Meaningfulness of Work - Responsibility and Knowledge of Outcome

Question: Discuss about the hygiene factor and motivational factor? Answer: Introduction The following essay is based on the significance of motivational theories and effective work environment that influence the workers to perform positively. The major purpose of the essay is to identify how the elements of strategic human resource management influence the affective work process. The essay effectively highlights the facts about how the organizations manage its internal work environment and develops the performance. It is quite certain that organizational performance is influenced or dependent on the human resource management practices. More specifically, the employee performance is the factor that influences the organizational performance. Thus, to learn internal factors that influence the organizational performance, the essay focuses on some significant elements of human resource management such as implementation of motivational theories, commitment, job satisfaction, employee wellbeing programs as well as other behavioral techniques that have wide impact on organizati onal performance. While applying the elements of strategic human resource practices such as implementation of motivational theories, the organizations have to link their human resource with the strategic goals and objectives to enhance business performance as well as develop organizational culture that promotes innovation, flexibility and competitive advantage. In this context, Danish and Usman (2010) mentioned that in an organizational setting, SHRM is referred to the action of accepting and involving the R functions as the strategic partner in the development of organizations strategies. The organizations that rely on the long-term goals and objectives often focus on its internal capabilities such as human resource. To keep the employees motivated, it is essential for employers to implement motivational activities. In this context, Manzoor (2012) commented that motivation is one of the forces that lead certainly lead to performance. Hence, Zhang and Bartol (2010) almost mentioned that motivation can be considered as the desired to achieve a goal or particular level of performance level, which leads to goal-directed behavior. Therefore, analyze these facts more intensively some relevant theories and models, related to motivation, commitment and employee job satisfaction have been discussed and linked with the evidences in the following. Discussion Due to the dynamic industrial environment, the organizations in each sector focus on their workforce development as the development of their strategic capabilities. The development human resource positively influences the performance. As the key strategy of human resource development, the employers emphasize on employee motivation activities. It is expected that in order to gain positive output from the employees, the employee needs and demands should be identified and fulfilled. In this context, De Cooman et al. (2011) commented that before applying conventional workforce development strategies, it is essential to focus on the issues and then develop the solutions. According to Voon et al. (2011), employee retention often remains as the big challenge in this dynamic corporate environment. However, employee retention can be managed by applying some key motivational theories as many organizations such as Unilever, PEPSI have been seen to be motivating its employees by meeting their ne eds. One of the major initiatives of Unilever is that it provides medical coverage of the entire family of the employee and the company provides yearly tangible benefits to its employees. Among several key motivational theories, Herzberg two-factor theory is widely embraced and praised by the scholars and marketers. There are two significant factors in Herzberg motivational theory namely hygiene factor and motivational factor and these two factors further include some sub-factors such as pay, company policy, fringe benefits, physical work condition, status and job condition that fall under the hygiene factor. In order to retain the key employees, the salary structure of the company needs to appropriate and it must be competitive to others in the same industry. As put forward by Dartey-Baah and Amoako (2011), when two or more organization in the same domain of same sector develop high salary structure, the employees find the reasons for leaving their existing company. As the competition is high pay structure is not the only solution of employee turnover, as mentioned in Herzbergs theory, the employers must provide other essential benefits like medical coverage and job security. This means the company needs to make their employees feel secure like a family. On the contrary, motivational factors include some sub-factors such as recognition, growth and promotional opportunities, responsibility as well as the meaningfulness of work (Hyun and Oh 2011). It is often observed that employees who work in the organization for long expect that their performance should be appreciated. Therefore, the organizations need to provide rewards and recognitions to the employees. In addition, the employees who work in the organizations for long look for career growth. Thus, the companies provide internal career opportunities for the potential and experienced employees. Another significant motivational theory often praised by McGregor X and Y theory. According to X theory, the leaders and managers tend to build a pessimistic opinion of their employees and consider that they naturally unmotivated. Consequently, the leaders need to think that team members or the employees need to be promoted, rewarded as well as penalized to ensure that they complete their tasks. However, Kopelman, Prottas and Falk (2010) commented that theory X does not fit the current dynamic environment. This means the organizations that have an autocratic culture implement such theory. On the contrary, with theory Y, the managers have an optimistic as well as positive opinion of their people. As the result, they tend to develop a decentralized and