Teamwork and Motivation
Imagine that you are the owner of a small manufacturing company. Your company manufactures a commodity, widgets. Your widget is a clone of a nationally known widget. Your company’s widget, WooWoo, is less expensive and more readily available than the nationally known brand. Presently, the sales are high; however, there are many defects, which increase your costs and delays delivery. Your company has fifty (50) employees in the following departments: sales, assembly, technology, and administration. Write a five to six (5-6) page paper in which you: 1. Design an organization motivation plan that encourages: a. high job satisfaction b. low turnover c. high productivity d. high-quality work 2. Propose two (2) methods to motivate all of the employees in the organization. Rate these methods in order of importance. 3. Propose three (3) ways to motivate the minimum wage service worker. Support your suggestions with a motivation theory. 4. Analyze the relevance of the individual worker in today’s organizational context. 5. Re-create and complete the following Individual Work to Teamwork chart using Microsoft Office or an equivalent such as OpenOffice. The left-hand column is filled with terms that describe an individual worker. Fill in the right-hand column with descriptive terms that suggest the desired change in behavior from individual work to teamwork. Use Chapter 8 as a reference. Note: The graphically depicted solution is not included in the required page length. Individual Work to Teamwork INDIVIDUAL WORKER TEAM MEMBER (change in behavior from individual to team member) Talks Me oriented Department focused Competitive Logical Written messages Image Secrecy Short-term sighted Immediate results Critical Tenure 6. Use at least three (3) quality academic resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and other Websites do not qualify as academic resources. Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements: •Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions. •Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length
Are you an iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, or iMac user? Have you ever wondered why Apple, Inc. keeps giving us a stream of innovative and trend-setting products?
In many ways today's Apple stoiy started years ago with its co-founder Steve Jobs, the first Macintosh computer, and a very special team. The "Mac" was Jobs's brainchild. To create it he put together a team of high-achievers who were excited and motivated by a highly challenging task. They worked all hours and at an unrelenting pace, while housed in a separate building flying the Jolly Roger to display their independence from Apple's normal bureaucracy. The Macintosh team combined youthful enthusiasm with great expertise and commitment to an exciting goal. In the process they set a new benchmark for product innovation as well as new standards for what makes for a high-performance team.1
Apple remains today a hotbed of high-performing teams that harness great talents to achieve innovation. But let's not forget that there are a lot of solid contributions made by good, old-fashioned, everyday teams in all organizations—the cross-functional, problem-solving, virtual, and self-managing teams introduced in the last chapter. We also need to remember, as scholar J, Richard Hackman points out, that many teams underperform and fail to live up to their potential. They simply, as Hackman says, "don't work,"2 The question for us is: What differentiates high-performing teams from the also-rans?
Teamwork and Motivation
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Institution:
Teamwork and Motivation
Organization Motivation Plan
Motivation in an organizational context refers to a sense of enthusiasm within individual workers or employees that result in desired levels of direction and effort in their work or tasks per se (Schermerhorn et al, 2012). The process of motivating employees involves a keen comprehension of the specific areas in which performance and or expectations are key or desired. As such, it is important to recognize needs for improvement and or sustainment in terms of job performance. The online business dictionary (2014) elaborates motivation as an amalgamation of mostly internal and to some extent external organizational factor, which are responsible for enhanced work effort and dedication to their set tasks, duties and responsibilities. This represents an emphasis and or commitment to set roles or duties directed toward the achievement of organizational goals and objectives, which is only achieved by demonstrated competence and dedication, creating a vital regard for employees.
It is also important to recognize human resources as the most valuable constituent of an organization, whose efforts in work determine the overall soundness of a business organization (Schermerhorn et al, 2012). According to Harris (2013), "the work environment is an important talent retention tool for any workforce, but it is particularly important for the skilled labor workforce." Work environments for the high-tech, healthcare, and manufacturing industries share several common issues: long hours, high stress, and often lower pay scales than positions that may require higher levels of education". Therefore, it is particularly vital for any given organization to establish a definite motivation plan for its human resources. This portrays a set of strategically guidelines to the company’s management in regards to mechanisms of achieving motivation of workers in line with objectives of a firm (Harris, 2013).
Factors of job satisfaction, reduced turnover, work quality and enhanced productivity go hand in hand with employee motivation. For this reason, an organizations’ motivation plan can entail several elements that are used in unison to achieve the stated objective. All the same, the plan is supposed to include specifications like management by objectives and reward management that are further discussed in this paper. The plan also enables an organization’s management to monitor and facilitate desired working conditions that suit job descriptions and design making employees more dedicated to their specific tasks owing to an established organizational culture that facilitates motivation (Schermerhorn, 2012).
A founding basis for an organization to create and maintain a motivational plan is the subject matter of ‘Job Enrichment’. This implies an importance of establishment of high quality working conditions and job content, which involves planning and evaluation of duties and tasks. Ultimately, the job positions in the organization bear elements of responsibility, recognition and personal growth and achievement. Furthermore, the workers efforts are acknowledged by accountability resulting in creation of platform for reward systems and management.
The company being an SME (small and medium sized enterprise), the leadership by the owner is wholly responsible on achieving motivation of workers. This in turn should be achieved with realization of low costs of production of the ‘WooWooo’ widgets. Hence, employees ought to comprehend the attainment of this as an organizational objective. One way of facilitating this is through establishment of groups or teams within the departments of Administration, technology, sales and assembly. Schermerhorn et al. (2012) indicate, "A team is a group of people holding themselves collectively accountable for using complementary skills to achieve a common purpose." The creation of work teams will facilitate common sharing of the company’s objectives as well as collective accountability of employees. Additionally, the 50 workers should view themselves as a team or group responsible for making and selling of the widgets.
In consideration of work turnover, the company should have mechanisms of allowing employees to air their concerns and or grievances in an orderly manner. This is only achieved by sustainment of good working conditions stated earlier. The job environment should encourage good interpersonal relationships and excellent communication channels in addition to flexible working time. The ultimate result will be the achievement of value for employees and an enhanced sense of belonging on their part.
Methods of Motivating Employees
Motivational planning involves the use of specific and predetermined methods. This paper hence discusses two important methods of motivating employees within an organization. It also realizes that regard for the organization’s objectives is vital throughout the process of motivational planning.
The most important means of achieving intrinsic motivation of employees as recognized by this paper is through ‘Management by Objectives’. This represents a process of communal setting of objectives within an organization. As such,...