How motivation can improve performance of employees

1. Introduction:

This dissertation is concerned with the selected topic how motivation can improve the performance of employees in any organisation. There would be broad information and its rationale about the topic in this chapter. First of all background is presented followed by the objective of the study. Literature review, methodology, analysis of data and at the end the plan of the study of the dissertation will be presented.

2. Background:

The word motivation is derived from a Latin word “movere”, which means “to move” (Kreitner & Kinicki, 1998). Motivation is an influence or energy to achieve desired goal. Robbins (1993) has defined motivation as it is the “willingness to apply high levels of attempt to achieve the organizational goals, trained by the hard work capability to convince the need of some individaul.”In this perspective need is an inner state that helps to make outcomes attractive. If there is an unsatisfied need tension is created, which stimulate an individual to do something. This stimulation of drives creates a searching behaviour in an individual to do something to achieve the desire goals. If those desire goals are achieved, it will satisfy an individual and tension can be revealed. ( Robbins, 1993).

Motivation is developed or created when an individual has a clear image and awareness about what he/she is going to do and he/she has confidence about his/her internal abilities. Naylor, Pritchard and Ilgen (1980) have explained that motivation is a process of transferring personal resources in the form of various acts and time in order to indicate affect as a result these acts can be maximised.

Podmoroff (2005) has viewed that “motivation is universal”; motivators are individual”. Human beings can be motivated like a pre-wired. Certain things start up with every morning. Human beings have different ideas regarding to do something and if we motivate them they can do best performance. Motivation is different at workplace because people working in workplace atmosphere are different in nature and attitudes. Lazenby (2008) found that “to employee motivation a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work”

Moreover, Motivation define as dynamic strength, there are two different aspects of motivation Intrinsic and Extrinsic. Intrinsic refers to initiate inside the person whereas Extrinsic initiates from outside individual such as achieving goal or reward to avoid negative consequences.

Motivation4

This diagram illustrate how motivation tigers individuals and results as a rewards.

Three different types of motivations needs:

Power Motivation – Such person who needs power to generate an impact on their company and eager to take risk to do so.

Affiliation motivation- relates to social such people perform better when they are praised for their positive attitudes and co-operation.

Achievement motivation – such people who ambitious by challenge of success and the dread of failure.

In overall management the customary approach to motivation is uncertain. These two approaches would appear to be in conflict with one another is employee’s motivation by spectacular salaries (extrinsic motivation) or by job satisfaction and importance of employee identification by their job (intrinsic motivation).

Motivation considers being an important aspect for Tesco for their continued growth of their company. In order to succeed and support their growth Tesco need staff that are motivated and well-trained and who recognises customers needs in correct manner.

Tesco’s Britain largest retailer store it started by Jack Cohen in 1919 as a market stall holder subsequently first store opened in 1929. Tesco has prolonged across the world consist of 2,200 stores including Tesco Express and hypermarkets to meet different customers’ requirements.

Tesco has over 468,000 employees. It is important for the continued growth of their company that they staff are well trained and motivated. Tesco has various roles and different levels to support and motivates their employee. Tesco has their own performance management where they manage their employee needs and performance in order to be remaining as UK’S leading retailer and sustain a competitive edge.

A motivated workforce will accomplish superior in less time with their hard work hence, less labour cost. It also needs less supervision and reveals pride in its work, showing great impact on customers. Motivated staff tends to be more loyal to their job and shows greater concentration hence less mistakes and incident to be in conflict. Whereas, unmotivated staff will be opposite and shows negative impact and less efficiently in their work.

Tesco motivate their staff by following rewards:

Flexible working

Free/ reduced rates health benefits

Discount gym membership

Competitive salary

Staff discount

Company share option

Tesco exposed that valuing their employee’s provide them practical goals and appealing environment increases their employee motivation. It means she or he will more focus on customers’ needs and will treat fairly each individual. Tesco reward programme work similar to Taylor’s theory which states that ‘people worked purely for money’ according this Tesco ensure the staff is motivated by competitive salary and benefits. (Ref 5). Tesco also have staff satisfaction survey every year which helps identify expectations of their employee and ensure they are offering enough to keep them motivated.

In 1930 Theorist Elton Mayo recommended various factors which can help workforce motivated. The factors such as superior communication, good team work, interest in what you doing and well being of others. Tesco operating Mayo theory throughout the company by appraisals as communication is a key factor between manager and employee’s.

