In order to encourage productive performance from employees, care needs to be taken with the design of jobs, working conditions, setting of goals, motivation and rewards. Explain how and why all these factors impact upon productive performance and evaluate how a manager may be able to impact upon the processes across the organisation.
Employee and workplace productivity are interconnected terms. Managers play an important function in maintaining the enthusiasm of employees in ways that result in producing the highest productivity. Often it is seen that different types of factors may induce job stress among the different employees. The development of job stress often affects the productivity for which organizational goals are either not met, or the results are delayed (Davis et al. 2014). Therefore, it becomes extremely important for the managers to identify the factors that which are responsible for developing job stress among the different employees. They should then implement proper interventions that would help the employees to overcome the various issues that are faced by them. Therefore, they will be able to concentrate and enjoy their work. Their motivation would help them to increase the productivity, and hence the organization will receive success. Some of the proper managerial interventions that managers can take are maintaining a workplace climate where all cultures will be equally respected and cared . The managers can also improve employability skills by proper training and encourage autonomy by micromanaging. Moreover clear communication, boosting productivity by encouraging self-care are some of the initiatives they can take that will make the employees feel loved and cared for (Tims and Bakker 2014). This, in turn, assures greater productivity. The present study will show how certain important factors like design jobs, proper working conditions, setting goals, motivation and rewards affect productivity. It will also suggest how managers can take active roles and help in providing productivity.
Job design can be defined as the procedure of putting together various elements that help in forming a job at the same time keeping in mind the various organizational and individual worker requirements. The job design should be done in such a way that it should also contain proper considerations of health, safety and different ergonomics. Researchers define this aspect as the particular way by which a task is set, or an entire position of an employee is developed (Roos and Shroff 2017). The managers should take an active part in developing a proper job design, which aligns with the skills and knowledge of the employees.
The managers first try to understand the working preferences of the employees and the activities that they are comfortable within the organization. The mangers should try to develop the idea what tasks are to be done, when and how the tasks are to be done and how many tasks the employees should do. The managers should also ensure that in which order the tasks need to be done and what factors affect the work. The managers should also ensure proper organization of the content as well as the tasks so that there remains a proper clarity in what is expected from the employees and what needs to be done. Researchers are of the opinion that good job design helps employees to properly understand the relationship of their responsibilities and duties with that of the organizational goals and values (Truss et al. 2014). Therefore, it becomes very important for the employees to align and thereby prioritize with the job responsibilities properly.
The managers should allow the input of the employees. Employees should be given the option to choose activities according to their personal needs, work habits and the circumstances in the workplace. Moreover, they should also give the employees to develop a sense of accomplishment. They should also include training requirements so that employees can understand what tasks are needed to be done and how those tasks can be completed successfully. The managers should also ensure that they develop proper working and resting schedules so that it does not harm their health or causes stress in them due to overworking. The managers should also ensure that proper feedback is provided to employees about their expected job performance (Truss et al. 2014).
Managers in this scenario can follow three important techniques. The first one is the job enlargement that helps in expanding the job horizontally. It helps in increasing the number of different operations that are required for the job and helps in increasing the job scope and the frequency with which the job cycle is repeated. By increasing the job diversity, boredom faced by the employees can be prevented. However, it is stated by many researchers that job enlargement cannot motivate employees, as the nature of the job remains same. Another is the job rotation that can be applied by managers for the systematic as well as planned rotation of individuals in pre-determined jobs. These give scope to employees to gain additional knowledge and skills. Job enrichment helps to focus on the increase in the depth of the job by developing the amount of discretion and responsibility of the job-holder. All these helped in designing of jobs which are suitable for the employees and helping them to develop their performance which is directly associated with the increase of productivity in the organization (DeBeen and Beijer 2014).
The benefits of proper designing allow effective employee input, employee training, proper work-rest schedules, and adjustments of physically demanding jobs by reducing the energy spent doing the job and aligning manpower requirements for the same.
Example: Managers may rotate jobs between employees like an indoor architect who mainly designs infrastructure can be sent to outdoor projects like monitoring the work of masons and similar others. This will result in prevention of boredom and increase of productivity.
The working environment can be defined as the zone within the organization where employees work to achieve their goals set by the organization. This aspect can have some areas such as the physical working environment that ensure overall health and safety of the employees. This mainly includes the identifiable workplace, causes of accidents and different illness. A comfortable physical environment in the office helps the employee to work comfortably keeping different physical barriers away such as inappropriate sitting and working conditions, suffocating workplace, overcrowded areas and others (Pencavel 2015). All these help the individuals to develop job satisfaction that in turn increases productivity as the employee looks forward to coming to his working place. This reduces absenteeism due to physical ailments and productivity is increased.