participative management style. The employees dare to take greater responsibility and their leaders encourage the workers to enhance their skills and recommend improvements. The appraisal activities are regular in theory Y. Moreover, the leaders develop an open communication style to build a healthy and positive relationship with the employees. This practice helps the employees to discuss their issues with the leaders with the hope of solution. Like the motivational theories, a positive work environment contributes a lot to the development of human resource in an organization. According to ?ahin (2012), a positive work environment refers to an environment that forms the part of workers engagement with the work itself such as the relationship with co-workers, managers, culture of the firm and scope for personal development. As put forward by Aiken et al. (2011), a positive work environment makes the staff feel positive about coming to work and this enhances the motivation to sustain throughout the work shift. However, a positive work environment must include Transparent and Open communication, work life balance, training and development-focused and recognition for hard work. According to Piccolo et al. (2010), a transparent as well as open form of communication identifies the employees need to make them feel that what initiatives the authorities take should has value. The activities, the workers perform becomes more meaningful and the employees learn that what they contribute to the organizations influence the organizations where they work. Similarly, another significant aspect is work-life balance. A workplace must have some sort of balance between the work and the personal life. As mentioned by Cummings et al. (2010), the balance could improve job satisfaction among the staff members as they feel they are not forcefully avoiding the other areas of their life. Hence, in the context of positive work environment, Kossek et al. (2011) insisted on the training and development, which means a workplace should not promote its positivity by only developing communication and work balance culture. Workforce development is a significant part of positive work environment. It is essential for the employers to keep abreast with the barriers as well as train their employees accordingly. As the strategy of employee motivation, HR department pays attention to job design, which could motivate the employees. While designing the tasks, HR considers the certain elements such as job specialization, job engagement, job enrichment and other factors. As mentioned by, Albrech, (2011), job engagement is one of the significant aspects to be considered, which refers to the expansion of the tasks conducted by the workers to increase more variety. Thus, providing the employees with several tasks, the HR stops limiting their activities to a small number of tasks. Likewise, the job enrichment technique is often used by HR, which allows the employees to take more control over how they conduct their own activities. This approach allows the staff members to take more responsibility. According to Barrick et al. (2013), as a significant alternative to job specialization, the organizations applying job enrichment techniques could observe positive outcome like reduced employee turnover, inc reased produced as well as reduced absenteeism. The job characteristic model developed and designed by Hackman and Oldman is based on the idea that the task itself is the potential to employee motivation. Particularly, a monotonous job could stifle the motivation to perform effectively. However, challenging job could also increase the motivation. In this context, Morris and Venkatesh (2010) commented that variety, autonomy as well as decision authority are the key factors of adding barrier to a job. Hackman and Oldhams job characteristic model theory suggests that motivation is liked to experiencing three psychological states such as meaningfulness of work, responsibility and knowledge of outcome. Among five different core elements, the skill variety is the extent to which a job requires a variety of different activities. In addition, it requires the use of different skills as well as talents of workers. According to Katsikea et al. (2011), jobs that appear to be high in skill variety are observed by employees as challenging due t o the range of skills involved. For instance, it can be mentioned that an administrative assistant with an increasing skill variety could have to perform several tasks. Likewise, the task identity is the extent to which a job might require completion of whole piece of work. The employees need to gain the ability of identifying the work and complete the work, hence enabling more pride to be considered in the outcome of the job. It is also observed that task significance is the extent to which the job has a substantial on the lives of other people. For instance, healthcare staff working on a cure for a terminal disease is likely to identify the significance of their work to the society. Like other elements, the autonomy is the extent to which the job provides substantial freedom, independence as well as discretion to the worker in scheduling the tasks as well as in determining the techniques to be used in the implementing the tasks. According to Christian, Garza and Slaughter (2011), autonomy is considered as the fundamental in developing the sense of responsibility in employees. Even though, most of the employees are intended to work within the wide constraints of an organization, they expect a particular degree of freedom. For instance, a sale person is often considered to be highly autonomous as they schedule their own work and select the most appropriate approaches for each customer. In addition, the job feedback refers to the extent to which implementing the work activities needed by the task provides the individual with appropriate direction as well as clear information regarding the effectiveness of the performance. The feedback can be both positive and negat ive but it is effective when it remains balanced. As commented by Morris and Venkatesh (2010), the organizations