Overall according to Taylor and Mayo theory Tesco identify their workforce needs in five categories:

Basic and physical needs – in form of place of work, monthly pay and essential needs within the building such as lockers and restaurant.

Security needs – in form formal employment contract, pension and sickness scheme and health safety issues at work.

Social needs- in form of team or group work

Self esteem- in form of self respect and admire of hard work through appraisal system.

Self fulfilment- in form of promotion and career progression scheme

Motivating their staff is an important task for their managers and by providing these benefits it helps Tesco to maintain strong foundation for their growth and high level of customer’s services through their well trained employee.

Motivation considers being an important aspect for Tesco for their continued growth of their company. In order to succeed and support their growth Tesco need staff that are motivated and well-trained and who recognises customers needs in correct manner.

3. Main objectives of the project

Motivation is imperative in almost all organisations. The main intention of this project is to determine the employee’s motivation in positive reinforcement. There are numerous reasons why employee may not perform at their potential; it is manifest that every company have their plans and strategies to motivate their staff. This project will outline all the main factors used to motivate their employee performance as well as how it contribution to the overall effect of the organisation in positive manner. The points that will be discussed are as follow:

To find out how motivation helps improve the performance of employees in Tesco.

To find out how motivation needs different style for different situations.

To find out how motivation helps to improve in Tesco productivity, profit and well legendary company.

To find out employee motivating factors such as High wages, Job security, Promotion in the organisations, full of appreciation of the work done etc.

To outline the external and internal types of motivation such as on job training and external education.

To find out how performance appraisals benefits employees and managers.

To find out how performance management system used by organisation helps employee to motivate.

To find out the social aspects of motivation such as social contact with others at work.

To find out the drawback of poor motivation such as low reputation and high recruitment cost, this results as negative impact on organisation.

To outline Tesco Motivational Theory and illustrate main points how it helps to motivate the performance of their employee’s.

4. Literature review of the project:

4.1. Human resource management:

Human resource management is embodied of activities and functions; it plays a key role in deciding what staff is suitable for any job and how to hire or recruit staff and whether to use self-determining contractors or to fill their all kinds of needs. It explains recruiting training and superior employee, by dealing with the various issues of performance it ensure the high performance and then it ensure your personal management practices that bring into agreement of different rules and regulations. The HRM also deals in managing approach i.e.an approach to compensation of employees, approach to benefit personal records and policies. Most companies achieve activities e.g. for profit or non profit by themselves because the companies are not able to afford the cost. But these companies ensure about the awareness of personal policies that conform to correct regulation. These policies are mostly reserved in the form of manual and employees have these manuals.

4.2. Definition of human resource management:

HRM is used to improve the performance of organisation by the use of human resource management practices effectively.

It tells all the basic activities and functions that are related to people practice including the support of computer system like database and skills.

To conduct human resource effectively HRM is used as an activity that an organisation uses.

HRM functions are recruitment of staff, planning of human resources, staff selection, directions, staff training and appraisal about their performance and compensation.

HRM also help in selection of staff what staff is appropriate for what kind of post and also manage the relationship among the staff reward system to motivate the staff and it concerns with the strategic view relating to human resource requirements.

4.3. Motivation in human resource management:

The basic purpose or aim of Human Resource management is acting to a planned approach to managing people effectively so they can perform well. Its aims include setting up a more open, flexible and adopting a caring management style so that as a result staff can be motivated. They need to be managed and developed in such a way that they can and will perform of their excellence to sustain department missions.

Motivation is intimately associated to organisational culture which is a vital phase of Human Resource Management. Staff motivation is a key stone of caring, open and flexible management culture and these can be established through Human Resource Management and it is an aim or purpose of any organisation or company.

Practically, if we look into detail “open” that there should not only have the flexibility for staff in order to listen their views and opinions but management or leader should also give power to staff accept their positive criticism and also implement these things.”Flexibility” means management or leader should need to change the ways in which things are being done. More over in the matter of staff motivation the major challenge is that to stop looking at the problems, focus is to find out the solutions of those problems so that good performance could be achieved.”Caring” is all about the leader or manger that they should care about the entire individual.

Emotional need of all the team member or staff should keep in mind and also give them priority. Because human beings deserve to deal with them according to their emotional needs and attitudes. As we are living with the belief that “peoples are our most important asset. Those who are working in the organisation they are most important asset of their reorganisation.

Motivation underpinning principle is that employees want importance or priority by their leader or manager and in this situation they can and will effort to perform willingly and more efficient way without the need for control them. As a result of this they can be self motivating which can lead to passion of doing well done work.

