Relationship Between Public Service Motivation And Job Performance

Mining Industry Analysis

Discuss about the Relationship Between Public Service Motivation and Job Performance.

The mining industry is facing major challenges globally, that are restricting and reforming the mining sector and as a result the industry demands a new and innovative approach to management. Many different small scale secondary industries depend on mining sector and also it also supports a substantial amount of employment and financially viable wealth of the society. MiningCo is a mining business organization which operates in a range of isolated locations with many fly-in, fly-out staff on a rotating two-week roster basis.  Now the organization is facing serious issues regarding employee commitment and performance in the organization.  In this report the author, HR of MiningCo, a senior HR-Executive tries to identify the underlying problem, high attrition rate in the organization and poor performance and analyse the essential factors that are facilitating the issues faced by the organization. Also, the author being the senior HR-Executive will form a crisis management team to manage the practices that any considerable talent gap emerges at any individual site.

The MiningCo is facing a human recourse shortage and management issue to meet with the production needs. The organization is experiencing a high attrition rate with more people leaving the jobs and opting for more safe and secure career options. The mining industry is extremely complex and with new developing settings and surroundings in the industry in which cut throat competition, business interests and scenario of the practical market are forcing organizations to optimize their human resource management policies in order to maintain sustainability and profit (Mudd, 2010). The organization is facing significant challenges when it comes to managing attrition rate because of the economic crisis in Greece and the increasing impact of the presence of ISIS in the Middle East on foreign nationals is resulting in many of the senior executive employees’ onsite wishing to leave.

As the mining industry is difficulties in attracting global talents due to hectic and risky job situations, the human resource managers are becoming more responsible for developing and employing business strategies to ensure decrease in attrition rates and increase in productivity of workers while be aware of the changing market conditions and industrial trends. According to Oracle’s Vice President, Mr. John F Hansen (Human Capital Management in JAPAC) stated that in mining industry an effective leader always balance the need for human capital specialization and flexibility with the steady force toward growing efficiency and improvements.

Performance Management and Employee Motivation

The concept of Performance Management is regarded as one of the significant human resource strategies for achieving the strategic purpose of the organization. The Performance Management System is a process that encompasses the performance appraisal and workforce improvement are vulnerable aspects of strategic human resource management (Boselie, P., 2010). Generally, management of an organization fails to identify the need for performance management in organizations as a result the organizations complain about the ineffective and poor performance of the staff. According to a recent survey it has been observed that only 3 out of 10 employees feels that the performance management system utilization actually helps them to improve their achievements and less than forty percent employee actually feels that their organization has an effective performance management system which generates sincere feedback or utilizes technology to modernize the process. So, it can be clearly seen that there is a serious gap in measuring the optimized performance management. The main reasons for these can be due to old fashioned performance management systems or lack of outlook of the management.

To improve the employee performance, organizations should consider including effectiveness and efficiency of organization performance management systems and employee morale (Gruman and Saks, 2011). It is a matter of fact that employee performance is always reflected through organization’s performance and profitability (Boxall and Purcell, 2011). Often managers feel hesitant in providing honest and practical feedback and conduct a sincere dialogue with employees because they think that it will retaliate and harm the relationship with their subordinates (Bellé, 2013) However, it is one of the fundamental process by which managers can initiate better performing employees. According to scholars, employees feel motivated and valued when they get honest and positive feedback from their managers or management. Positive criticism encourages employees to look positively and effectively work on their week points for improving their performances (Stahl, et al. 2012).  Thus, in the current scenario, developing an efficient workplace performance metric system and honest and positive feedback system in organization is regarded as one of the job responsibility of the human resource manager.

There is no universal rule or strategy for implementing performance management in an organization. As a result, it can be formulated by analysing the organization’s purpose and function, which should be planned and developed by identifying and recognizing business requirements, culture of the organization and other human resource factors. Generally, a well structured and useful performance management system has well-planned method for achievements, evolution methods, with well-structured method to evaluate achievements and accomplishments with clear and defined job roles and responsibilities for the employees (Walker, wt al 2012). A well-structured performance management system has plan, recruitment, performance meter, training and development, career opportunity, succession planning, awards and evolution and reporting (Markos and Sridevi, 2010).

Managing Employee Attrition Rate

Effective and reliable performance management systems have performance standards by which the organization clearly states the expectation of performance from the employees. It shows how employees are performing and the gap between the expected performance and actual result. This will allow the human resource manager to monitor the work force efficiency and helps in identifying the low performers in the organization and focuses on the managing and motivating employees. The organization’s performance management system generally aligns with the long term organizational objective (Syverson, 2011). It engages supervision of employee labours, which is based on measureable performance results. The performance management system also consists of employee motivation which improves employee performance as it clearly states performance and makes rewards achievable (Ayub and Rafif, 2011). According to scholars, recognition at workplace is regarded as one of the most strong forms of motivation for employees. Encouraging performance appraisal in workplace allows employees to get recognized, important, and stable acknowledgment from the management which makes employees more focused and work committed (Armstrong and Taylor, 2014).

