Relevance and Importance of Teamwork and Employees Motivation - Coursework Example

Organizational Behavior Name Institution Course Date Introduction In recent decades, there has been a tremendous focus on the organizational behaviors among different organizations. The demanding nature of organizing and managing employees in an organization has made organizational behavior a vital aspect of management. The term organizational behavior is studies of peoples’ behaviors and attitudes in an organization (French & Schermerhorn 2008). It applies scientific practices and knowledge to study impacts of individuals, groups and structures on human behavior within an organization. Concepts such as job satisfaction, employees’ motivation, organization team work, leadership and innovation are all facets of organizational behaviors and responsibilities of management (French & Schermerhorn 2008). This essay will demonstrate the relevance and importance of teamwork and employees motivation behaviors within a workplace. Motivation Motivation is a critical organizational behavior that affects the overall performance of an organization. An organization performance is dependent on the level at which employee feel motivated to work in their respective areas within the organization. The term motivation has been defined different by different scholars. However, the common definition used in the workplace is that motivation is that need or push someone to act. Hiam (2008) defines the term as the act of providing motivation to people in order to make them act. There are numerous theories that describe employees’ motivation. This paper focuses on the relevance and the importance of the employee motivation in work place. In the current competitive world, employees’ motivation is essential for a company to attend its goals and objectives. According to French & Schermerhorn (2008), employee motivation has a positive correlation with individual work performance. French & Schermerhorn (2008) states that motivated employees have awareness of the specific organizational and personal goals. Their personal goals define what they are expected to perform in the organization. On the other hand, organizational goals refer to the overall goal of the organization. Motivate employees are not only aware of the goals but are also determined to achieve the goals. They direct a lot of effort towards attaining the two types of the goals (Tjosvold, 2009). Hiam (2003) states that motivated employees provide quality services in their work which translates to greater productivity of the organization. In business organizations, increase in the productivity means an increase in the gross profit. French, R., & Schermerhorn, J. R. (2008) states that, employees’ motivation results to greater thinking which result to greater achievement. They add that motivation among employees result to creativity as the employees are determined to achieve the organization goals within the shortest time and effectively. The eventual outcome of the effort is that the overall performance of the individual increases. Motivation among the employee results to job satisfaction. According to Lawler (2012), the relationship between employee motivation and job satisfaction is a two way direction. Motivation affects employees’ job satisfaction while the latter affect the formal. In this paper, we examine how the employees’ motivation affects job satisfaction. According to a survey conducted in 2012, the correlation between the two variables is positive 0.833 (Katzenbach & Smith 2011). This is a strong correlation. According to the study, motivated employees have high job satisfactions which have positive effects on the organization performance. Employees’ job satisfaction results increased efficiency and job performance. Motivation in workplace is closely related to the employees’ high employees’ retention. Turnover has become a major challenge affect many organizations in the recent past. Research studies have linked the high turnover to lack of motivation among employees. Paul and Robertson (2012) conducted a survey that involved more than 100 organizations. They examined the relationship between employee motivation and employee turnover. In their conclusion, they stated that organizations employee’s turnover is inversely to the employee motivation. High turnover is not only expensive but also time consuming. Organizations loss talents and take time to find a replacement. However, an increase in employees motivation result to employee retention and hence less turnover. Consequently, employee motivation reduces cost of training employees and saves time wasted when finding a replacement. Lastly, Hiam argues that motivation is contagious and, therefore, does not only affect specific individuals in workplace. Lack of motivation affects team work in an organization. Employees with low motivation lack the zeal and the dedication which is essential for the success of teamwork. Such employee has less contribution in teamwork, and sometimes results to failure of the entire teamwork. On the hand, highly motivated employees produce excellent working in teamwork projects. They contribute effectively in their team hence the success of the teamwork project. Teamwork The popularity of the teamwork behavior in organizations leads one to believe that teams play a central role in success of any organization. Indeed, analysts argue that organizations’ success is as a result of success of teamwork. Parker writes that business organizations cannot operate successful without good teamwork. Team work is a term that describes the concept of people working together to achieve a common goal. The behavior is applied across different organization to increase employee unity, company culture and performance. Teamwork is used in most organization to foster employee unity. The behavior provides an opportunity for employee to form bond with each other. A good bond among employee in the same organization enhances good relationship among them. Most of projects done through teamwork are successful due to the integration of variety of opinions, knowledge and skills from different members of the team. The success of the project makes the employees valued as they contribution is part of the project. The increase employee relation is important in development of trust among the members among the employees which is vital in providing a good working environment (Parker 2009). Teamwork is important in improving an organization performance. The main driving force for teamwork in different organizations is that teamwork results to high performance. A member of a team accomplishes tasks more effectively and faster than when they handle the project individually. The cooperation in a team reduces the workload per employees as they share the responsibilities and skills among themselves. In addition, an employee is assigned the areas of the project they are specialized in. The division of the labor according to the specialization result to effective and faster completion of the project. Consequently, teamwork results to high performance of individual and the entire organization (French & Schermerhorn 2008). Teamwork is a major ingredient of innovative organization environment. Teamwork enhances creativity and innovation among employees. Parker