Psy 320 - Workplace Motivation Paper

Workplace Motivation Paper

James Irby

PSY/320

November 20, 2014

Carol Bailey

Workplace Motivation

In today’s tough economic markets, motivation is very important in the overall growth and productivity within an organization. The motivating process is beneficial for both the employee and the company as it leads to higher profits. Company leaders have a unique responsibility to understand human behaviors to help them better know each person’s work related potential while balancing production and employee morale. In any organization, it is very important for leaders to use positive reinforcement, performance praises, effective communication, and rewards to enhance motivation in the workplace. Lowes management is using an outside research company to address the following to include organizational efforts to improve performance, employees’ resistance to increasing productivity, and management's philosophy of motivation and its practices. This research became vital during the downturn of the housing market in 2007, and has proven to revitalize the financial performance and efforts of the company in recent years. Lowes is using self-motivation of associates to help improve customer service levels and promote better collaboration between the corporate division and store employees (Motivation Strategies, 2007).

Organizational Efforts To Improve Performance

Lowes leaders business philosophy states building a solid management team will lead to improved productivity in the workplace. In today’s society, company leadership must have a desire to strategically develop and improve their overall business performance. Management that desires motivated workers in the workplace must, treat associates fairly, manage employees as individuals, use empowerment, create a fair and positive reward program, and promote a flexible environment that meets the needs of the business. Effective leaders will use both intrinsic and extrinsic reward systems to ensure effectiveness within the company. The goals of a proficient reward system will meet employees needs, be fair for all associates, have a specific financial benefit for the business, and the reward system must catering to all associates within the organization. In Lowes there are several different job functions such as sales floor associates, shipping and receiving personnel, and delivery drivers, therefore the company must have a diversified reward system. The company has incentive based programs that provide different level rewards to include total store quarterly incentives, sales specialist performance incentive, sales floor associates service incentives, and yearly store incentives; and these programs leads to motivated associates and improved productivity   (Motivation Strategies, 2007).

Employee's Resistance to Increasing Productivity

Many associates are very comfortable with his or her current job position, and are stagnant and complacent in their career roles, and many employees display a since of unhappiness in the workplace. Associates have little motivation or drive to excel in their work roles and this leads to low to moderate productivity, and many employees’ focus their attention on the internal organizational politics. Employees do not believe their ideas and thoughts are of value to the organization and that management is not interested in what value they bring to the workforce, therefore many associates are reluctant to change and distrust leaders. Some associates believes that increase productivity should lead to better wages and that they would be working more for less; management must use rewards programs to value employees’ innovational performances. In the past four years and a response to reducing housing marketing, Lowes senior management is focusing their attention on improving the customer service levels and this process starts with improving the workplace environment, enhancing the company’s information technology systems, better development of management and employees, set goal for better training programs, and provide a platform that encourages innovation and creativity. Employees have been a more active role in helping develop the information technology systems by allowing stores to test programs and provide value added feedback before implementing a company wide initiative; this is major change from the old philosophy of testing offsite then forcing associates to learn the new programs during organizational-wide rollouts. This leads to a better collaborative work environment with a sense of trust and pride from employees. Lowes main focus is to create a positive workforce environment that promotes productivity, and this is accomplished through a purposeful rewards and incentive program and changing the workplace environment so employees feel comfortable providing input for better productivity.

Lowes senior management and board of directors tweaked the internal operations of the company to align with future business plans to include core values, revising the mission and vision statements, and setting new organizational goals. The organizational leadership team hired the assistance of an outside company to analyze Lowes current business model and provide feedback for improvement. The outside company determined that Lowes needed to change their workplace environment to a more employee friendly atmosphere that allows associates to feel comfortable sharing ideas and innovation. Lowes believes that giving employees the opportunity to be involved with innovation and creativity will lead to better customer service in the workplace, and drive associates to better levels of productivity. As associates of Lowes, employees have a better opportunity for internal advancement, improved training and development programs, and the ability to add value to daily customer service; and this leads increased job performance, self-motivation, better attendance records, and reduced turnovers thus saving the company in long-term expenses. Lowes primary goal is to continue to be a major leader in the home improvement industry and grow globally within the next five to ten years; and the leadership team understands that the productivity and motivation of store employees is the key to overall future success (Clark, D., 2007).