Effort-to-Performance Expectancy - Case Study Example

YakkaTech Case Analysis Institution Name Introduction YakkeTech Pty Ltd is an IT service firm, employing 1500 individuals across New Zealand and Australia. The company has a consulting division and a customer service division. The company faces significant problems in its company structure and human resource management, leading to poor quality service, specifically in the customer service centre. This paper discusses the problems at YakkaTech, through the lense of Expectancy organisational theory. It further uses organisational theories that can enable the executive management to identify the solutions to the existing problems (Dunn, 2009). Symptoms suggesting problems at YakkaTech In the present case scenario, it is clear that something has gone wrong, since Yakkatech Pty Ltd has failed to live up the customers’ as well as employees’ expectations. In particular, there is a problem with quality service, since customers have complained about the poor services offered by the call centre division. Additionally, employees' are indifferent to customer needs. The company's service business has almost doubled over five-year period. However, this has also seen increased customer complaints concerning poor quality services. Indeed, many customers have complained that the employees disregard their complaints. Some customers have also complained about slow response to their complaints. The employees are continually being educated by the customers. Further, there is a case of employee resignations in the company. The employee turnover rate at the contact centre has risen beyond the industry average. This has increased cost of labour, as the company has to recruit new employees. The monotony of work is also a problem. Aside from informal comments from employee conversations, results of an employee survey show that many employees regard their work as being monotonous. Cases of conflict are also prevalent. An employee survey has found cases of ongoing conflicts within employees in the departments. This is also encouraged by the stress related to service to dissatisfied customers. Despite increased salaries to motivate employees, there is no improvement in productivity. Despite the need to motivate the employees by increasing their salaries, based on the assumption that higher pay would decrease the number of resignations and improve their morale, the productivity and customer satisfaction has not improved. There are also cases of employee referrals (Dunn, 2009). The main causes of the symptoms The main cause of the problems that the YakkaTech faces is linked to motivation of the employees. The causes of the problems can be best explained by the Expectancy Theory. The problems relate to low motivation due to policies that tend to infringe on the employee’s instrumentality, expectancy, valence as well as a mix of the three. The three depict the key dimensions of Expectancy theory. Indeed, the theory can be used to apply all the factors affecting the employees to establish the motivation force. For instance, lowering one of these factors leads to lack of motivation among the employees (Lunenburg, 2011). Expectancy theory relies on four fundamental assumptions. First, the employees at YakkaTech’s call centre must have joined the organisation while expecting the company to fulfil their needs, past experiences and motivations. Consequently, efforts by the company to satisfy these expectations determine how employees react to the company. Second, individual employee’s behaviour results from conscious choice (Eerde & Thierry, 1996). This implies that employees are free to adopt behaviours determined by their individual expectancy calculations. Third, employees expect different things from the organisation, such as job security, salary, food or career development (Fagbohungbe & Akinbode, 2012). Fourth, individuals will always select between alternatives on how to leverage outcomes for themselves. Based on these four assumptions, the expectancy theory has three key elements, namely valence, instrumentality and expectancy. According to the theory, an individual becomes motivated to the extent he believes that his or her effort will lead to acceptable performance, that such performance will be rewarded and that the value of the rewards is greatly positive (World Campus, 2013) (See Figure 1). Figure 1: basic expectancy model (Lunenburg 2011). Expectancy Expectancy refers to an individual’s estimate of the likelihood that work-related efforts will lead to a certain level of performance. Expectancy comprises the subjective probability of an effort, activities or action that lead to performance of an outcome. It is measured in terms of the perceived link or relation between an outcome and activity. Additionally, the expectancy can be interpreted as the subjectivity likelihood that actions lead to the outcome of a performance (Eerde & Thierry, 1996). Among the issues that Yakkatech has neglected or failed to address is that of the expectancy of the workforce. Expectancy consists of the superficial link between the efforts the employees put and the performance they accomplish. This is particularly a problem with the contact centre where the turnover rate exceeds the industry average. It appears that the expectations of the workers at YakkaTech call centre are not being perceived by the company’s