Another aspect of the proper working environment is the psychosocial working environment. This aspect mainly involves many important factors like the set of job factors, which involves interaction among people, their work and the organization. Well being of the employees needs to be ensured by maintaining the proper working environment, which boosts the confidence of the employees. This makes them align with the mission and vision of the organization. One of the most important attributes that the working environment should possess is respect for all cultures with equal values. In the present generation, when most of the organizations are competing in the global market, it becomes important for the managers to maintain proper multi-cultured environment where every of the cultures should be equally respected and valued (Jain and Kaun 2014). Present day researchers are of the opinion that when organizations provide respect to different cultures and provide importance to cultural preferences and inhibitions, employees feel respected and cared for the organization. This satisfaction ensures higher productivity as the employee feels integrated into the system.
Moreover, proper relationship building among the employees and continuous exchange of positive feedbacks among the employees ensure the release of stress experienced by the workers. They overcome inferior or superior complexes and help each other in ways which helps to not only meet the organizational goals but helps each other to overcome job stress and increase productivity. Besides, the workplace which constantly promotes a learning environment among the employees, motivates them to perform better in a positive manner and acknowledges the dedication of the workers ensure high productivity (Kozluk and Zipperer 2015). Therefore, not only hygiene and physical factors in the working environment ensures lower turnover, lower absenteeism and higher productivity but also psychosocial factors also helps to achieve higher productivity by developing greater job satisfaction.
For example, if the working area is too much crowded and is not hygienic, it may lead to different physical issues like transmissions of different infections. Moreover, a crowded working environment often becomes noisy. This affects concentration of the employees that affects their productivity.
Researchers have stated that goal setting is an important attribute of organizations, for team building and for individual employees that assures role clarity of the employees and help them to meet the organizational vision. Organizational mission usually are broad aspects `which can never help individuals to understand how to proceed properly to achieve the mission. Therefore, researchers are of the opinion that it is the responsibility of the managers to break the mission into some goals, which are easily understood and can be achieved by the employees. Breaking down the mission into simple goals provides the chance of employees achieving them easily and hence they become active. They get back motivation and thus by completing each small goal, they thrive for achieving the organizational mission (Deschamps and Mattijs 2017).
Present day researchers have set particular criteria for the managers in their goal-setting task for the employees. These attributes make the task easy achievable ensuring that the employees do not feel demotivated by failing to achieve goals that are not possible to achieve by them. The goals which are to be set by the managers need to be specific, that it should be clear about what is needed and how to achieve the goal (Yoon et al. 2015). Setting specific goals helps the employees to use proper tools that align with the goals and managers at the same time should provide guidance one needs to improve and attain the goals. Moreover, the goals that will be developed by the managers for the employees should be measurable. This means that the employees should make sure that they measure the goals qualitatively or quantitatively over time (Welsh and Ordonez 2014). It is extremely important for them as measurable goals help them to develop the feeling that they achieved certain part of the broad mission and this keeps them motivated. The managers should also ensure that the goals that are developed should be attainable. Often setting up gaols that are difficult and can never be achieved, demotivate the employees. The employees feel that they are not competent enough and raise questions about their strength and credibility. These make them demotivated, and their productivity is hampered. Therefore, managers should make sure that the goal, they create could be attained properly by the employees (Favero et al. 2014). Moreover, managers also need to make sure that the employees learn how to set timeframes for achieving their goals. These would prevent delaying in the achieving of the goals and help them to complete the organizational objective within the deadline fixed by them. Moreover, the managers should also ensure that the goals developed by them should be relevant which matches the requirement for the broader objective. Setting up goals that do not help to achieve an aspect of the broader aim should be considered irrelevant and should not be set for employees. When goal setting is conducted by mangers in the ways discussed, it ensures productivity from the employees as goals (when achieved) help in meeting the broader aims set by organizations (Kaasinen et al. 2015).
For example, an organization would have the vision of achieving a certain amount of profit. However, this vision cannot help employees to understand how to proceed with work. Managers should make sure that each of them aligns with short SMART goals like meeting everyday targets, taking workshops to develop skills, reflecting properly each day about how to develop better, recognizing weak points and many others. All these would ultimately help them in meeting the vision.
