Managerial Approaches for Improving Motivation

A number of approaches can help managers motivate workers, to perform more effectively. The following steps promote intrinsic motivation:

• Workers Participation in Management (WPM)
• Management by Objectives (MBO)
• Organization Behavior Modification
• Job-Redesign
• Alternative Work Schedules.

Two approaches, however, have been especially effective: linking pay to jot performance and quality of work-life programs.

Pay and Job Performance

Pay often can be used to motivate employee performance. But a pay plan also must be able to do the following tasks:

• Create the belief that good performance leads to high levels of pay;
• Minimize the negative consequences of good performance; and
• Create conditions in which rewards other than pay are evaluated as related to good performance.

Quality of Work Life Programs

Quality of Work Life (QWL) is defined as an attempt through a formal program to integrate employee needs and well being with the intention of improved productivity, greater worker involvement and higher levels of job satisfaction.

Programs for QWL improvements range from those requiring minor changes in an organization to those requiring extensive modifications in structure, personnel and the utilization of resources. There are three types of QWL programs, which are as follows:

Quality Circles

Quality Circles (QC) are small groups of workers who meet regularly with their supervisor as their ‘circle leader’ to solve work-related problems. QCs give an employee an opportunity for involvement, social-need satisfaction, participation in work improvement and challenge and opportunity for growth. They are, in essence, vehicles for providing employees with opportunities to satisfy lower and upper-level needs as stated by Maslow, through the motivators described in ‘Herzberg’s theory.

Alternative Work Schedule

Organizations also frequently use the modified ‘work-week’ as a way to increase employee motivation. A modified ‘work-week’ can be any work schedule that does not conform to a traditional 8 hours a day or 5 days a week format. The modified ‘work-week’ helps individual satisfy higher-level needs by providing more personal control over one’s work schedule. It also provides an opportunity to fulfil several needs simultaneously.

Job-Redesign

Job-Redesign or changing the nature of people’s job is also being used more as a motivational technique. The idea pursued here is that mangers can use any of the alternatives job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment as part of motivational programme. Expectancy theory helps explain the role of work design in motivation.