HROB Chapter 6: Work Motivation
True or false: in merit based plans, employers seek to link performance to pay
= false, this is the opposite, they do not seek to link performance to pay as pay isnt always related to performance by managers
Explain: 4 outcomes
a) high internal work motivation b) high growth satisfaction c) high general job satisfaction d) high work effectiveness = when the outcomes are here, the worker is able to draw motivation from the job itself that results in higher quality productivity
4 contextual characteristics
1. ergonomics 2. physical demands 3. work conditions 4. equipment use
4 flexible work options
1. flex time 2. compressed workweek 3. job and work sharing 4. telecommuting
5 knowledge characteristics
1. job complexity 2. information processing 3. problem solving 4. skill variety 5. specialization
What theory says Money is a highly desired outcome
= (Expectancy Theory)
What theory says: Salary and pay can satisfy basic human needs
= (Maslow's Hierarchy)
Define: social characteristics
= (interpersonal and social aspects of work) = work context characteristics
What is a flexible work arrangement?
- Work options that permit flexibility in terms of "where" and/or "when" work is completed - Serves diverse workforce needs and promotes increased job satisfaction to help manage work-life responsibilities and balance - help employees manager non-work responsibilities - reduce absenteeism and turnover
What did a survey on organizations that use merit based plans reveal
- 83% of organizations said that pay for performance was only somewhat successful or not working at all - many people under these plans don't perceive a link between their job performance and their pay - evidence also that pay is not related to performance under some merit plans
Explain: research on telecommuting
- benefit for work life balance and increased productivity - small but positive effects on perceived autonomy, lower work family conflict and job satisfaction and performance, lower stress, lower turnover, - negative: damage of informal communications and decreased visibility when promotions are considered, issues of trust and worries that employees will not be as productive
Explain: research evidence for flextime
- employees under flex time almost always prefer fixed hours - generally, work aptitudes become more positive - minimal abuse of arrangement - absenteeism and tardiness often decrease - positive effect on productivity, job satisfaction, satisfaction with work schedule
Explain: research evidence for job characteristics theory
- support for basic prediction of the model that = workers tend to respond favourably to jobs higher in motivating potential - the 5 job characteristics are positively related to outcomes of the model and some of the core job characteristics are also related to behavioural and well-being outcomes - strong support for the psychological outcomes of experiencing meaningfulness of the work and less for the experienced responsibility and no for the role of knowledge traits (therefore, experienced meaningfulness is the most critical psychological state) - the model fails in its predictions about growth needs and context satisfaction and that the evidence for these is weak and contradictory (moderators)
Evidence for MBO
- the evidence suggests they result in clear productivity gains - however: difficult, elaborate, time-consuming, - high commitment in program can result in a 56% average gain in productivity - low commitment in program can result in a 6% productivity gain
Explain: work design questionnaire
- used to measure the work design characterisitcs and is the most comprehensive measure of work design available - scale used as a diagnostic tool to assess the motivational properties of jobs prior to work redesign - work characteristics found to have a large sig effect on employee attitudes and behaviours (most support for task characteristics)
Explain: work design and relational job design model
-acknowledges both the jobs and the broader work environment = attributes of the task, job, and social and organizational environment - has motivational and social characteristics
6 ways we can enrich jobs
1. Combining tasks: assigning tasks that might be performed by different workers to one person - could increase the variety of skills that an employee has and contribute to task identification as each worker approaches doing a unified job from start to finish 2. Establishing external client relationships: putting employees in touch with the people outside the organization who depend on products and services - involve the use of interpersonal skills to increase identity and significance of job, increase feedback about ones performance 3. Establishing internal client relationships: putting employees in touch with people inside organization who depend on their services ex. Billers and expeditors in manufacturing firm in touch with sales - similar to above advantages 4. reducing supervision or reliance on others: increase autonomy, and control over ones work 5. forming work teams - leads to the formal/informal development of a variety of skills and increase the identitiy of the job 6. Making feedback more direct: used in conjunction with other job designs aspects that permit workers to be identified with their own product or service ex. Signing their name on the product so they take ownership
