Employee Motivation on Kraft Heinz Company

Employee Motivation
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Employee Motivation
Identification of the failure and the context
Kraft Heinz Company (NASDAQ: KHC) is popular in producing consumer products such as Lunchables, Heinz, Jell-O, and Kraft, among others. The company was formed by merging two companies: the Kant Food Group and the H.J Heinz Holding Corporation (Reis, 2021). The merging was the genesis of the negative impacts on the company's culture. Employees were demotivated by the numerous layoffs and plant closures in the United States. Employees have begun to complain and remain demotivated as the company started cutting costs, making it difficult for them to maintain a balance in work and life circumstances.
Employees commented, "corporate leaders don't truly respect or care about their employees. They only care about making money off of them." (Reis, 2021). The company yielded an employee rating of 2.6stars out of the possible five, signifying that the employees were demotivated. The lower rating given Kraft Heinz Company (NASDAQ: KHC) company yielded it being ranked the second lowest-rated United States company. A lack of or poor leadership structure, employees in the company, were demotivated since the company's objectives, and goals were unclear. It was difficult for the employees to work towards the set goals (Rumyantseva, Krotenko, & Zhernakova, 2020). Some of the issues that contributed to the demotivation of the employees include the nonexistence of job descriptions, the lack of a clear command chain, confusing directives, and hazy objectives and goals.
Major consequences raised by the demotivation of employees include poor quality of work due to the underperformance of the employees, and this later decreases the business standards (Taylor & Francis Online, 1994). Additionally, from MASHED news, some of the repercussions associated with employee demotivation is a toxic work environment (Maxwell, 2021). Demotivated employees exude negative attitudes, affecting work interactions and ethics (Kark, Van Dijk, & Vashdi, 2018). Most employees feel offended when they are posed with negative attitudes, which causes much tension in the work environment, making it impossible for employees to complete tasks.
Analysis of organizational behavior factors
Employee demotivation is when employees lack interest or enthusiasm in their work (Springer International Publishing, 1983). When employees are demotivated, they are uninterested in their work and tend to avoid competing tasks or engaging in teamwork with other staff members (Elsevier, 1996). Demotivation is inversely proportional to employee motivation, defined as the desire to attain the expected goals and objectives (Korczynski, 2019).
Employee motivation is defined by Campos-García & Zúñiga-Vicente (2019) as the level of creativity, commitment, and energy that employees bring to the workplace (Campos-García & Zúñiga-Vicente, 2019). Motivated employees begin their motivation journey from their step out of bed, as they always feel excited to go to work and take on new challenges. Motivated employees are always urged to learn new skills, take in new responsibilities, and stretch their capabilities (Emerald Group Publishing, 2001). The benefits associated with employee motivation are that employees are productive and bring positive energy to the whole organization (Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 1992). Various theories revolve and describe more on employee motivation more. With the company's failure to motivate employees, employees are not excited to get to work, resulting in excessive absenteeism.
From Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the basic argument is that humans need to get motivated to achieve higher objectives and goals. Through the failure of the Kraft Heinz Company (NASDAQ: KHC) company, the employees were demotivated due to the new merger and the reason that they were not engaged in the change. Through Maslow's theory, the five levels of needs are categorized from the bottom, the basic needs, which incorporate the physiological and safety needs. The psychological needs incorporate belongingness, love, esteem, and self-fulfillment, which are at the peak of the hierarchy with the need for self-actualization (Annual Reviews, 2014). From Maslow's theory, to understand a person's motivation, one must understand what motivates them (Awdish, 2018).
Similarly, employee motivation depends on the type of industry and the company's current stage. Concerning the Kraft Heinz Company (NASDAQ: KHC) company failure, the employees needed the motivation to work in the new environment. The failure of the company to motivate the employees in the newly merged company decreases the organization's standards, leading to poor quality of work.
The failure to motivate employees in the Kraft Heinz Company (NASDAQ: KHC) company increased the turnover rate, leading to the organization not performing to its full capacity. Herzberg's motivator and hygiene factors significantly influence the engagement and motivation of the employees. Based on the theory, motivational factors are the factors that provide positivity in a company, hence facilitating the best out of the employees (Taylor & Francis Online, 1979).
Some examples of the motivational factors under Herzberg's motivator and hygiene factors include recognizing and appreciating the employees. Appreciation of the employees in the Kraft Heinz Company (NASDAQ: KHC) company is through the recognition of their impact on the decision making process. Hygiene factors, on the other hand, are defined as factors making employees feel demotivated and dissatisfied when they are not engaged (Pham & Nguyen, 2020). These factors include benefits, salaries, and company policies, among others. Herzberg's motivator and hygiene factors prevent low motivation by taking care of the hygiene factors and raising motivation by promoting the motivator factors.
Self-determination theory insists on the provision of a framework that increases internal motivation. The theory signifies that employees' three basic psychological needs, relatedness, competence, and autonomy, help encourage intrinsic motivation and maintain high employee performance (Sansone & Tang, 2021). Kraft Heinz Company (NASDAQ: KHC) lacked self-determination of employees, which limited the employees to not give the best themselves.
Expectancy theory states that employee motivation depends on three main factors, valence, expectancy, and instrumental. The theory states that when employees choose what to do depending on their work, they tend to choose the work that motivates them the most. To gain employee motivation, there is a need to have a positive correlation between their efforts and performance (Ferguson, 2019). Expectancy has been defined in the Expectancy theory as what employees expect from their efforts. Similarly, the theory describes instrumentally how employee performance is evaluated as good enough to achieve the desired result (Emerald Group Publishing, 1983). Valance is how an employee value the expected reward. For an organization, a business, or an enterprise to attain employee motivation, all three factors must be positive and high; hence, Kraft Heinz Company (NASDAQ: KHC) lacks the three factors, hence failing in employee motivation.
The three-dimensional theory of attribution by Benard Weiner promotes motivation through the need of people trying to find the meaning of everything that happens to them (Scherer, 2018). Based on the theory, when employees feel that they are in control, especially of factors causing problems, they improve and feel the urge to do better through motivation. In Kraft Heinz Company (NASDAQ: KHC) compan...