So, in the present scenario, introducing performance management system will encourage in clear vision in organization’s objectives and job responsibilities and effective communication system in the organization among employees and management at all levels.

The MiningCo is facing challenges regarding managing attrition rate in the organization with more senior employees want to leave the organization. The MiningCo operates in a range of isolated locations with many fly-in, fly-out staff on a rotating two-week roster basis. The fly-in, fly-out can be explained as a process when an organization relocates staffs temporarily in remote and isolated locations for completing a project for a specific period of time, families are not relocated with employees as generally the places are very distant to support basic life requirements (Vojnovic, 2014). In this method, employees often feel pressured as they live without family and social life for an extended period of time. In a recent study it was observed that employees who engage in fly-in fly-out job are more prone to many psychological disorders, such as higher tendency to suicides (Taylor, and Simmonds, 2009).

In MininCo, the main factors that are pushing employees, specifically high level executive employees to leave the organization are the economic crisis in Greece and the increasing impact of the presence of ISIS in the Middle East on foreign nationals. Due to sudden drop in oil prices internationally, many mining organizations are facing a financial turmoil situation and are unable to attract employees with lucrative salaries.

The employees in the mining sector generally have a very dull, risky and hectic work life where constant work pressure has resulted into depression and stress in workplace environment that results poor performance and lack of commitment towards work. People want to quite when they do not trust or lack of involvements with the organization. It has been observed that employees who are motivated they feel more involved and committed towards job responsibility. But when employees become stressed due to working conditions with declining enthusiasm and their morals deteriorate, they becomes less interested and distant towards their job roles. The author feels that to face these issues the management should convey a clear purpose and direction for the employees that what is the organization’s objective and what are the expected performances from the workforce. Otherwise without lack of clear vision, employees will not have a clear idea about job role and organization’s objective as a result they will find it hard to employ their best performance in workplace. Lack of comprehensive communication in the organization also gives rise to lack of trust and stress among work force (Taylor and Simmonds, 2009). The human resource department should emphasise on building an effective communication system in the organization so that the employees as well as the management feel heard and convey their concerns and build a strong work place relationship among employer employee. The management should have a clear communication with the high ranked executives who want to leave the organization to make them feel listened, understood and valued. An effective communication process will direct towards a strong workforce and it also provides employees the knowledge, structure and positive work environment they need to feel comfortable dealing with conflict and resolving issues effectively. The human resource department should encourage interactive communication sessions and dialogue platforms with employees to develop individual communication and interpersonal associations in the organization at all level if management (Hendry, 2012).

There is a socio-political turmoil in the Middle East due to over growing influence of ISIS and their hostile attitude towards employees of foreign origins. The management should focus on this issue and examine the underlying threat and take appropriate actions to ensure employee safety at workplace. The human resource department should address this issue to the employees who feels that there is a substantial risk of life at workplace due to terror threat and convince them that organization has taken legal steps to ensure employee safety as a priority of the organization. The HR department should ensure the organization should not encourage any kind of grave vine communication that may give rise to rumours and restrain any hysteria within the organization. In these scenario, one of the basic objective of the human resource department should be bringing back the confidence and trust in the workforce by building strong relationship with them.

One of the challenges faced by the MiningCo is to retain key workforce. The HR department should constantly restructure and redesign organizational culture to introduce innovative and effective workplace planning strategies overcome the struggle of talent shortage in the industry. The HR department should team up with the management to formulate business transformation strategies for encouraging employee commitment and optimization of workforce. This can be achieved by planning clear job role and responsibilities, diversity of job responsibility, better decision making authority, and safe and healthy workplace environment. 

Also, in this confusing and chaotic disorder, the human resource management of MiningCo can play a very important role in retain human resource talents and sustain while focusing on the fast changing market conditions. The human resource department should focus on the current demand and future landscape of the industry. The world is experiencing technological advancements, so the HR department of MiningCo should employ mechanization and atomization where intelligent machineries will replace a good amount of human capital requirements for onsite jobs (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2012). It will offer the organization to setup a more technologically improved workplace which will shift the labour force from dull and risky situations to managing and administrating machinery processes from an office.  This will change the basic concept of labour employment in mining industry.