The motivational practices used and that will be effective, rely on a number of factors (4)
1. Employee needs (e.g., money, challenge) 2. Nature of the job (e.g., individual, group) 3. Organizational characteristics (e.g., culture) 4. Desired outcome (e.g., learning) - more complex systems that have more variety are typically more effective
5 task characteristics
1. autonomy 2. task variety 3. task significance 4. task identity 5. feedback
Explain: 3 moderators
1. knowledge and skill: weak knowledge and skills should not respond favourably to jobs that are high in motivating potential since they will be seen as too demanding 2. growth need strength: the extent to which people desire to achieve higher order need satisfaction by performing their jobs - high in this means responsive to challenging work 3. context satisfactions: when unsatisfied by the context of the job i.e. pay, supervision, company policy), less responsive to challenging work than those reasonably satisfied
3 issues with merit pay plans
1. low discrimination 2. small increases 3. pay secrecy
5 problems with wage incentive plans (Q.O.C.J.P)
1. lowered quality: faster people are processing, might come at the expense of the product quality - quality control is harder for some types of tasks than others 2. differential opportunity: workers have different opportunities to produce at a high level - ex. Materials and quality of production equipment varies from workplace to workplace - this could lead to expectancy that they can produce at a high level (expectancy theory) 3. Reduced cooperation among workers 4. Incompatible job design: ways different jobs are designed can make it difficult to implement wage incentives - ex. Assembly line, difficult to identify and reward the contribution of a single employee when many were involved in the creation - as the size of the team increases the pay for the individual person decreases 5. Restriction of productivity: psychological impediment, workers restrict productivity - without wage incentives the typical productivity is bell shaped distribution - workers may come to an agreement with themselves what constitutes a fair days work and artificially limit their output - workers my feel that increased productivity due to the incentive will lead to reductions of workforce
MBO syas that employee-manager interactions have 4 themes
1. manager meet with individual worker to develop and agree on employee objectives for the coming months - should include objectives that are specific and quantified 2. periodic meetings to monitor employee progress to achieving objectives - objectives can be modified 3. appraisal meeting is held to evaluate the extent to which the agreed-upon objectives have been achieved 4. MBO cycle repeated
5 potential problems with job enrichment
1. poor diagnosis ex. Job enlargement: increasing job breadth by giving employees more tasks at the samle elvel to perform by leaving other core characteristics unchanged - this could lead to more boring, fragmented, routine tasks to do, lead to overload and work stress from too many responsibilities 2. lack of desire or skill - some workers do not want enriched jobs bc they don't want the extra responsibility 3. demand for rewards - may ask for greater extrinsic rewards such as pay to accompany their redesigned jobs 4. Union resistance - historical focus on negotiating with management about easily unquantified extrinsic motivators such as money, rather than soft stuff of job design 5. supervisory resistance - unanticipated impact on other jobs or other parts of the organization system - bc someone else job is being enriched might mean the bosses job is being disenriched
4 types of programs to motivate teamwork
1. profit sharing 2. employee stock ownership 3. gainsharing 4. skill based pay
Explain: 5 core job characteristics (S.A.S.I.F)
1. skill variety = the opportunity to do a variety of job activities using various skills and talents 2. autonomy = the freedom to schedule one's own work activities and decide work procedures 3. task significance = the impact that a job has on other people 4. task identity = the extent to which a job involves doing a complete piece of work from beginning to end 5. feedback = information about the effectiveness of one's work performance - higher levels of these characteristics should lead to favourable outcomes
4 social characteristics
1. social support 2. interdependence 3. interaction outside the organization 4. feedback from others
3 ways to increase the scope of the jobs?
