Motivation-Hygiene Theory and a Pay-For-Performance Plan
The motivation-hygiene theory elaborated by Herzberg includes two components. Maintenance factors, also known as hygiene issues, are work conditions, job security, salary, and insurance (Alshmemri et al. 13). The motivators are composed of responsibility, involvement in the work process, the recognition of an employee’s achievements, and challenging work. Hygiene factors identify the workplace through its policies, supervision, and a system of incentives, which may be perceived as dissatisfaction points. The workplace satisfaction and career growth are associated with motivators.
A pay-for-performance plan allows employees to increase their remuneration that depends on their performance, thus providing motivation and enhancing a company’s profits. Among the potential advantages of implementing the pay-for-performance plan, there are better motivation and morale, boosted productivity, and cost-efficiency. Since employees are likely to practice high-quality work to receive increased pay, a company they work for benefits from improved outcomes and retaining talents.
The disadvantages may be expressed in the need to have qualified employees. If they lack relevant skills and knowledge, the identified system would not be successful. Another difficulty refers to the fact that changing or ending the pay-for-performance plan may result in decreased morale of employees. In addition, it is important to make sure that all employee reviews are objective.
To design job enrichment, job rotation, and job enlargement program for a forklift operator, a manager needs to test his or her skills and knowledge and specify a pool of employees whose job positions will be replaced. After that, the manager should match employees and available jobs so that the former perform suitable tasks (testing equipment, for example). It is also important to increase workforce flexibility in terms of job enrichment that is the horizontal increase of employees’ responsibilities (as a chief operator, for example). The manager needs to consider the ways employees may grow vertically in their career, thus ensuring job enrichment.
Job Design Methods
Night shifts often perceived by employees as rather boring since the responsibility lies only in monitoring any suspicious events or persons. Especially security officers and police employees are vulnerable to encountering boredom during their work. To increase their motivation and engage in work, Phillips states that job rotation may be useful in addressing boredom by shifting an employee to 2-3 different positions (582).
In case of the given security officer, he or she may be given such positions as a border patrol agent and other private security jobs. Since this employee finds nightshifts difficult, his or her schedule should also be reconsidered. Namely, it is possible to recommend offering him or her rotating working shifts such as from 6 AM to 2 PM or from 2 PM to 10 PM. Such a design method would allow this employee to enjoy his or her job and develop personally.
Job enlargement is another method that can be applied particularly to the given employee and other security officers working nighttime. The number of tasks performed by them during nightshifts should be increased, for example, some part of work may be transferred from dayshifts. The assignments associated with documentation may be planned in the schedule of nightshifts so that employees would be interested in the effectiveness of their work.
To address monotony and boredom, the following elements should be taken into account: the evaluation of the current needs and skills of this employee, training to assign him or her new tasks, and schedule issues (du Toit 108). The overall task of implementing the described changes is to help the employee in improving his or her attention and concentration on work by reducing the so-called down-time periods.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is an understanding of one’s feelings in various situations and the ability to use them in the best way. The leaders, managers, and their organizations benefit from emotional intelligence as they learn to understand people and how their emotions influence their decisions. This allows them to build relationships in the most effective way, thus enhancing productivity. Favorable interpersonal relationships, personal emotional stability, and plasticity are an integral part of the successful performance of managerial functions (Sony and Mekoth 25).
Managers should be able to create and maintain effective working relationships with a large number of diverse people both within and outside the organization. In case employees’ attitudes to their organization are positive, they feel the sense of belongingness, and want to contribute to further development, it is possible to state that they are loyal and committed to it. Such employees are responsible, cooperative, and proactive in their pursuit of opportunities and creative solutions. If employees are not engaged and seem to be negative towards their company, unintended behaviors are likely to appear in aggression, missed deadlines, and overall passivity.
The paramount difference between cognitive and affective attitudes towards work is the incentive that leads employees in their decisions and behaviors. The cognitive stance represents thoughts, ideas, and beliefs about something, while the affective one focuses on feelings and emotions. For example, if an employee knows some negative information about the manager, he or she may hate him or her from the affective point. It is most likely that emotions impact employees’ behavioral responses more than cognition, especially negative emotions. Since people are prone to face strong feelings, it may be difficult to cope with them, yet emotional intelligence strategies should be used to shape proper responses.
Career and Psychosocial Functions of Mentoring
Career functions of mentoring include the provision of new knowledge and skills to employees with the aim of improving their performance and responsibility. Another function is building a strong basis for further development of employees as a valuable part of a company (Lam).
Personally, I have observed career functions of mentoring while interning in a XYZ organization. My mentor explained to me the basics of managing people in this organization and invited me to participate in the resolution of several workplace conflicts. Along with challenging assignments, my mentor used a protection function to shield me from the unnecessary contacts with senior management.
Psychosocial functions of mentoring involve counseling, role modeling, acceptance, and friendship. The main goal of these functions is to assist a person in developing the clarity of identity and competences required by one or another organization (Petri). I believe that these functions are the most important ones since they introduce a new intern or employee in the context of a company. While career functions may be learned in the course of the work, psychosocial ones require more efforts and time to adopt them. As stated by Jones, career mentoring programs may be outdated, while emotional assistance is of great importance to achieve corporate loyalty.
One more concern refers to the need to ensure equitable mentorship as the current situation seems to be stigmatized and hardly accessible to women and African-Americans (Petri). More to the point, I have observed that many mentoring programs fail to design a proper and structured plan for mentors, and the latter have to adjust it themselves. Thus, by exploring personal concerns and focusing on social interactions, psychosocial functions of mentoring seems to be more valuable.
Societal Culture
For shaping a societal culture, religion, economics, politics, and ethnicity are important as integral parts of any nation. Depending on certain traits, Hofstede ranks various nations in terms of such dimensions as collectivism / individualism, power distance, masculinity, and so on. According to Hofstede, the US has the following ranks: power distance (40), individualism (91), masculinity (62), and uncertainty avoidance (46) (Mihaela 110).
One may suggest that power distance refers to politics, uncertainty avoidance to economics, and religion / ethnicity to individualism / masculinity. In my point of view, these ranks are rational, as they reflect the American nation’s characteristics such as advanced economy, wide political powers, monotheistic religion, and inequality.
Hofstede’s dimensions anticipate employees’ preferences for working, depending on their belongingness to a particular category. For instance, the American individualistic culture encourages active and creative personal work, while Chinese value collective work and family links at work. Accordingly, Americans are more likely to select privately owned organizations structures, and Chinese may prefer to work for large family-owned corporations.
The national culture dimensions identify how processes, policies, and practices are organized. For instance, in cultures with high power distance, subordinates are told what to do, and they are expected to be consulted in nations with low power distance. In cultures with the expressed masculinity, there is a larger gap between compensation and pay of men and women compared to low masculine (feminine) societies. The countries with high long-term orientation are more likely to stick to work-related ethics compared to those that are ranked low in this dimension. Thus, employees and managers are viewed differently in the workplace since their roles, responsibilities, and attitudes tend to vary from culture to culture.
Works Cited
Alshmemri, Mohammed, et al. “Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory.” Life Science Journal, vol. 14, no. 5, 2017, pp. 12-16.
du Toit, David. “Working as a Security Guard on Potchefstroom Campus: Issues, Challenges and Coping Strategies.” South African Review of Sociology, vol. 46, no. 2, 2015, pp. 97-114.
Jones, Mel. “Why Can’t Companies Get Mentorship Programs Right?” The Atlantic, 2017. Web.
Lam, Bourree. “How Office Culture Can Crush Women’s Ambitions.” The Atlantic, 2017. Web.
Mihaela, Herciu. “A Synergistic Approach of Cross-Cultural Management and Leadership Style.” Journal of International Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 2014, pp. 106-115.
Petri, Alexandra E. “When Potential Mentors are Mostly White and Male.” The Atlantic, 2017. Web.
Phillips, Scott W. “Police Discretion and Boredom: What Officers Do When There is Nothing to Do.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, vol. 45, no. 5, 2016, pp. 580-601.
Sony, Michael, and Nandakumar Mekoth. “The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence, Frontline Employee Adaptability, Job Satisfaction and Job Performance.” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, vol. 30, no. C, 2016, pp. 20-32.