Skill-based pay encourages employees to concentrate on one or two highly desirable skills.

Chapter 7

Motivation:  From Concept to Applications

Job Characteristics Model

A model that proposes that any job can be described in terms of five core job dimensions:

1) Skill variety

2) Task identity

3) Task significance

4) Autonomy

5) Feedback

The bottom line: people who work on jobs with high-core job dimensions are generally more motivated, satisfied and productive than those who do not.   And the core job dimensions lead to personal and work outcomes through critical psychological states and employee growth-need strength and not directly.

How Can Jobs Be Redesigned?

1) Job rotation - the periodic shifting of an employee from one task to another (note: often called "cross-training")

2) Job enlargement - increasing the number and variety of tasks that an individual performs results in jobs with more diversity (note: the job actually changes)

3) Job enrichment - the vertical expansion of jobs, increasing the degree to which the worker controls the planning, execution, and evaluation of the work.

Alternative Work Arrangements

The typical "9-5" job is slowly becoming a thing of the past.  Instead, many organizations are utilizing:

Flextime (i.e. flexible work hours) options are becoming very popular.  Workers must be at their jobs during core hours but can either start early and leave early or start late and leave late as long as they are present during the core hours. This system usually decreases absenteeism, improves productivity, reduces overtime expenses, lessens hostility towards management, reduces lateness, traffic on the roads, and increases feelings of autonomy, responsibility, and satisfaction. However, this system may not work for all jobs.

Job Sharing (i.e. having 2 or more employees split a traditional 40 hour work week).  This can be done by splitting each day (i.e. working from 8am-12noon and another employee works 1pm to 5pm ) or by splitting the week (i.e. working Monday thru Wed and another employee works Wed thru Friday).   This is often tough for upper management as the coordination between the two must be very productive for this to work.

Telecommuting   - working from home/remotely at least 2 days a week via a computer linked to the office.  This is often associated with a virtual office.   Many types of jobs can be done this way and with new technologies and reduced costs of telecommunication equipment, this option is extremely popular. However, some employees say they miss out on important information gathered both formally and informally while at work in the office.

                      Don't Forget Ability and Opportunity (So important, it shows up again :)

Performance = f (Ability X Motivation X Opportunity ) Don't assume people are "simply not motivated" to work.  Be sure to check all three dimensions before making a decision about what to do next...

Employee Involvement Programs

• A participative process that uses the input of employees and is intended to encourage increased employee commitment to the organization’s success.

 Examples of Employee Involvement

• Participative Management
• Representative Participation
• Quality circles

*Note: these strategies use concepts found in Theory X and Y, the two-factor theory, and needs (i.e. N achievement) and ERG. These approaches are popular around the world.

Rewarding Employees

What should we pay our employees?

Consider internal and external equity (p. 237-238)

Variable-Pay Programs

What are they? A program where a portion of an employee’s pay is based on some individual and/or organizational measure of performance.

• piece-rate pay plans
• merit-based pay
• bonuses
• profit-sharing plans
• gainsharing plans
• employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)

Rewarding Individual Employees Through Skill-Based Pay Plans

• Pay levels based on how many skills employees have or how many jobs they can do.  What’s the appeal of skill-based pay?

• From management’s perspective : flexibility, facilitates communication, lessens “protective territory” behavior.

• Is there a downside? Yes. People can “top out”, employee frustration can increase, skills become obsolete, paying people for acquired skills not used

• Are we heading to a skill-based society? (p. 244)

Flexible Benefits: Developing a Benefits Package

• Allowing employees to tailor their benefit program to meet their personal needs by picking and choosing from a menu of benefit options.

Intrinsic Rewards: Employee Recognition Programs

• Programs that recognize both individual and group accomplishments ("thank you", "Bragging boards", Employee of the month, etc.)

• Consistent with the reinforcement theory, rewarding a behavior with recognition immediately following that behavior is likely to encourage its repetition.

• In contrast to most other motivators, recognizing an employee’s superior performance often costs little or no money, making them highly attractive to industry.

• Be careful not to make these types of plans "political" - do them right and they are often effective

SPECIAL ISSUES IN MOTIVATION (an added bonus for your reading pleasure)

Motivating Professionals:  How are “Professionals” different?

• Receive a great deal of “intrinsic” satisfaction from their work.
• Strong and long-term commitment to their field of expertise
• Well paid/ chief reward is work itself.
• Value support
• More focused on work as central life interest.

How might we motivate professionals?

• Provide challenging projects
• Give them autonomy in follow interests and structure work.
• Reward with educational opportunities.
• Recognize their contributions.
• Create alternative career paths.

Motivating Contingent Workers

• No simple solutions to motivating contingent workers.
• Contingent or temporary workers often have little or no job security/stability, therefore they don’t identify with the organization or display the commitment of permanent employees.
• Contingent or temporary workers are typically provided with little or no health care, pensions, or similar benefits.
• Greatest motivating factor (for those who are not contingent voluntarily) is the opportunity to gain permanent employment.
• Motivation is also increased if the employee sees that the job he or she is doing for the firm can develop salable skills.  Be careful – some temp employees doing the same work as “regular” employees often perceive inequity in their relationship with the organization – be aware of pay differences

Motivating a Diversified Work Force

Not all employees are motivated by money!

Flexibility is the key to maximizing your employees’ motivation by understanding and responding to the diversity of needs.

• specially designed work schedules

• flexible compensation plans
• flexible benefits plans
• physical work settings
• child care
• elderly care
• flexible work hours
• job sharing
• flexible leave
• work teams for those seeking this type of environment

How might we motivate an (often low-skilled) service worker?

• One of the most challenging problems in industry today.
• Many “plans” have been tried, almost all unsuccessfully
• Try flexible work schedules
• broader responsibility for inventory, scheduling, and hiring
• Try creating a “family” atmosphere among employees
• Unless pay and benefits rise significantly, continued high turnover can be expected.

Motivating People Doing Highly Repetitive Tasks

Motivating individuals in these jobs can be made through careful selection:

• People vary in their tolerance for ambiguity.
• Many individuals prefer jobs that have a minimal amount of discretion and variety.
• High pay and careful selection can reduce recruitment problems and high turnover, however…
• This doesn’t necessarily lead to highly motivated workers.
• Creative personnel programs have exhibited some success by providing:

clean and attractive work surroundings, ample work breaks and opportunity to socialize during breaks, and empathetic supervisors.