The Organizational Levers of Motivation

Although fulfilling all four of employees’ basic emotional drives is essential for any company, according to the Harvard business review (July-Aug 2008), suggests that each drive is best met by a distinct organizational lever.

1.    The reward system

An organization's reward system, which successfully distinguishes between good and poor workers, attaches rewards to performance, and provides opportunities for progression to the best employees, is most easily met by the acquisition drive. (July-August 2008, Harvard Business Review). Reward management systems have a significant impact on an organization's capacity to attract, retain, and motivate high-potential individuals, resulting in great performance (Gungor, 2011). Employee remuneration is the overall compensation received in exchange for the services provided (Agustiningsih et al. 2016).

Example

When the Royal Bank of Scotland bought NatWest, it inherited a company where politics, status, and employee tenure dominated the reward system. RBS implemented a new system in which managers were held accountable for specific goals and good performance was rewarded over average performance. Former NatWest employees embraced their new company to an unusual degree following an acquisition, in part because the reward system was tough but recognized individual achievement. (Harvard business review -July-Aug 2008).

 

Another example, Sonoco, a manufacturer of industrial and consumer goods packaging, transformed itself in part by making a concerted effort to better meet the acquisition drive—that is, by establishing very clear links between performance and rewards. Historically, the company set high business-performance targets, but incentives did little to reward meeting them. Sonoco implemented a pay-for-performance system based on individual and group metrics in 1995, under Cynthia Hartley, the company's new vice president of human resources.

According to the results of a regular internal survey, employee satisfaction and engagement have improved. Sonoco was named one of the top 20 talent-management organizations in the United States by Hewitt Associates in 2005. It was one of only a few midcap companies on the list, which also included 3M, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Dell, and IBM. (Harvard business review -July-Aug 2008).

 2.    Culture.

 According to Martin (1992), the goal of studying organizational culture is to better understand organizational life. Understanding organizational life is critical since it is largely accepted that organizational cultures influence firm performance (Denison,1990; Kotter and Heskett, 1992; Truskie, 1999; Schein, 2004).

According to Boddy (2002), organizational culture has a significant and direct impact on the behavior of an organization's employees. According to Anthony (1994) Culture is an abstract and comprehensive notion that encompasses many features of organizations.

The most effective way to satisfy the desire to bond and instill a strong sense of camaraderie is to foster a culture that values teamwork, collaboration, openness, and friendship. RBS broke through NatWest's silo mentality by bringing people from both companies together to work on well-defined cost-cutting and revenue-growth projects. (Harvard business review-July-Aug 2008).

 

Example

An example for another business with an exemplary culture is the Wegmans supermarket chain, which has appeared for a decade on Fortune ’s list of “100 Best Companies to Work For.” The family that owns the business makes a point of setting a familial tone for the companywide culture. Employees routinely report that management cares about them and that they care about one another, evidence of a sense of teamwork and belonging. (Harvard business review -July-Aug 2008).

 3.    Job design

Job design is the specification of a job's processes, relationships, and contents to fulfill the job holder's organizational, technological, personal, and social needs (Armstrong, 2003). Ali and Aroosiya (2012), outline the functions of task arrangement, responsibilities, and tasks in an institutional work unit.

According to Garg and Renu (2005), the approaching relationship between goals and job planning can occasionally assist in improving performance levels, and job design can improve not just contentment but also performance worth. Designing jobs that are meaningful, interesting, and challenging is the best way to address the desire to comprehend (Harvard business review -July-Aug 2008).

For an example, despite taking a conservative approach to expenses during the NatWest integration, RBS invested heavily in a state-of-the-art business school facility adjacent to its corporate campus, to which employees had access. This move not only advanced the company's success in fulfilling the bonding drive, but it also challenged employees to consider how they could contribute to making a difference for coworkers, customers, and investors. (Harvard business review -July-Aug 2008).

