employees are being fired and the top 20 per cent are being rewarded with $5,000.00 based on what their supervisor records on the form without consultation with employees. Thus, supervisors may not provide accurate scores as they do not have to justify their responses (Aguinis,
In addition to feedback, goals have been found to be more effective when they are tied to employee evaluations. The results of employee evaluations typically carry great weight when it comes to raises, bonuses, and potential advancement. Tying these types of rewards to successful goal completion also improves performance and increases goal commitment among employees (House, 1971). Incorporating deadlines to specific goals is also attributed to elevated performance levels. The motivation levels of the employee increase to meet goals within set deadlines and receive positive feedback (Lunenburg, 2011). As organizations focus on employee satisfaction and motivation, goal setting will remain an important aspect of management practices. In today’s economy, organizations are competing for top talent and ensuring employee satisfaction among job tasks is an important piece of talent retention.
Whitford explained how in the 1990’s, public management agenda had critical changes in the federal government’s merit system with limited job security and the innovation of merit-based pay systems (1). Merit-based pay systems is a part of governmental reform efforts but there is still challenges of implementing incentive systems as there are different organizational contexts (2). Choi and Whitford discuss how merit-based pay is limited in government settings by the inherent of public organizations. They also discuss how coercive control as an attempt to increase effort coercively instead of voluntarily as it measured by improved views of empowerment, task involvement and other sentimental results (4). This reading explains how employees when they are less satisfied with their workplaces and exposed to financial incentives will result in turnover and future incentives as merit-based pay is either inherently flawed or public organizations are bad places to implement it
The problem with merit pay systems is often a result of flaws in the company design and/or administration. Annual performance evaluations and pay adjustments take a long time makes it difficult for employees to connect the pay change with behavior that may have occurred many months ago. In order to motivate performance at a higher level, the difference between the pay increase for employees whose performance is average and employees whose performance is exemplary is just not
It’s time to Get Rid of Merit Pay Teachers are a valuable asset to the educational system without them, how would the children of the future be able to go off to college with an open mind and ready to take on the world. The merit pay system kind of comes and goes. The problem is that they have a system set in place to encourage teachers to up their teaching abilities; meanwhile the merit pay system is struggling because there just is not enough money to keep up with how fast the teachers are reaching the set goals for the merit pay out. It’s a case of supply and demand or the lack of.
When developing a performance based appraisal system it is important for the company to clearly outline how the scale works and what the benefits are of following the scale. This type of system is all about accessing and recording performances in order to reward the employee for his or her stellar performance. Like I stated within the reinforcement theory section that any time rewards are given can lead to a negative outcome. This is my opinion of course but I’ve seen performance appraisal backfire in the same manner. A company may be in a position at one time to reward employees a certain way for completing a task in a certain manner however this is not always the case. When a company begins this approach in many cases there is no coming back. The employees will always expect the same recognition and reward for that particular job. This can lead to an employee feeling entitled which can lead to a narcissistic attitude within the job. This particular approach backfired on me when I was first made platoon sergeant and I rewarded my soldiers for being on time and improving themselves both mentally and physically, example like scoring higher on their pt test. When a particular soldier was asked why they were trying so hard the soldier answered with, “The sergeant has promised fewer duties for the top soldiers that improves the most.” As you can imagine this did not go over well with my superiors because they
The curve can accommodate only a few people at the top. For this, during performance appraisal, relative appraisal mechanisms are employed, wherein an employees’ performance is benchmarked against that of a group of people. When performance appraisals for an employee are done with respect to a group’s performance, biases can be formed about the group’s dominant behavioral characteristic and the employee’s assessment could be calibrated with respect to that
Once the productive performance appraisal recognizes these employees, they can be compensated with raises and career advancement. The prevailing form used for hourly laborers give to inaccuracies and falsification in the evaluation process which can point to discrimination, poor performance, low employee morale, and a lack of development. The current model is too vague and does not reveal what the employee is doing adequately and what requires to be developed. When employees are not notified of what they are doing wrong or right they cannot make the fundamental
Employee compensation and reward systems have undergone a couple of paradigm shifts since inception. Reward systems were traditionally compensation based and focused on the individual or the position (Beam 1995). After a recession in the early 1980's, employers turned to performance based models in an attempt to save money while still rewarding top performers (Applebaum & Shapiro, 1992). Today, the most successful organizations are using a total reward model, a hybrid of the performance based model combined with strategic human resource management planning to create reward systems that both benefit the employee and help organizations realize their operational goals (Chen & Hsieh, 2006).
In large organisation, competition is not only in the market for goods and services but also for the quality of employees. As such, a large organization can only become attractive to the most skilled and high quality workers if it has an effective compensation and benefit plan. The key purpose of an effective compensation and benefit system is to provide employees with the right rewards for their work and right behavior in the workplace. Typically, organizational success is determined by the quality of employees an organization has. In turn, the organization can only attract such quality workers and maintain them through effective compensation and benefit
Improving staff efficacy and effectiveness is only possible in light of their performance appraisal (Torabi and Sufodeh 2010). Performance Appraisal does not always increase productivity, it may be biased, not accurate and not accepted by users. Occasionally, performance appraisal system has been linked to increase in dissatisfaction, lack of motivation, resistance especially on the part of the appraiser/employees. This condition is due to other errors in the content of evaluation biases in the process of evaluation, disharmony between employee needs and appraisal goals or the absence of clear and independent dimensions (Grangreio, Caruguti, Sebastiano and Tamimi
In any organization, sometimes, monetary schemes doesnot get people involve to pursue work in a certain way, rather it demoralize and threatens the self-esteem of employees. According to Meyer (1975), “the basis for most of the problems with merit pay plans is that most people think their own performance is above average”. The amount may ...