Management Case Speech 1

Good afternoon Mr. Johnson.

The fourth problem that I would like to discuss is low employee motivation, and there are a few root causes contributing to this problem.

First of all, the overprotective BVI market laws and regulations contribute to low employee motivation. The laws state that companies are not permitted to lay off staff during slow seasons. In fact, the occupancy rate of WIYCR drops significantly from 100% in peak season to 40% in off season.

This means that the resort is overstaffed during off season, and even in such case, employees cannot be fired and as they know their jobs are secured, they won’t have incentive to work at all.

Additionally, what if a company wants to dismiss an employee under other situations – it is still not easy.

For example, if an employee steals from the company, the company will have to file documents with the government and attend a formal hearing on why the employee has to be dismissed.

As it takes a long time to go through these complicated procedures to fire an employee, companies usually give up dismissing staff.

As a result, local staff realise that under any circumstances, they are still guaranteed a job so they have no motivation to work at all.

Secondly, the ineffective compensation system fails to motivate local employees to work.

Employees in the resort are paid an hourly rate based on their tenure, and the compensation system grants employees a raise without any performance review.

Hence, even the most senior staff in the water sports department hide from work because they know they will get raises even if they do not work at all.

Therefore, we can observe that the compensation system fails to provide an incentive to local employees to work harder.

Thirdly, ineffective management of water sports department also contributes to low employee motivation.

As a matter of fact, the position of Waterfront director is always vacant because of high workload associated. For example, as the waterfront director, you need to oversee the water sports department and its director, plan and promote day excursions, develop and maintain relationships with the sites that day excursions visited.

With all these physically demanding tasks, three expatriates quitted this job, and now the position is vacant again. This not only demotivates employees to work, but also leads to high expatriate turnover, one of the identified problems in the resort.