Strategic Employee Motivation and Creating Productive Work Environments

Strategic Human Capital Leadership

Jonathan H. Westover, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Management, Woodbury School of Business

Email: jon.westover@gmail.com; jonathan.westover@uvu.eduAbout Me: about.me/jonathan.h.westover

Introduction

This session will address the following 2 main topic areas:•Proven best practices and principles of employee motivation with a focus on how to leverage employee capacity to optimize workplace potential and overall firm success. •Proven best practices and principles of productive work environments with a focus on creating a high performance work culture.

What we will Cover

We will:1.Explain the importance of human capital maximization.2.Identify approaches to designing a job to make it more motivating.3.Explain how dissatisfaction affects employee behavior and firm performance.4.Describe how organizations contribute to employees’ job satisfaction and retaining key employees.5.Define high-performance work systems, conditions to create such a system, and summarize the outcomes of a high-performance work system.6.Explain how human resource management can contribute to high performance and the purposes of performance management systems.7.Explain how to provide performance feedback effectively and summarize ways to produce improvement in unsatisfactory performance.

What we will Cover—Cont.

1. We consistently attract the best available talent to fill our human capital needs.

2. We know who our most talented performers are and that we hire “like talent.”

3. We have a handle on future needs for leadership and an outstanding strategy for filling these needs.

4. All of our employee’s job assignments “fit” their unique talents and skill sets.

5. Employee turn-over is low, particularly with our best people.6. Morale is high and that our people are happy in their jobs.

Self-Assessment: How Are We Doing? –We are confident that:

7. We know the dreams and aspirations of our people and have developed career planning tools to match these desires with opportunities for development.

8. We have put in place strategies whereby we will lose fewer of our talented people this year than we did last year.

9. We know where strategic improvements are needed and we ARE making them.

10.We have a performance appraisal system that is both accurate and fair.11.When our best employees choose to leave, our exit evaluation process

identifies with great clarity why we suffered this loss. 12.Our middle management supervisors possess the skills required to

develop the people entrusted to them and have earned the trust of those they serve.

Self-Assessment: How Are We Doing? –We are confident that:

• How can I get the right people into the right job?

• How can I reduce employee turnover?

• How can I improve my performance management process?

• How can I create a high-engagement work culture?

• How can I best tap the full potential of my employees?

The Challenge of Utilizing Human Capital

Maximizing Your Human Capital Maximizing Your Human Capital PotentialPotential

1. Skill variety – the extent to which a job requires a variety of skills to carry out the tasks involved.

2. Task identity – the degree to which a job requires completing a “whole” piece of work from beginning to end.

3. Task significance – the extent to which the job has an important impact on the lives of other people.

4. Autonomy – the degree to which the job allows an individual to make decisions about the way work will be carried out.

5. Feedback - the extent to which a person receives clear information about performance effectiveness from the work itself.

Designing Jobs That Motivate: Designing Jobs That Motivate: The Job Characteristics ModelThe Job Characteristics Model

Characteristics of a Motivating JobCharacteristics of a Motivating Job

The Truth about MotivationThe Truth about Motivation

MasteryMasteryAutonomyAutonomy

Job Withdrawal and DissatisfactionJob Withdrawal and Dissatisfaction

Job withdrawal – a set of behaviors with which employees try to avoid the work situation physically, mentally, or emotionally.

Job satisfaction – a pleasant feeling resulting from the perception that one’s job fulfills or allows for the fulfillment of one’s important job values. The three important components are: (1) Values, (2) Perceptions, and (3) Ideas of what is important

Job SatisfactionJob Satisfaction

• Employee Empowerment – Giving employees responsibility and authority to make decisions regarding all aspects of product development or customer service.

• Employee Engagement – Full involvement in one’s work and commitment to one’s job and company. This is associated with higher productivity, better customer service, lower employee turnover

Employee Empowerment

Pike’s Place Fish MarketPike’s Place Fish Market

1. Play 2. Make Their Day 3. Be There 4. Choose Your Attitude

• How do these principles of designing jobs that are both motivating and empowering apply to your organization?

• Which concepts do you think are most helpful and what are the first steps to implementing them?

• What can you do immediately to start making a difference?

Designing Motivating and Empowering Jobs—What will you do?

• Performance management: the process through which managers ensure that employees’ activities and outputs contribute to the organization’s goals.

• This process requires:– Knowing what activities and

outputs are desired– Observing whether they occur– Providing feedback to help

employees meet expectations

Performance ManagementPerformance Management

Stages of the Performance Management Process

Performance ManagementPerformance Management

• Contrast errors: the rater compares an individual, not against an objective standard, but against other employees.

• Distributional errors: the rater tends to use only one part of a rating scale.– Leniency: the reviewer rates everyone near the top– Strictness: the rater favors lower rankings– Central tendency: the rater puts everyone near the middle of the scale

• Rater bias: raters often let their opinion of one quality color their opinion of others.– Halo error: when the bias is in a favorable direction. This can mistakenly tell

employees they don’t need to improve in any area.– Horns error: when the bias involves negative ratings. This can cause employees

to feel frustrated and defensive.

Types of Performance MeasurementTypes of Performance MeasurementRating ErrorsRating Errors

Hot-Stove Rule Progressive DisciplineA formal discipline process in which the consequences become more serious if the employee repeats the offense.

Progressive Discipline

Principle of discipline that says discipline should be like a hot stove, giving clear warning and following up with consistent, objective, and immediate consequences.

Improving PerformanceImproving Performance

Outcomes of a High-PerformanceOutcomes of a High-PerformanceWork SystemWork System

1. Continuous learning – each employee’s and each group’s ongoing efforts to gather information and apply the information to their decisions.

2. Knowledge is shared – one challenge is to shift the focus of training away from teaching skills and toward a broader focus on generating and sharing knowledge.

3. Critical, systemic thinking – is widespread and occurs when employees are encouraged to see relationships among ideas and think in new ways.

4. Learning culture – a culture in which learning is rewarded, promoted, and supported by managers and organizational objectives.

5. Employees are valued – the organization recognizes that employees are the source of its knowledge. It therefore focuses on ensuring the development and well-being of each employee.

Key Features of Learning Key Features of Learning OrganizationsOrganizations

• How do these principles of performance management and creating a high performance work culture apply to your organization?

• Which concepts do you think are most helpful and what are the first steps to implementing them?

• What can you do immediately to start making a difference?

High Performance Work Culture—What will you do?

Jonathan H. Westover, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Management, Woodbury School of Business

Email: jon.westover@gmail.com; jonathan.westover@uvu.eduAbout Me: about.me/jonathan.h.westover

QUESTIONS?