executive. Although the management increases their salaries to exceed the industry average, there is no change in their poor performance. The correlation between high performance and hard work is low, leading to reduced motivation rates (Lunenburg, 2011). Since the YakkaTech employees view quantity as the yardstick of good performance, they tend to focus more on quantity rather than quality. Conversely, the company perceives quality as the standard for measuring performance (Fischer et al., 2005). Hence, there is a divergence in expectancy between the company’s executive and the employees. It is critical to note that expectancy relies on the view of what should really be good performance. Instrumentality Instrumentality is clearly a factor that Yakkatech has overlooked or decreased, leading to the symptoms. Instrumentality refers to a person’s estimate of the likelihood that a certain level of attained tasks will contribute to certain work outcomes. The concept can be defined as an outcome-outcome relationship. Further, it has been intrepreted as a link between two outcomes as well as the likelihood of obtaining an outcome. Instrumentality, therefore, is the correlation between the tasks performed and what is received. Hence, it can be argued that the reward system causes low instrumentality and the reward system appears as doing little to motivate quality performance (Lunenburg, 2011).  It should further be argued that the payscale does not correspond to the quality of work done by the YakkaTech employees. Rather, it is based on motivating employees to reduce the turnover. It should further be noted that what lowers instrumentality is the lack of reward system for good work in a rather timely fashion. For instance, despite the bulk of work that resulted from the company’s growth to almost double its size, some five years ago, there has been no motivation for quality work or doing extra work. Indeed, it appears that the company perceives that employees only get to finish their work so as to avoid the negative implications of failing to meet the established quotas (Eerde & Thierry, 1996). Indeed, while the employee turnover rates decreased radically, the customer service quality remained poor. This is since customer complaints remained dramatically high and the productivity below expectations. This leads to the perception that the company is more concerned about retaining them than motivating them to ensure quality. Hence, there appears to be no reason for the employees at the contact centre to perform work effectively. Despite the fact that the money generates good instrumentality for the employees to work a lot, it appears that in their minds, it benefits them to work slowly and ineffectively, and to collect the high pay since there is nothing that raises their instrumentality to work effectively. Valence Valence refers to the strength of an individual’s preferences for certain rewards. Hence, increased salaries or other rewards may have higher or less value to particular employees. Valence comprises of the entire likely affective orientations towards results. It is perceived as the attractiveness, significance, importance and desirability of the expected satisfaction with the outcomes (Vroom, 1995). The company has failed to identify what employees really value as incentive. Since each worker will perceive different things, just by raising their salaries to motivate them to work hard will not work for all employees (Eerde & Thierry, 1996). Such a perceived value is known as valence. Valence can be positive or negative. Positive valence outcomes signify what employees really want while the negative valence denotes the outcomes that the workers are likely to avoid. Considering that employees obviously value the higher salary perks they get. Since the company’s executive management increased the salaries, the employee turnover rate has decreased significantly. Hence, it can be assumed that they want more pay. Hence, an idea like firing the employees can be considered as a deterrent. To this end, positive and negative valence can be used to motivate employees. Hence, the company may give the higher salaries as positive valence motivator to enable them encourage higher performance (Eerde & Thierry, 1996). Additionally, the company can set up a policy of firing employees whose performance is below par, over certain duration of time. Since the employees need the money, such negative valence would deter them from performing work poorly. In this case, the company failed to address all the factors, namely instrumentality, expectancy and valence. Lunenburg (2011) suggests that if any of these factors is low, then employees will remain unmotivated. The employees have good instrumentality since the pay is high. Additionally, they value the pay, which means the valence is good. Despite these, they have lost motivation because of the low expectancy. They have the perception that their hard work will not lead to high performance and they lack the opportunity to succeed because of other issues experienced in the company. Actions to be taken by YakkaTech executives While the expectancy theory does not offer specific suggestion on what will appropriately motivate the YakkaTech employees, it offers a process of cognitive variable that reflect person-to-person differences in work motivation. As the model has helped to indicate, the employees at YakkaTech do not simply act, resulting from strong internal drives, rewards applications or unmet needs. Rather, they are rational individuals whose perception, beliefs and estimated expectations have not been met and hence have influenced their behaviours. From the perspective of the YakkaTech’s executive management, the expectancy theory has some significant implications that motivate the workers (Eerde & Thierry, 1996). It identifies certain significant things that can be ensured to motivate the employees by changing their performance-to-reward expectancy, effort-to-performance expectancy and reward valences. Effort-to-Performance Expectancy YakkaTech’s executive management should intensify the belief that the contact centre employees have the capacity to perform job effectively. They should ensure this by selecting individuals with the necessary skills and knowledge. They should also offer the required training as well as clarify the job requirements (Lunenburg, 2011). Further, they should offer sufficient resources and time. Additionally, they can offer additional tasks based on training. They should also take heed of the employees’ suggestions on ways of changing the jobs. Additionally, the management should also intervene and makes efforts to prevent problems that may affect effective employee performance (Fischer et al., 2005). In addition, they can provide the workers who are accomplished in completion of certain tasks in addition to coaching those who lack self-confidence. Essentially, the company’s executive should make the desired performance achievable. They should also clarify to the employees that the company expects itself to help the employees to achieve the desired level of performance (Kumar & Bakhshi, 2010). Performance-to-reward expectancy YakkaTech’s executive management should make efforts in increasing the belief that effective performance would lead to valued rewards. This should be done in several ways including measuring job performance effectively and clearly describing the rewards that can lead to effective performance (Lunenburg, 2011). They could as well provide example of employees, or model employees, who have worker effectively leading to higher rewards. Essentially, the leaders should directly link certain performance they desire to the rewards that the employees perceive. It is also important that the employees should perceive clearly the reward processes at YakkaTech. In this case, concrete activities should be an adjunct to statement of intent. In essence, compensation mechanism is greatly influential in linking job performance to rewards. In this case, compensation systems capable of rewarding the workers directly, based on how effectively they work, are called pay-for-performance plans (Berger, 2009). In any case, the rewards that are linked to performance have to be monetary in nature. On the other hand, verbal and symbolic forms of recognition can also be effective. Valences of Rewards YakkaTech’s executive should also increase the expected valued rewards that originate from the desired performance. This can be ensured in several ways, including distributing rewards valued by employees and individualizing the rewards. Since the YakkaTech workforce is expected to be diverse, it may be misleading to perceive that the entire workforce anticipate similar rewards. While it is likely that some employees will value pay rise or promotion, other may be looking for additional days for vacation, day care, improved insurance benefits or baby care facilities. For instance, some companies have introduced cafeteria-style benefits plan with a degree of success (Lunenburg, 2011). Such incentive schemes enable employees to identify their fringe benefits from a list of options. An additional issue that may arise when it comes to expectancy theory include the desire for the company’s leadership to reduce the occurrence of counter-valent rewards, which refer to performance rewards with negative valences. For instance, group norms are likely to trigger some employees to do their jobs at minimum levels despite the formal rewards. In itself, the job may motivate the employees to perform work at higher levels (Mercer et al., 2010). Customer satisfaction The company should create customers’ profiles system that lists all the problems or challenges facing its workforce. Listing the problems should be available for each customer, once every ticket is closed. The system should reflect the customers’ problems and the department that attempted to address the issue. It should also contain the name of the employees who handle the case and the corresponding customer’s feedback (Lunenburg, 2011). Such a system should be able to be shared among the company’s four regions, in ways that allows the employees to access and monitor previous problems and queries of issues that clients raised. In this way, much time and effort will be saved, ultimately increasing the customer satisfaction. The system should also direct the entire calls made to the basic employees who have been assigned the duty of handling the customer’s problems or queries before. If that particular employee is unable to address the raised issue at that particular time, then the supervisor should instead handle the call and therefore, customers do not have to wait on the line to get served. Additionally, employees need to call back customers at a time they consider