Motivation

Workplace Motivation Paper

The job of the manager is to get things done through his or her employees. In my workplace, our company has put in to affect several motivational strategies to assist their management through their train program. In this training program the company uses extrinsic motivation to assist in the development of our staff.

This training program is based on four levels of training and development; at each level of the employees' development they are eligible for a salary increase. Each level in the employees' development has its challenges; every employee must complete worksheets, workbooks, take tests with a minimum required score, and complete all on floor training activities. The training program has encouraged many of the employees to reach the fourth level of development and giving each of those employees opportunity for advancement. My companies training program seems to have derived its core concepts from the Ego Development Theory, which was developed by Jane Loevinger in 1976. (Reeve, 2001) Loevinger describes personality growth as a sequence of changes in impulse control, interpersonal methods, and conscious preoccupations. In other words, each developmental level corresponds to a frame of reference or lens through which individuals identify and understand his or her social world.

Not every employee has the drive or the interest to develop a career with my organization, so how does this training program motivate those that do not aspire to develop a career? This is where my company's motivational strategy comes in, each employee has the opportunity to develop to what ever level he or she choose and still gain the benefit of salary increases as well as the other benefits that come with each level of development, i.e. employee discounts, reduced medical benefit costs, paid vacation time, an evaluation of performance at each level of development, etc.

A big part of this training program is focused on the motivation of the employees. As I have stated previously, one of the benefits of advancing in the employees' training and development are evaluations. These evaluations are designed to give regular feedback-based on the performance of the individual. Based on my history with administering evaluations, this is one of the greatest opportunities to create new behaviors, change non-productive behaviors, and encourage those behaviors that are of benefit to the individual and the company. This strategy has been very beneficial to the productivity of the staff and the company.

Not all the strategies that my company has in place are productive. One motivational strategy that I believe reduces productivity is his or her sales strategy. My company's mission statement is to be the best restaurant company in the market, but my company also offers a retail shop. The company's marketing strategy is to drive retail sales through the growth of the restaurants customer base. Not to bad an idea as my company has grown from 200 stores to 520 stores in just a few short years.

Based in the companies marketing strategy is the idea that the retail stores will have two opportunities to sell to every customer who come to eat at the restaurant. This is where the negative impact on productivity comes in. The retail employees are under immense pressure to maintain a sales goal that equates to 30% of the total sales, generated by both the restaurant and the retail store. With this being said, the task is accomplishable, but the company does not offer any opportunities for the retail staff in ways of marketing the retail side of the business, hence making the retail employees' job more difficult.

In most cases, when an individual or group go to a restaurant to eat, his or her intent is to eat not to be encouraged to purchase impulse merchandise. The company has just begun to identify that the retail employee has no real motivation to sell. So what has the company done to address this issue?

The company has allocated a budget for extrinsic motivation. The management team is to decide what and how to use this budget to increase productivity for both the retail employee and the restaurant employee. Now the challenge for the management