Managers are often seen to use both positive reinforcements as well as negative reinforcements for motivating employees to develop their performance and achieve higher productivity. Many managers believe positive motivation techniques help in encouraging the different employees to produce more and better quality work to meet the productivity targets set by organizations (Faisal Ahammad et al. 2015). This technique usually helps in praising the winning employee by acknowledging his or her dedications and efforts. This not only motivates him to be more active to meet the productivity target but also helps the others to try their best to receive such rewards from their managers (Becker et al. 2015). In addition, many managers provide negative reinforcements to motivate the employees to change their bad behaviours. Written warning, suspensions and many others are examples. However, researchers are of the opinion that negative reinforcements may affect the image of employees for which there might be increased absenteeism, job stress, or even higher turnover. Therefore, managers should mainly provide positive reinforcements to ensure that both the quality and quantity of their work is increased.
Researchers are of the opinion that reward system also has positive impacts on the productivity of individuals. Incentives, which are one form of rewards, can come in variety of forms. This usually includes bonuses, travel benefits, vouchers and paid time offs. All these are provided by the managers as human psychology states that if whatever done by the humans are appreciated, it results in the development of a sense of accomplishments. This, in turn, encourages the employees to keep achieving and keep receiving recognition (Howard et al. 2016).
Examples: Managers can help employees get motivated by giving them incentives, acknowledging their success and dedication and many others.
Conclusion:
The managers have the duties to care for the employees in ways that by which the employees can perform better and achieve higher productivity. Different factors are directly and indirectly associated with increase of productivity of the employees. Proper job designs, workplace environments, motivation and rewards, goal setting all ensure higher satisfaction among the employees that release job stress and tensions among them. This ultimately results in higher productivity.
References:
Becker, T.E., Kernan, M.C., Clark, K.D. and Klein, H.J., 2015. Dual commitments to organizations and professions: Different motivational pathways to productivity. Journal of Management, p.0149206315602532.
Davis, S.J., Haltiwanger, J., Handley, K., Jarmin, R., Lerner, J. and Miranda, J., 2014. Private equity, jobs, and productivity. The American Economic Review, 104(12), pp.3956-3990.
De Been, I. and Beijer, M., 2014. The influence of office type on satisfaction and perceived productivity support. Journal of Facilities Management, 12(2), pp.142-157.
Deschamps, C. and Mattijs, J., 2017. Sustainable goal setting: a large-scale case in management practice. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 66(8), pp.1087-1104.
Faisal Ahammad, M., Mook Lee, S., Malul, M. and Shoham, A., 2015. Behavioral ambidexterity: The impact of incentive schemes on productivity, motivation, and performance of employees in commercial banks. Human Resource Management, 54(S1).
Favero, N., Meier, K.J. and O’Toole Jr, L.J., 2014. Goals, trust, participation, and feedback: Linking internal management with performance outcomes. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 26(2), pp.327-343.
Howard, L.W., Turban, D.B. and Hurley, S.K., 2016. Cooperating teams and competing reward strategies: Incentives for team performance and firm productivity. Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management, 3(3).
Jain, R. and Kaur, S., 2014. Impact of work environment on job satisfaction. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 4(1), pp.1-8.
Kaasinen, E., Roto, V., Hakulinen, J., Heimonen, T., Jokinen, J.P., Karvonen, H., Keskinen, T., Koskinen, H., Lu, Y., Saariluoma, P. and Tokkonen, H., 2015. Defining user experience goals to guide the design of industrial systems. Behaviour & Information Technology, 34(10), pp.976-991.
Kozluk, T. and Zipperer, V., 2015. Environmental policies and productivity growth. OECD Journal: Economic Studies, 2014(1), pp.155-185.
Pencavel, J., 2015. The productivity of working hours. The Economic Journal, 125(589), pp.2052-2076.
Roos, G. and Shroff, Z., 2017. What will happen to the jobs? Technology-enabled productivity improvement–good for some, bad for others. Labour & Industry: a journal of the social and economic relations of work, 27(3), pp.165-192.
Tims, M. and Bakker, A.B., 2014. Job design and employee engagement. Employee engagement in theory and practice, pp.131-148.
Truss, K., Baron, A., Crawford, D., Debenham, T., Emmott, M., Harding, S., Longman, M., Murray, E. and Totterdill, P., 2014. Job design and employee engagement.
Welsh, D.T. and Ordóñez, L.D., 2014. The dark side of consecutive high performance goals: Linking goal setting, depletion, and unethical behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 123(2), pp.79-89.
Yoon, H.J., Sung, S.Y., Choi, J.N., Lee, K. and Kim, S., 2015. Tangible and intangible rewards and employee creativity: The mediating role of situational extrinsic motivation. Creativity Research Journal, 27(4), pp.383-393
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download