convenient, to reduce their frustrations resulting from waiting on the line, which may be hugely a frustrating factor (Lunenburg, 2011). There should also be an intensive training program for the entire staff, namely motivation course, quality courses and conflict management stress management. More importantly, the training should be aimed at enhancing the staff’s capabilities so as not to effectively attend to the more informed and educated customers on the details of the firm’s IT system’s infrastructure, in addition to other stuff (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). The condition of staying in the company also needs to be changed from two years, in order to get bonuses. For instance, reducing it to two years can be more motivating to the employees. When the entire suggestion works to improve company’s productivity and customer satisfaction to no success, then the company should consider reviewed and smart outsourcing of processes that may be representing customers’ dissatisfaction. Conclusion The problems at YakkaTech are examined through the lens of Expectancy organisational theory. Further, organisational theories are used to enable the executive management to identify the solutions to the existing problems. It is concluded that YakkaTech is not an ideal workplace for jobs that require high pressure, such as call centre operator. There fundamental changes in the company’ systems and structure should be implemented to improve the employee’s morale. In the present case scenario, it is clear that something has gone wrong since Yakkatech Pty Ltd has failed to live up the customers’ as well as employees’ expectations. There is certainly a problem with quality service, since customers have complained about the poor services offered by the call centre division. Further, there is the case of employee resignations in the company. The employee turnover rate at the contact centre has risen beyond the industry average. The monotony of work is also a problem as many employees regard their work as being monotonous. Cases of conflict are also prevalent due to the stress related to service to dissatisfied customers. As indicated, the main cause of the problems that the company faces is linked to motivation of the employees. The problems relate to low motivation due to policies that tend to infringe on the employee’s instrumentality, expectancy, valence as well as a mix of the three. The causes of the problems can be best explained by the Expectancy Theory. It appears that the expectations of the workers at YakkaTech call centre are not being perceived by the company’s executive. Although the management increases their salaries to exceed the industry average, there is no change in their poor performance. The correlation between high performance and hard work is low, leading to reduced motivation rates. It should further be argued that the payscale does not correspond to the quality of work done by the YakkaTech employees. Rather, it is based on motivating employees to reduce the turnover. It should further be noted that what lowers instrumentality is the lack of reward system for good work, in a rather timely fashion. Additionally, while the employee turnover rates decreased radically, the customer service quality remained poor. This is since customer complaints remained dramatically high and the productivity below expectations. This leads to the perception that the company is more concerned about retaining them than motivating them to ensure quality. Hence, there appears to be no reason for the employees at the contact centre to perform work effectively. References Berger, L. (2009). The compensation handbook: A state-of-the-art guide to compensation strategy and design. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Dunn, B. (2009). The brave new world of executive compensation: What do we do now? New York, NY: Aon Consulting. Eerde, W. & Thierry, H. (1996). Vroom's Expectancy Models and Work-Related Criteria: A Meta-Analysis Wendelien Van. Journal of Applied Psychology 81(5), 575-586 Fagbohungbe, B & Akinbode, G. (2012). "Organizational Determinants of Workplace Deviant Behaviours: An Empirical Analysis in Nigeria," International Journal of Business and Management 7(5), 207-221 Fischer, R, Ferreira, M & Assmar, E 2005, "Organizational Behaviour across Cultures Theoretical and Methodological Issues for Developing Multi-level Frameworks Involving Culture," International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, Vol. 5 No.1, p.27-46 Lunenburg, F. (2011). Expectancy Theory of Motivation: Motivating by Altering Expectations. International Journal of Management, Business, and Administration 15(1), 1-5 Hellriegel, D., & Slocum, J. W. (2011). Organizational behavior (13th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning Kumar, K. & Bakhshi, A. (2010). "The Five-factor of Personality and Organisational Commitment: Is There Any Relationship?", Humanity & Social Sciences Journal, 5(1), 25-34 Mercer, M. K., Carpenter, G., & Wyman, O. (2010). Pay for results: Aligning executive compensation with business performance. New York, NY: Wiley. Vroom, V. H. (1995). Work and motivation (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley. World Campus, PSU (2013). Lesson 4:Expectancy Theory. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/su13/psych484/001/content/lesson04/printlesson .html Read More