 4.    Performance-management and resource allocation processes

Organizational effectiveness relies heavily on performance management (Cardy, 2004). The performance management process aids them in increasing their performance, and employee satisfaction surveys consistently place performance management as one of the lowest topics (Pulakos, 2009). Many firms have refocused their attention on their performance management systems and explored strategies to increase employee performance as a result of the current issues they face (Buchner, 2007)

According to Verweire and Van Den Berghe (2004), performance management is only useful if all of the system's components are in sync. Increased performance (both task and contextual) might be considered a distal effect of the process, even if it is the ultimate goal of performance management. The cognitive, emotional, and conative outcomes that precede improvements in performance are more proximal results. (Borman and Motowildo 1993)

Processes for performance management and resource allocation that are fair, trustworthy, and transparent help to meet people's desire to defend. Employees may disagree with a given outcome, but they may understand why the choice was made. New technological initiatives are undertaken by teams from various business units that make decisions based on specific criteria, such as the influence on the company's financial success. (July-August 2008, Harvard Business Review).

 

 Example

Aflac, another perennial favorite on Fortune ’s “100 Best Companies to Work For,” exemplifies how to match organizational levers with emotional drives on multiple fronts. (For concrete ways your company can use its motivational levers, see the exhibit “How to Fulfill the Drives That Motivate Employees.”) Stellar individual performance is recognized and rewarded in highly visible ways at Aflac, thereby targeting people’s drive to acquire. (Harvard business review -July-Aug 2008).

That’s a major competitive advantage for a company in terms of employee satisfaction, engagement, commitment, and reluctance to quit. (Harvard business review -July-Aug 2008).

 

For a better understanding, enclosing below 

 

Saurce – Harvard Business Review (2008)

 

Reference

Agustiningsih, H. N., Armanu T., Djumilah H., Noermijati N., (2016). The effect of remuneration, job satisfaction and OCB on the employee performance. Science Journal of Business and Management, 4(6), 212-222.

Ali, H., & Aroosiya, M. (2012). Impact of job design on employees’ performance. Journal of Management, 8(1), 33-41.

Armstrong. K, (2003), ‘Job Analysis and Job Design’, Human Resource and Personal Management, 4th Edition, 93-125, India: Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited.

Anthony, P. (1994). Managing Culture. Open University Press.

Boddy, D (2002). Management. 2nd ed. Pearson Education Limited, Essex UK.

Borman, W. C., & Motowildo, S. J. (1993). Expanding the criterion domain to include elements of contextual performance. In N. Schmitt & W. C. Borman (Eds.), Personnel selection in organizations (pp. 71−98). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Buchner, T. W. (2007). Performance management theory: A look from the performer's perspective with implications for HRD. Human Resource Development International, 10, 59−73

Cardy, R. L. (2004). Performance management: Concepts, skills, and exercises. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe

Denison, D. (1990). Corporate Culture and Organizational Effectiveness. John Wiley & Sons: New York

Grag, P., & Rastogi, R. (2005). A New Model for Job Design: Motivating employee’s Performance. Journal of Management Development, 25(6), 572–587. 

Gungor, P. (2011). The relationship between reward management system and employee performance with the mediating role of motivation: A quantitative study on Global Banks. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences. 24, 1510-1520.

Harvard business review (July–august 2008 page 3, Page 4) Employee Motivation A Powerful New Model by Nitin Nohria, Boris Groysberg, and Linda-Eling Lee

Kotter, P., Heskett, L. (1992). Corporate Culture and Performance. New York: Macmillan.

Martin, J. (1992). Cultures in Organizations. Oxford University Press

Pulakos, E. D. (2009). Performance management: A new approach for driving business results. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell

Schein, E. H. (2004). Organizational Culture and Leadership. 3rd ed. USA: John Wiley and Sons Inc

Truskie, S. (1999). Leadership in High-performance Organizational Cultures. Quorom Books

VerWeire, K., & Van Den Berghe, L. (2004). Integrated performance management: New hype or new paradigm? In K. Verweire & L. Van Den Berghe (Eds.), Integrated performance management (pp. 1−14). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications