Impact of Motivation on Employee Performance, Causes of Stress at Workplace - Coursework Example

ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR NEWSLETTER Name: Course: Instructor: Date: Contents INTRODUCTION 3 MOTIVATION AT WORK 4 What is motivation? 4 What motivates employees? 4 Impact of motivation on Employee performance 6 THE IMPACT OF STRESS ON PRODUCTIVITY AND INDIVIDUAL WELLBEING 7 What is stress? 7 Causes of stress at work place 8 The impact of stress on productivity and individual wellbeing 9 DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE SELF-DIRECTED WORK TEAMS 10 Workplace bullying and how to inform and protect employees 10 Concept of bully’s and bullying 11 Managing Workplace bullying and employees’ protection 12 INTRODUCTION According to French (2011), organization behavior is defined as the study of the different ways through which people interact within groups. Such groups might imply organizations within society or any other formally recognized entity that brings people from diverse backgrounds together. Normally, organizational behavior seeks to create more efficient business organizations through increased coordination between the different people involved in the execution of different tasks to achieve organizational goals and objectives. The core concept in organization behavior therefore turns out to be a scientific methodology that can be effectively applied to manage employees. Going by the above definition, the essence of this newsletter will thus be to inform the organization staff, especially those who might not have any knowledge of organization behavior, of the current trends in the modern day organizations. The information contained herein in the newsletter will thus be on four broad topics that often affect employee comfort and hence performance at the place of work. The topics covered include Motivation at work, the impact of stress on productivity and individual wellbeing, and the process of developing effective self-directed work teams, and the concept of Workplace bullying and how to inform and protect employees. In order to present a more exhaustive discussion, the major topics will be further broken down in to substituent components where necessary, to enhance the understanding of the target audience. MOTIVATION AT WORK What is motivation? The oxford dictionary of contemporary English defines motivation as the general desire or willingness of someone to do something. In the context of organizational behavior and with respect to work place context, employee motivation is defined as the evident level of energy, zeal, commitment and creativity that the organization’s employees show towards their respective jobs. Motivation plays a very vital role in keeping the organization’s best employees, and as a result, any organization that fails to consistently motivate its employees is bound to experience extremely high turnover rates. Motivation can thus be easily noticed from the way employees carry themselves around, especially from their desire to selflessly offer their services (Bruce, 2011). As a result, it is always the core responsibility of the management to find way through which they can motivate employees regardless of the level of growth or performance of the organization. In this case, motivation can also be thought of as a combination of all things done by the management in order to increase the employees’ comfort at their respective workplaces and thereby stimulate an increase in quality and quantity of output. What motivates employees? Bruce et al,(2011) suggests five fundamental methods that can be used by the management to motivate employees. The operational principle behind all these methods is that they seek to increase comfort at the work place thr4ough job satisfaction and other incentives. The initial method of employee motivation is through provision of incentives. An incentive is anything that that incites or tends to incite to action or greater effort, as a reward offered for increased productivity. For the case of employees, incentives can include reasonable salary and remuneration packages, physical presents and gifts, or any other privilege outside the official salary package. Managers can also give an extra paid day off, gift cards, tickets to the movies, or other low-cost ways to show their appreciation. According to Lauby (2005), incentives are primarily offered as motivation boosters to employees and hence they don’t have to be expensive. Empowering employees has also been cited a significant motivator. Empowering in this case means that the employees are granted more authority and say in how they do their jobs. Empowerment is seen when managers seeks idea and suggestions from employees on how to increase efficiency rather than forcing down already designed policies onto the employees. In other words, employees feel motivated when they are involved in the decision making process, discuss performance reviews as well as see part of their suggestions make up part of the organizational policies (Bruce et al, 2011). Career growth and development opportunities also serve as significant motivations for the employees; employees tend to give their best when they realize that they are working towards something and not stagnate in the current positions (Bruce et al, 2011). Knowledge of opportunities for training and advancement hence stimulates selfless service and hard work from the employees. Besides contribution towards personal career growth, grooming staff to take up better opportunities subsequently improve the reputation of the organization. Employees in an organization also tend to become motivated through efficient and well defined communication systems. As a result, regular communication helps keep an updated workforce which is always aware of the current state of the organization as well as future expectations. For instance, impending changes in the organization ought to be communicated in advance to the members of staff. Besides the numerous emails and letters, an effective manager is that who takes time off his or her busy schedule to initiate face-to-face communications with members of his or her staff. Finally, there must be a role model for the employees to emulate in order to stay motivated (Bruce et al, 2011). In this regard, managers ought to be leaders and hence examples too. Members of the managerial team must serve as examples to the rest of the organization. For instance, no employee will be willing to work hard if the management always looks sluggish and casual. Similarly, if the management shows ambition, anxiety and excitement towards organization’s goals, no doubt employees will reciprocate the same since good moods are often infectious, especially at the work place. Impact of motivation on Employee performance Motivation has several effects on performance of employees at their respective places of work. One impact of motivation is that it increases