Organisations in its functional environment generate welfare for its employees according to their performance. Organisations have clear purpose and as a n open system, organisations uses a wide variety of inputs for example human, information and technological materials and all these revolves around to achieve the planned goals and these should be cleared and accepted by the members because this is the best to motivation. So regarding to better performance they will feel satisfaction, if they feel unsatisfy this lead to lose determination.

People working in an organisation can turn into central competences of the organisation by their activities only when they work with loyalty understand and agree with the situation. The Human Resources can be competent and can create competitive benefits if they could be trained to achieve the specific objectives that are settled through the strategy. This can be achieved through deep thought motivation. To make motivation successful there is need to take some actions and the result of these actions which are expected create satisfaction.

An organisation in order to stand in a competitive and energetic environment must adopt actual ways of personnel’s motivation and if they want to adopt it should hold in all functional levels of management.

5 .Research plan:

deductive_reasoning_pyramid1

Inductive Approach

DEDUCTIVE

Deductive Approach

5.1Perspective

The research is basically depends on two approaches inductive approach and deductive approach. Deductive approach starts from more general to more specific principles and then it is concluded. We can say it is “top-down” approach .Conclusion follows on available facts. In the other hand, inductive research approach work opposite to deductive approach. It starts from specific observations to greater or broader generalisation and theories. Inductive approach is some time called “bottom up” approach. Inductive approach starts from Conclusion to main points then analysis of data examples and evidence. If we look into the history we come to know that many researchers believed that logically reasoning is an essential part of human thinking process and this lead to technological scientific research and development. In fact human are not natural logical readers.

5.2. Design

Methods of data collection;

Collection of data is very important in research method. There are several ways in which data can be collected for example

Quantitative research

Qualitative research

In quantitative research method data is collected in numerical and figures, all the data in this method is numeric form answers to specific questions (Wholey, et.al. 2004) .This method will be used in this research method to get the result. Qualitative data is consists of collecting evidence find out the answers of questions by interviews ,observations and reading pattern themes to analyse the data(Maxwell, 1996, Patton, 2002) qualitative research method will be used in this project to collect the primary data.

6.1Data analysis

Collected data for this project especially that data which is collected through questionnaires will be placed to use via SPSS software and then it will be transferred to Micro soft Excel. Statistical data will be used for significant, presentational and inferential analysis.

6.2Limitations:

There are certain limitations which can effect on this project for example time period for collecting the data in secondary sources that are interviews and real information from questionnaire, issues that concerned with the reliability about all the data primary and secondary data. Validity is also concerned in these kinds of issues because of composite and difficult process of business in any organisation regarding to the performance of employees.

7. Plan of dissertation:

Plan of dissertation means the detail about the whole dissertation like how many chapters would be in this dissertation. Plan depicts the whole framework of the dissertation and also describes the major and essential contents of all the chapters.

Chapter no; 1 .in the first chapter of the dissertation there would be a concise introduction and background of the main areas would be covered. This chapter will also describe the literature review of the dissertation.

Chapter no: 2 in the second chapter of the dissertation there would be a critical review of the sources through which data would be collected and checked for example while making the dissertation what kind of books journals and articles are used for this purpose.

Chapter no 3: in the third chapter of the dissertation methodology will be shown that will be used to complete this project.

Chapter no 4: chapter four will consist of detail about the analysis of finding and research which will be done in qualitative and quantitative way.

Chapter 5: conclusion and recommendations along with the objectives and methodologies will be provided in the chapter no five.

At the end of the project references will be provided in order to explain what sources have been used to complete this project work like books, journals, articles and web sources

8. Ethical consideration:

While completing my project it is very sensitive matter to take care of ethical elements that are relating to the process of data collection will be more careful in this matter in keeping confidential all the detail and answers that will be provided by questionnaire from the respondents. Issues that are concerning physical and mental destruction are not associated with this project work. To fill out the questionnaire without any kind of interruption respondents will be provided comfortable environment. More over to take interview the availability of interviewers will be kept in mind. in order to manage my interview for collecting the data I will get information from my supervisor. I am careful in order to avoid the plagiarism by using the Turnitin software which is arranged by my institution. Because plagiarism is an offence and i will be careful in this regard. References will be given at the end in Harvard Style.

9. Time:

The time period is for four months to complete this project and it will be started as the submission of the proposal. This project will be completed at the first week of of the April. Gantts chart is shown below to give the detail about the about the plan of the activities.