1. use stretch assignments = offer employees challenging opportunities to broaden their skills by working on a variety of tasks with new responsibilities 2. job rotation =rotating employees to different tasks and jobs in the organization ex. Bell does this 3. job characteristics = can psychologically impact workers ex. skill variety
Define: high scope jobs
= - deep and broad bc they are required to do a number of tasks with a lot of discretion on how to do them ex. professors, management ~ provide a lot of intrinsic motivation can fulfill the higher order needs by the opportunity to perform high scope jobs, intrinsic motivation if the outcomes of the job are attractive (says expectancy theory)
Explain: 3 critical psychological states
= 1. experienced meaningfulness of the work 2. experienced the responsibility for outcomes of the work 3. knowledge of the actual results of the work activities = work will be intrinsically motivating
Define: job involvement
= = a cognitive state of psychological identification with one's job and the importance of work to ones total self-image - employees with challenging + enriched jobs rend to have higher levels of job involvement - all core job characteristics have been found to be positively related to job involvement
Explain: management by objective approach
= = an elaborate, systematic, ongoing program designed to facilitate goal establishment, goal accomplishment and employee development - objectives for an organization are developed by top management and diffused down through an organization through the MBO process - organizational objectives are translated into specific behavioural objectives for individual members - focus is on the nature of the interaction between management and individual workers
Explain: profit sharing
= = the return of some company profit to employees in the form of a cash bonus or retirement supplement - problem: too many factors beyond the control of the workforce that can affect profits no matter how well people perform at their jobs - in a large firm difficult to see the impact of one's own actions on profits - works bets in smaller firms that regularly turn a handsome profit
T/F: pay disclosure can increase performance and satisfaction with pay if system is properly created
= If there is inequitable or inadequate performance evaluation system, openness will expose inadequacy and lead to change
Explain: gainsharing
= a group pay incentive plan based on productivity or performance improvement over which the workforce has some control - includes reductions in the cost of labour, material or supplies - most common is the Scanlon plan: stresses participatory management and joint problem solving between employees and managers - uses the pay system to reward employees for this cooperative behaviour - aligns company goals and employee goals - these plans support the motivational impact of this group wage incentive - disadvantage: bonuses might be paid even when the organization does not make a profit
Define: piece-rate pay performance
= a pay system in which individual workers are paid a certain sum of money for each unit of production completed
Explain: telecommuting
= a system by which employees are able to work at remote locations but stay in touch with their offices through the use of information and communication technology - related to the distributed work programs where it's a combination of remote work that allow the employee to do work from their business office, home office, satellite office
Explain: skill based pay
= a system in which people are paid according to the number of job skills they have acquired - aka pay for knowledge - motivate employees to learn a wide variety of work tasks - encourage flexibility in task assignments and is especially useful on self-managed teams - disadvantage: increases the cost of training, labour costs can increase as employees acquire more skills
Explain: job and work sharing
= alternative work schedule in which 2 part-time employees divide the work of a full time job - usually to save jobs in a downsize or recession - helps to retain highly skilled and trained employees, cut costs, save jobs, avoid layoffs - no hard research in this area - issues with performance appraisals - issues if the workers don't communicate well
Explain: flex time
= an alternative work schedule in which arrival and departure times are flexible - well suited to meet the needs of a diverse workforce since it allows employees to tailor arrival and departure times to their own transportation and child care situations - generally limited to white collar workers
Explain: compressed workweek + research
= an alternative work schedule in which people work fewer than normal 5 days but put in normal hours per week - 4-10 vs 5-8 - at first people seem to like it but then there is an increase in fatigue following the introduction - no changes in productivity
What is the restriction of productivity curve
= an artificial limitation of work output that can occur under wage incentive plans - theres a drop off
Explain: merit pay plans