Mining industry is regarded as one of the most hazardous job roles with oil spills, terrorism threats, corporate chaos, political pressures, accidents at workplace, etc that effects organizational performance and sustainability. Crisis is a condition where an event or action that leads to an unstable and disastrous situation that can have a direct impact on human life (Lerbinger, 2012). In context to business organizations, a crisis is a situation where a total or partial interruption in business operations can occur due to hazardous or emergency situations. It can also manipulate stakeholder’s perception towards the organization, mostly negatively (Booth, 2015). Mining organizations often leads to crisis situations due to its hazardous nature job with both natural as well as human made situational crisis and disaster leads to organizational instability. Thus, mining organizations needs a dedicated crisis management approach to handle crisis situations and maintain equilibrium in the workplace. In the present scenario, the human resource department can play an important role in safe guarding the employee welfare and safety and support in business sustainability. Thus, referring to the current scenario, which the MiningCo is facing, the author is suggesting planning and developing an effective crisis management team for having a right approach to manage crisis. The human resource department can manipulate the culture and potential of the organization to build effective capability and groundwork for effective crisis management and leadership in the time of crisis (Elliott, et al. 2010). The author believes that this job can be best delivered by the human resource department of the organization because it is the human resource department which has an outlook and approach to understand the human side of the organization and understand the tactical approach of human capital management.

Generally, in the contemporary business organizations, management often prioritize emphasize systems, operations, infrastructure to be managed in a crisis situation and neglects human capital. But the management should understand that a business cannot sustain and survive without well-organized, job responsible and motivated workforce. Organizations with improper or lack of crisis management team and plan faces catastrophic situations when faces emergency or crisis. People get more prone to accidents resulting in permanent disabilities and fatalities which eventually affect the workforce which psychologically traumatize the workforce and eventually change of personality & principles ad this will ultimately lead to loss of crucial talents and staff system in the organization. Lack of proper crisis management measure in organization can affect not only employees but also can have impact on organization’s processes with increase in absenteeism and high attrition rate (Ley, 2012). Also, improper crisis management often leads to negative publicity and bad public image of the organization.

In the contemporary business scenario, one of the most important assists in an organization is human capital and businesses are emphasizing on development and improvement of human resources while safe guarding their needs and requirements. The human resource management has a tactical function and responsibility to make certain that the management are aware of the internal significance of the human capital to the possible crisis possibilities so that they can ensure the crisis management plan and strategy encompass all possible risks and apprehensions. It is important for the human resource department to become involved in the crisis management of the organization so that they can understand the risk management and business stability administration which would encompass the human capital plan of the business. Thus, the author recommends to build a well-structured crisis management department in the organization, which will coordinate with the organizational department at all levels to formulate a effective protection and enhancement system the can be achieved through effective crisis communication network at organization at all levels, human capital and talent management, planning for succession, resource planning, training and development of talents and crisis action plan by formulating safety training. This process cannot be lead by a single brain so to build an effective crisis management team; the organization should emphasize on its structure and functional areas. A crisis management expert always handles emergency situations more effectively. So, the organization can hire crisis management experts for the organization’s crisis management but the department should have other members comprised of heads of other departments in the organization to act as advisors. The crisis management department have to work in coordination with other departments of the organization for developing a communication and coordination system for emergency management by promoting and encouraging the workforce to take appropriate decisions and actions at the time of emergency and crisis (Coombs and Holladay, 2011). The team must take charge and encourage the organization to work as a single unit during crisis as its basic job is to identify the crisis and understand the factors that created the crisis situation. The team must work to improve the condition for smooth functioning of the organization. Developing alternative and unconventional plans for survival of business also regarded as core area of the crisis management team (Roux-Dufort, 2012). The team must double check the plan and consider all possible results and consequences before implementing the plan. The plans of crisis management teams are often for short term solutions to survive in the crisis situations. Rarely do they plan for long term solutions. So, there should be a proper feedback system for evaluating the implemented plan. So, that once the organization overcomes the initial stage of crisis, it should evaluate the plan and restructure organization’s culture and structure for long term sustainability. The basic job of a crisis management team is to facilitate the organization to act accordingly in emergency and overcome critical situations (Crandall, et al. 2013). Lastly, reward system for the crisis management team should be based on their performance to supervise the affairs that any considerable talent gap emerges at any individual site of the MinningCo.

Conclusion:

In the above report, the author tied to identify the underlying problem, high attrition rate in MiningCo and poor performance and analyse the essential factors that are facilitating the issues faced by MiningCo. The report discussed the importance of performance management system in contemporary organization’s success and focusing on the current issues faced in the organization. Author explores the topic how human resource can play an important role during crisis management. Lastly, the author has also recommended for a formation of a crisis management team within the organization for various sites and their core job would be managing the incidents that any significant talent gap appears at workplace.

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