Introduction
Leadership is a very important skill which is not possessed by all; hardly very few people are blessed with this skill. Being a leader is not easy; it poses many challenges and the person who overcomes these challenges make a successful leader. A leader instills confidence and provides motivation to the employees, motivation is an extremely important factor and motivation can easily transform an employee within no time, ones the transformation of the employee takes place, the goals of the company would become much easier to achieve. This is why motivation is considered to be one of the most important factors and all most all the companies look for new methods to motivate the employees and to bring out the best out of them. This paper will focus upon an important issue of how to motivate the employees at workplace.
“Nothing matters more in winning than getting the right people on the field. Differentiation helps you do that.” (Welch Way, 23 March 2009). One of the biggest challenges faced by the leaders these days is getting the right people for the job, any job can be completed by anybody but the point is how efficiently a person can do a job? Leadership is all about perfection and any wrong decisions taken can prove very fatal. For instance a leader hires a person, who he believes is the right man/woman for the organization but the work of that employee proves otherwise, the organization can suffer because of the same and the loss occurred because of that wrong decision of the leader will always remain irrecoverable. It is very difficult these days to find the right people, who can commit their future to the organization but leaders are expected to have the quality of differentiation, a leader who possesses this quality can never go wrong in the process of selecting the right people for the organization. The quality of differentiation is very difficult to instill in a leader, this is something which should come naturally to the leader, no educational institution teaches this quality and it cannot be learnt anywhere and it is purely dependent on instincts. A leader should always differentiate the right people from the wrong people in order to succeed in his/her endeavors. This is one of the biggest challenges which the leaders these days face, if a leader is born with this quality then major pitfalls in leadership can be avoided without facing much difficulty.
Motivation at Workplace
Motivation is one key term which can overcome all the challenges. Motivation is a very wonderful tool which can turn around anything which is perceived to be as difficult. Motivating the employees is a very tough job which every leader should undertake and complete successfully. Motivation can be of many types but the one type which works out the best is rewards. Rewarding the employees for their hard work gives them the confidence to achieve more than what they have achieved and for achieving some target; the most important thing is confidence. Without confidence no employee can ever perform for the organization and the confidence is boosted by rewarding the efforts of the employees. Rewards can often change the thinking of the employee for good, in the sense that rewards can provide the employees with enough motivation to achieve the goals of the company and if all the employees in an organization work towards the target only then the target can be achieved. So all the employees, should be rewarded at some stage or the other for their efforts. If all the efforts of the employees goes unnoticed by the leaders then they will surely tend to think that there is no use of working so hard and this will ultimately result in de motivating the employees and from then on their contribution will reduce by an great extent. So to make sure that this does not happen a leader should make sure that the efforts of the employees should never go unnoticed.
Another way of dealing with the challenges is by having self control. By self control a leader can experience stronger motivation and this will help further in meeting the goals of the company. A leader should control his/ her own performance and set high standards for himself/ herself. A leader should be a role model in front of the employees, all the employees should admire the leader and only then the employees will listen and follow the instructions of the leader. Self control provides extra awareness in the sense that the leader becomes more aware of his/her goal and he/she starts working towards it along with the others in the organization. Another important thing is the analysis, which a manger is expected to have as a skill, he/she should be able to analyze the objectives of the organization and work accordingly. A clear plan of all this comes with self control, there are many other advantages of the same. Some of them are, if a manager has self control he/she will be able to maintain a good work environment in the organization, this is extremely important because in order to work in an organization it is extremely important to maintain a good and a healthy atmosphere. This is related to the self control of the manager and self control is also significant in decision making. A leader with self control will always make better decisions when compared to a leader with much less self control. The paper has already thrown light upon decision making and it would be redundant to elucidate upon how important is decision making for a leader.
Ways to Motivate Employees
Incentive Pay or Pay for Performance is given for specific performance results rather than the time worked by an employee. It is beneficial for both, the employees, as well as the organization because an incentive increases motivation of employees to work harder and to achieve the goals of the organization and when more and more employees work towards the goals of the organization, both, the employees as well as the organization inevitably grow and prosper. Incentives can give a much deserved boost to an employee, results of which, is usually seen in quick time this also strengthens the relationship of an employee and boss, the same also contributes in achieving the goals of the organization. “The simplicity inherent in the casual incentive approach attracts many farmers who would not consider a structured incentive. Casual rewards include a pat on the back, a sincere thank-you, a $50 bill, a dinner for two at a local restaurant, or a pair of tickets to the rodeo (workers may have excellent suggestions along these lines). You may want to entitle workers to choose from a menu of several rewards.”1
There are many types of incentives all meant to boost the performance of an employee. For instance, typical incentives include profit sharing, bonus for reducing production cost etc. Safety incentives include training the workers, forming a safety committee in an organization etc. Each incentive is meant for a special purpose and if made use of, it can work wonders for the organization.
“What better way to drive people to work harder and more efficiently, you may ask, than to offer them a special carrot: more money for hitting specific company targets? The idea seems perfect. Managers want their employees to pull out the stops on Project X, for example. Employees, confident of their ability to reach if not surpass the goals, start banking on the extra money.”2
Managers employ this method to attract the employees to work harder and to achieve the organizational goals, however, this system produced horrifying results when implemented by HP. The first 6 months were really enjoyable for all the employees as well as the managers but when the managers moved the target a little on the higher side the negative impact of this system was exposed. The frustration of all the employees was there in front of everyone to see. They could not meet the target as a result of which there were no incentives. This goes to show that this system can be a failure if the managers become too ambitious or set unrealistic goals.
“Pay for performance is a growing phenomenon, according to a Hewitt Associates study that found employee pay raises inching up an average of 3.8 percent in 2008, maintaining the tepid growth of the last few years. Bonuses based on performance, meanwhile, were set to hit a record high this year of 12 percent, as a percentage of payroll, up from 8.8 percent in 2003. Ninety percent of companies offer at least one broad-based variable pay plan, Hewitt found, up from 80 percent in 2006 and 51 percent in 1991.”3
This paper threw light upon how motivation can turn around the fortune of a company. The ways to motivate people has also been discussed in this paper. A comprehensive guide to motivating employees has been provided in this paper.
References
Drucker, P., “Management challenges for 21 century, Classic and style”.
Henry Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work, Harper & Row, 1973.
“Incentive Pay” University of California.
Pay for Performance, Entrepreneur.
“Pay for Performance Does not always pay off” Working Knowledge.
Straight from the Gut. In Welsh Way.
Footnotes
- “Incentive Pay” University of California
- “Pay for Performance Does not always pay off” Working Knowledge
- “Pay for Performance” Entrepreneur