= an attempt to link pay to performance on white-collar jobs - it difficult to find objective indicators of individual performance for these types of jobs b/c they are typically done by subjective judgement of performance from the manager - managers are required to evaluate the performance of employees on some form of a rating scale and or writing a written description of performance - recommended some amount of merit pay be awarded above and beyond their basic salaries - merit pay can provide a tangible signal of whos on track for an employee's performance - individuals who see a strong link between rewards and performance tend to perform better - merit pay plans more frequent than wage incentive plans (now one of the most common forms of motivation in Canadian organizations) - can attract, retain, effective for improving performance of professionals
Define: job enrichment
= designed to enhance intrinsic motivation, quality of working life, and job involvement
Define: deep jobs
= emphasize the freedom in planning how to do the work - the degree of discretion or control a worker has over how the work tasks are performed
Explain: pay secrecy
= extreme secrecy that surrounds salary in most organizations - employees might retain ignorant of these facts bc they have no way of comparing their own merit treatment with that of others - secrecy might severely damage the motivational impact of a well-designed merit plan - in the absence of better information, employees invent salaries for one another and reduces both satisfaction and motivation - managers: underestimate bosses pay, overestimate peers pay, overestimate subordinates pay
Explain: employee stock ownership plans (ESOPS)
= incentive plans that allow employees to own a set amount of a company's shares and provide employees with a stake in the company's future earnings and success - help to: retain talent, motivate performance, focusing employee attention on organizational performance, creating a culture of ownership, educating employees about the business and conserving cash by substituting options for cash - believed to increase employees loyalty and motivation because they align employees with goals and interests with those of the organization and create a sense of legal and psychological ownership - work best in small organizations; in larger ones its more difficult for employees to see the connection between their efforts and company profits - they lose their motivational potential in a weak economy when a company's price share goes down
research on pay and financial incentives are consistent with need and expectancy theory say these programs do what?
= increase performance and lower turnover
Explain: job design as a motivator
= job design is the structure, content, and configuration of a person's work tasks and roles - many workers are motivated by stimulating, challenging, meaningful work - this is in contrast with the traditional view of job design which was simplification
Explain: low discrimination
= managers may be unable or unwilling to discriminate between good and poor performers - only fair response is to rate most employees as equal
Explain: small increases
= merit increases are simply too small to be effective motivators - lump sum bonus: merit pay that is awarded in a single payment and not built into base pay - lump sum used to help the small increase problem but if not careful can lead to unethical behaviour in the organization
Explain: job characteristics model
= proposes there are several core job characteristics that have a certain psychological impact on workers - these psychological states induced by the job lead to certain outcomes that are relevant to the workers and the organization - the moderators influence the extent to which these relationships hold true
Explain: Hackman and Oldham Job Diagnositc survey (JDS)
= report the amount of various core characteristics in their job - the following formula is (see ohone for image to write out on cue card) - uses a 7 point scale that can range all the way from 1 to 343 - average is 128
Define: broad jobs
= require workers to do a number of different tasks - the number of different activities performed on the jobs
Explain: low scope jobs
= shallow, narrow, ex. Assembly line
Define: motivational characteristics
= task characteristics, knowledge characteristics
Define: job scope
= the breadth and depth of a job
Explain: relational architecture of jobs approach (Adam Grant)
= the structural properties of work that shape employees opportunities to connect and interact with other people - uses prosocial motivation: the desire to expend effort to benefit other people and make a difference in their lives - jobs vary in terms of the impact they make on others lives - allowing employees to communicate and interact with those effected by their work allows them to see the benefit and importance of their work for others - jobs should be designed so that employees have contact with or are aware of those who benefit from their work - proven to improve performance and motivation
T/F: pay secrecy can damage motivation
= true - Managers over estimate pay of employees and peers, underestimate pay of superiors,This lowers satisfaction with pay
Define: wage incentive plans
= various systems that link pay to performance on production jobs - hourly wage + piece rate on top - ex. Operator makes $15 an hour and then 50 cents on top of every widget he produces - compared to straight hourly pay, usually leads to substantial increases in productivity
When will pay for performance programs be more effective in terms of employee performance and reward expectancy and job performance?
= when accompanied by immediate managers contingent reward leadership and organizational profit sharing - incentive compensation programs that link pay to numerical targets result in more cheating than other compensation system