states that a supportive environment that comes with highly effective group stimulates innovation and creativity. Teamwork encourages wide and depth view of problem unlike the narrow conformity evident in personal work. It assimilates new ideas from members and encourages creative thinking. The trend is well described by French and Schermerhorn, (2008) who state that team environment fosters creativity and risk taking. They add that teamwork provide an engaging environment which challenge the members to think creatively. Therefore, teamwork is essential in an organization as it enhances. The need for teamwork has moved from an option to a necessity. The advanced technology has resulted to mass production techniques, where projects are broken down into small tasks. The technique requires employees to cooperate with other workers and supervisors in the organization. The complex nature of the technology make it complicates to be operated by an individual. In this situation, the need for the teamwork has become a necessity and not an option as it has been (Berggren 2009). The lack of teamwork results to slow production which translates to decreased performance. Recommendations All organizations are established to achieve certain outcomes or objectives. While some fail to achieve the objectives, other succeeds, and produces the desired outcomes (Katzenbach & Smith 2011). The ability to achieve the outcome at the most effective way is referred to as organizational effectiveness. Organizational effectiveness reduces the time required to achieve the outcomes as well as the cost involved. Organization effectiveness is achieved through several key areas such as leadership, organization design and talent management among others. This paper describes how organizational behavior aspects of motivation and teamwork in an organization can be utilized to achieve organizational effectiveness. Organizations should ensure their employees remain motivated throughout their work. Motivated employees are not only high productive but are also satisfied which make them to withstand various challenges affecting different professionals. There is much theoretical knowledge that has been put forward describing how employees should be motivated. Some of the prolific contributors of the theories include Maslow and Frederick Herzberg to mention a few. In order to achieve organizational effectiveness in regard to this organizational behavior aspect, organization management should be well acquitted with these theoretical knowledge and should have an understanding of how to use the knowledge to motivate the employees (Lawler 2012). A high motivated employee will make the organization achieve its objectives effectively. Second, organizations should ensure that they provide basic requirements which affect employees’ motivation. First, organizations should provide retraining program for their employees. Retraining of employees is one of them most basic yet important factor that motivate employees. The program provides the employees with skills and the knowledge which enhance job satisfaction and motivates them. Second, organizations should always recruit skilled and qualified employees. These types of employees are high motivated to do their work hence resulting to high productivity of the organization. Lastly, organization should provide the environment that is high motivating to the employees. These basic factors would increase the organizational effectiveness of organizations in regard to employee motivation aspect. Employee motivation is essential so is the teamwork behavior to the success of an organization. Organizational effectiveness depends largely on the ability of an organization to work as one or as a team. Therefore, an organization that needs to achieve a high organizational effectiveness must pay attention to enhancing teamwork. In order to achieve the effectiveness in regard to this behavioral aspect, organizations need to take some measures. First, teamwork thrives only where the goals and tasks are defined in regard to the teamwork. Organizations should ensure that they define their goal as common to every employee and team within. A common goal makes employees to team up and work towards the common goal. In order to achieve this, an organization should ensure every employee understands the common goal and their contribution to the goal. Employees in this situation will work together as a team in order to achieve the common goal effectively. Team rewarding encourages employees to work as a team rather than as individuals. This effort would increase an organizational effectiveness in regard to the teamwork behavior. Organizational effectiveness will be achieved by quality teamwork. Teamwork is supported a number of the factors. The factors include role assignment, leadership, team decision making, and communication. Organizations should provide these factors to enhance team working. Every team should be assigned with a specific role and should be clearly understood by the team members. The team should have effective leadership to supervise the implementation of the assigned role. Decision making is important and an organization should provide policy and platform through which teams would arrive at their common decision. Lastly, there should be effective communication in an organization. Communication is the major pillar of teamwork as team involves collaboration of many employees and management. Therefore, organizations should form quality teamwork so that they can achieve the organizational effectiveness in regard to this organizational behavior. Conclusion This essay has demonstrated the relevance and importance of teamwork and employees motivation behaviors within a workplace. Organizational behavior has become one of the most essential aspects in different organizations. Among the various organization behavior aspects include motivation and teamwork among others. Employee motivation refers to the push by the employee to act. Employee motivation results to high productivity, job satisfaction and low turnover. Teamwork refers to the case where employees work as one. It increases creativity and employee performance. Teamwork is essential in the complex organization structure used by most organizations today. Effective teamwork and employee motivation enhance organizational effectiveness. Reference Berggren, C., 2009, Alternatives to lean production: Work organization in the Swedish auto industry. Ithaca, N.Y: ILR Press. French, R., & Schermerhorn, J., 2008, Organizational behaviour. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Fitzwater, T., 2012, The manager's pocket guide to employee relations. Amherst, Mass: HRD Press. Hiam, A., 2013, Motivational management: Inspiring your people for maximum performance. New York: AMACOM, American Management Association. Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. 2011, the wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press. Paul, W. J., & Robertson, K. B.,2012, Job enrichment and employee motivation. London: Gower P. Lawler, E. E., 2012, Motivation in work organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Parker, D. 2009. Teamwork for customers: Building organizations that take pride in serving. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers Read More