should provide the feedback on time instead of delay until the annual appraisal meeting. There is a significant way, based on which the workers could make adjustment to assess how they perform in the present time. It is also observed that feedback usually come directly from the activities that employees perform. The senior management or the supervisors provide the feedback verbally or in a document. For example, Mulberry (a retail organization in UK), sales person usually receives the feedback regarding the number of contacts they make on a daily or weekly basis. The above-discussed fundamental job characteristics have significant effects on different critical psychological state. For instance, task identity, skill variety and task significance altogether contribute to employees observed meaningfulness of the work. In this context, Barrick, Mount and Li (2013) commented that a job that provides a large deal of autonomy are observed to be contributing to individuals experienced responsibility for the consequence of the work. When the employees have the freedom to decide what to do and how to do it, the employees feel more responsible for the work or its consequence. Eventually, the job feedback is observed to provide employee with the knowledge of the actual outcome of the work. Hence, Taylor (2015) commented that when a job is designed or developed to provide the employees with the information regarding the effects of their initiatives in the workplace, they gain the ability of developing an understanding about how effectively they perform. I n addition to this, it is also observed that job characteristics model of Hackman and Oldman implies that the three significant psychological states largely affect different personal as well as work outcome such as internal work motivation of employees, enhanced satisfaction and general job and work effectiveness. According to Katsikea (2011), when the individuals perform the task that has increasing level of these five core characteristics, they should feel highly motivated and satisfied. Even though job characteristics model of Hackman and Oldman includes some unique characteristics for employee motivation, this model has a significant relationship with Maslows hierarchy of needs theory. Maslows hierarchy of needs theory consists of five different needs namely physiological, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. The fulfillment of these needs can be considered as the employee motivational activities. The self-esteem need is associated with individuals belief that person is doing good and her effort and contribution should be recognized. As put forward by Christian, Garza and Slaughter (2011), confidence is the potential element; this means if a supervisor will tell, the employee has the confidence, that employee will perform well. Likewise, this principle is also applicable in the workplace. If the staff member believes in himself or herself, the others believe in them. This need of Maslows hierarchy can be can be linked with job character istics model of Hackman and Oldman, which is task significance. The task significance indicates that if employees observe and understand their role as well as they has self-confidence about the job, they perform well. Hence, the most important point is that employees believe that they are doing something significant in their organization. Similarly, the love and belonging needs, which helps to learn that if employees who respond in the affirmative could be enagaed than who do not. This is significantly attributed to Maslow low third range of needs. The organizations with a long record of social as well as other camaraderie-building activities have large extent of employee involvement than organizations. Similarly, in Hackman and Oldmans job characteristic model, skill variety has the ability or it discusses the ability of performing the large variety of tasks. Hence, Taylor (2015) mentioned that jobs that have large skills variety are often observed as more challenging by the employees. This characteristic increases the chance of high involvement of employees to tasks. When it increases the involvement of the employees, the employees develop a great sense of competence. Conclusion In conclusion, it can be mentioned that job enrichment is an effective strategy for job content. It can be mentioned that Fredrick Herzeberg, Hackman and Oldham provides the explicit framework for developing jobs. On the basis of their own work as well as their work of others, they enhanced a job characteristics model. More specifically, the model especially specifies that enriching certain aspects of jobs alter peoples psychological states in a manner that improves their work effectiveness. In addition, it can also be mentioned that as the industrial environment has become dynamic, the organizations have to apply several strategies for the enhancement of both external and internal environment. Thus, for the development of internal environment, the major focus of the company is to develop the internal capabilities. The biggest aspect of internal capabilities is the workforce. In order to have control over the external environment, the company needs to focus on human resource. As discussed above, the motivational activities such as the application of Herzberg two-factor theory often helps the employers to fulfill the needs of the employees. Likewise, McGregor Y theory helps to build an effective relationship with the employees, which eventually motivates the employees and as the result, they perform effectively. Nevertheless, it is necessary for the companies to focus on the innovative strategies for employee motivation. This is because, each industry has observed a rapid change and the competition of hiring the talented workforce is increasing. The workforce is the only resource that enables the company to remain active in the competition. Thus, the employers need to develop innovative human resource development plan in coming future. References Aiken, L.H., Cimiotti, J.P., Sloane, D.M., Smith, H.L., Flynn, L. and Neff, D.F., 2011. 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