efficiency at the work place which leads to a subsequent increase in the output. When employees are motivated, they tend to always find reasons as to why they should offer their best for the company. In this case, the tem does not need to be reminded to work hard or attend to their respective tasks but instead develops a natural urge and self-drive to take up their responsibilities (Lauby et al, 2005). At the end of the day, the organizations realize a subsequent increase in the overall output from almost all departments of the organization. Motivation similarly increases the quality of output from employees. Usually, a demotivated workforce will require supervision and close monitoring for them to perform. However, the case seems different with a motivated workforce. Once employees feel that they are appreciated and taken good care of by the organization, they tend to reciprocate the same by keeping a strict adherence to the organizational culture and production standards (Lauby et al, 2005).. Supervision therefore becomes less amidst increasing quality of output. Hence, organizations that establish and maintain high standards of output are those one that continuously strive to motivate their employees. THE IMPACT OF STRESS ON PRODUCTIVITY AND INDIVIDUAL WELLBEING What is stress? In psychology, stress is defined as the feeling of being under too much mental or emotional pressure, and pressure turns into stress when you feel unable to cope. Work place stress can thus be thought of as all conditions that disturb employee comfort by way of initiating endless worries. Such conditions might relate to personal performance, objectives achievement, salary and remunerations as well as any other existences that might elicit psychological worry (Hicks & McSherry, 2006). From the above definition, it clearly turns out that stress leads to discomfort and constant worry. As a result, the normal functionality of any human being tends to be significantly affected by stress. For the case of an organization, stress, failure to handle work place stress does not only affect the person in consideration but instead the effects spill over to the entire organization. Causes of stress at work place As earlier on pointed out, work place stress may arise from different sources. However, there are inherent and hence general causes of workplace stress that are often found at all organizations. For instance, insufficient salary and remuneration packages have been cited as the leading cause of work place stress. According to Cartwright, & Cooper, (1997), the human resource office is supposed to come up with salary and remuneration packages that tend to offer some degree of contentment to the employees. For instance, such packages should be designed based on the existing economic conditions and the perceived social classes of different employees. Cartwright et al (1997) reveals that underpaid employees are always worried of the source of the extra funding for their various requirements. As a result, such underpaid employees spend, much of their time thinking on where they will get the surplus amount required to meet their various needs. In the end run, underpaid employees often suffer work place stress due to the endless streams of thoughts over the inability of their earnings to satisfy their needs. Job insecurity can also result into workplace stresses (King, 2005). This has been found to mostly affect casual and contracted employees who are often required to work for certain periods without knowledge of whether their tenures will be renewed or not. As a result, the uncertainty about the future of their job leads to stress. Employees in this case stay worried about their future at the organization and hence get stressed especially when other available opportunities might be hard to come by. Finally, rapid changes within the organization might also cause work place stress. Such changes may either involve changes in the managerial structure or in the organizational structure. Generally, employees tend to establish some degree of rapport with their line managers and other leaders in the organization. Similarly, exposure to certain routines leads to sequent mastery of the same. Stress thus comes about in places where employees are expected to adapt to rapid changes such as strict deadlines, long working hours or harsh managers that might be brought on board as part of the changes in the organization. The impact of stress on productivity and individual wellbeing Where employees become stressed due to underpayment, there are always cases of high turnover rates as employees leave the organization in search of greener pastures. In this case, personal productivity automatically goes down. As earlier pointed out, salaries and remunerations are considered as the first line incentives for employees and hence any incidence of underpayment definitely leads to demoralization and demotivation (King et al. 2005). No organization would wish to experience escalated turnover rates since the recruitment and hiring process as well as the employee trainings are extremely cost-consuming and expensive undertakings. Similarly, high turnover rates affect all aspects of the organization, right from the quality of production to the public reputation and even the market segment in case of business organizations. Stress subsequently leads to development of a negative attitude towards the organization and hence work place discomfort. Usually, most people try to avoid places that may cause them stress or any other form of discomfort. However, the fact that avoiding one’s work place would surmount to unpermitted absenteeism and even warrant dismissal implies that employees often have no alternative but to present themselves at their respective places of work. In the process, they tend to aggravate their stresses and increase the severity. In the long run, such affected employees are not only uncomfortable at their work police but even develop feelings of hatred against the organization. When explaining some of the impacts of stress on productivity and individual wellbeing, King et al (2005) first approaches workplace stress as then is the harmful physical and emotional responses that can happen when there is a conflict between job demands on the employee and the amount of control an employee has over meeting these demands. His assertion therefore leaves it without further explanation that work place stress has detrimental effects on individual health and wellbeing. For instance, a stressed member of staff does not only exhibit such emotional feelings while on job but instead carries the same interpersonal life. Psychologists argue that any form of stress has, a corresponding mental effect which when not timely attended to, can lead to mental illness. In fact, some employees may still show such mental effects even when the causes of stress have been solved by the organizational management. DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE SELF-DIRECTED WORK TEAMS Workplace bullying and how to inform and protect employees The oxford dictionary of contemporary English defines bullying as the intentional use of superior strength or influence by an individual so as to intimidate other people by typically forcing them to do what he or she wishes. While the definition revolves around the use of power and force, other manifestations of manipulation through the use power, sexual favors, enticement or any other crafty means to make employees carry out personal desires of any other person surmounts to bullying. Concept of bully’s and bullying Unfortunately, incidences of bullying have been on the increase in most organizations. The most common forms or bullying involve use of authority to gain personal favors as well as forceful interpersonal relations in order for one to survive at their respective job placements. According to Douglas (2001), most cases of work place often involve top managers within an organization. In order to show their might and power on their subordinates, such managers, the bullies in this case, us their authority to make their subordinates work in a way as to either please the manager in context or to satisfy his heartily desires. For instance, common cases of bullying include making employees work for long hours, working overtime without payment, ordering employees to take up tasks they are not meant to nor have little knowledge about and so many others. Apparently, most cases of bullying often go unreported as the victims are threatened with dismissals, pay cuts or transfers should they report the bullies to the relevant authorities. The second form of work place bullying similarly involve top manager as well as long serving members of staff. Whenever a new member of staff comes on board, the old serving employees may decide to make the survival of the new member dependent on them. This form of bullying has been reported in cases where new members of staff learn through apprentice ship. As a result, the long serving employees seize the opportunity to make the new members work as they give orders and instructions. In this case, the new members feel that they might fail to get the required training should they revolt against the bullies (Douglas et al, 2001). Similarly, some top managers have been accused of exploiting new members of staff for their own gains. For instance, when a new member comes on board, the managers keep on moving them from one place to another, often calling upon such members to help with the manager’s duties as the bossy bully watches. In this case, the fact that such employees are new makes them less rebellious and unlikely to report such incidences of bullying. Mata (2012) notes that most incidences of work place bullying are not only directed towards new employees but also to other staff members who might, in one way or another, be implicated in some form of irregularity at the work place. He asserts that employees who fail to report the occurrence of certain mistakes and instead opt to solve the same privately with their line managers often end up victims of harassment and work place bullying. The manager in this case, the manager seizes the opportunity to bully the implicated employee, often threatening the mistake should the employee fail to obey the orders or report the manager to the authorities. Managing Workplace bullying and employees’ protection One thing that organizational manager ought to make it clear to all members of their respective organizations is that any form of bullying is punishable, not only by organizational management but also by the law of the land. In this case, any person, whether a manager or a mere employee, who engages in any form of bullying, is deemed to have engaged in a criminal offence and hence subject to punishment by law. In the same regard, organizations are expected to clearly state their anti-bullying policies in the rules and regulations of the organization so that perennial bullies do not cite ignorance whenever called upon to explain their alleged involvement in cases of bullying. Similarly, drafting such policies within the organizational rules and organizations empowers the various employees to report any cases of bullying without fear of being victimized or punished in any case. Work place bullying can also be minimized and employees protected through regular bonding and team building activities. According to Mata el al (2012), team building events helps employees to build mutual relationship and a sense of mutual respect amongst themselves. Such activities offer all the employees opportunity to interact and intermingle with one another regardless of their position or hierarchical order in the organization. Mutual respect and the appreciation for one another hence ,makes it almost impossible for any member of the organization to either look down upon others or bully them. Managers for instance are likely to discover the exciting social sides of the respective employees and hence drop tendencies of using their authority to harass and intimidate subordinates. Finally, organizations should make it a policy that any form of bullying reported is punished as required by both the organizational statutes as well as the law of the land. In some cases, some members of the society may completely fail to stop bullying others until they see a culprit punished. Punishing bullies in both the organization and society as a whole helps to send a stern warning to potential orchestrators who may likely shy away from the behavior. Similarly, when perpetrators are punished, the victims tend to develop confidence in the various authorities and hence the willingness to report any incidences of bullying meted against them. Bullying should never be entertained in any organization as it significantly taints the corporate image of the affected organization. References Bruce, A. (2011). A briefcase book Manager's guide to motivating employees. New York: McGraw-Hill. Cartwright, S., & Cooper, C. L. (1997). Managing workplace stress. Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage. Douglas, E. (2001). Bullying in the workplace: An organizational toolkit. Aldershot: Gower. French, R. (2011). Organizational behaviour. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. Hicks, T., & McSherry, C. (2006). A guide to managing workplace stress. Boca Raton, Fla: Universal Publishers. King, M. (2005). Surviving stress at work: Understand it overcome it. Victoria, B.C: Trafford. Kramer, R. M., & Staw, B. M. (2003). Research in organizational behavior: An annual series of analytical essays and critical reviews. Amsterdam: Elsevier/JAI. Lauby, S. J. (2005). Motivating employees. Alexandria, Va: ASTD Press. Mata, L. S. (2012). Understanding workplace bullying. Miner, J. B. (2006). Organizational behavior 3. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe. Read More