Tuesday, 10 May 2011

Improving Staff Performance Week 3

IMPROVING STAFF PERFORMANCE                         WEEK 3



The word motivation is coined from the Latin word "movere", which means to move. Motivation is defined as the process that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviours. Motivation is what causes us to act, whether it is getting a glass of water to reduce thirst or reading a book to gain knowledge. It involves the biological, emotional, social and cognitive forces that activate behaviour. In everyday usage the term motivation is frequently used to describe why a person does something. A number of social scientists have expressed their views and wrote theories regarding the importance of having a motivated workforce. Further those theories are divided into two categories, Content theories and Process theories.



The content theory of motivation mainly focuses on the internal factors that energize and direct human behaviour. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Alderfer's ERG theory, Herzberg’s motivator-hygiene theory (Herzberg’s dual factors theory), and McClelland's learned needs or three-need theory are some of the major content theories.
Another type of motivation theory is process theory. Process theories of motivation provide an opportunity to understand thought processes that influence behaviour. The major process theories of motivation include Adams' equity theory, Vroom's expectancy theory, goal-setting theory, and reinforcement theory.
‘’Introduction to Organisational Behaviour’’ by Richard Pettinger

I worked in KFC for a few months and noticed that KFC deals in many ways to motivate their workers as they are famous for their team work approach as they believe that a goal oriented approach, diversity, feedback to workers and a little competition between employees is the best and far most the ultimate way to motivate workers. Not just this there are other motivating factors as well. The different ways in which KFC employees are motivated:


               
Team Work: it is an established fact that workers perform their duties more effectively if they were given a chance to operate in form of groups or teams. They can work as a cohesive unit and pursue mutual goals successfully. Moreover, this practice makes work enjoyable and less monotonous.  Team work is the most important point that leads towards success. We all used to work as a team as we all knew that how much our contribution is important to the success of the business and to deliver best results. Working together as one team we built a partnership and trust amongst the employees which resulted in improved performance and respect for each other.
Bonus: I think this is the one of the best motivators for employees because the bonus acts as a reward for their extreme hard work. This bonus makes everyone work hard and keep the restaurant up to the standards that company had set for themselves which include good quality service, good quality food and good quality environment for the customers as well as the employees. Bonus is also given to the employees of the whole branch if the restaurant meets all the standards set by the company which are usually checked by unannounced visits or by mystery customers.      
Promotion:  it refers to an attempt to increase the scope of a job by broadening or deepening the tasks undertaken. It is when an employees is given more authority and employee is supposed to carry out more work of similar nature but this time employee enjoys a sense of achievement and job satisfaction as he is more authoritative. For instance in KFC a team member is made a team leader if he is working very well from a long time n a team member is made an assistant manager so this chain of giving more authority motivates the employees.              
Daily benefits: this includes a free meal every full shift a member has done. This is a motivator as it shows the employees how much they mean to the country and apart from this also acts as a reward for the day to day hard work the employees are putting into the business. Apart from this a 20min break is also given to the employees as they get tired working constantly in the restaurant serving loads n loads of customers.

The process theory that relates to KFC is Vroom Expectancy Theory. This theory tells that people will be motivated to do things to reach a goal if they believe in the worth of that goal and if they can see what they do, will help them achieve it. In other words, Victor Vroom believed that an individual’s motivation towards doing anything will be determined by the value he places on the outcomes of his effort, multiplied by the confidence he has that his effort will materially aid in achieving a goal. This may be described as:

FORCE= VALENCE × EXPECTANCY

Where, Force is the strength of a person’s motivation, in KFC the greed to employees to get promotion or bonus is an inner motivation that helps them to work hard. Valence is the strength of an individual’s preference for an outcome as the outcome at KFC is promotion and bonus. Expectancy is the probability that a particular action will lead to a desired outcome. The desired outcome can be anything like for someone it can be experience working for a multinational company or for some people who want to work forever it can be promotion and for people who work part-time or who are students their desired outcome will be bonus.

Conclusion:
Motivation is the driving force that enables a worker to perform at his best level. A business should have a well-motivated workforce if it wishes to achieve its objectives such as productivity, minimising wastage, enhancing efficiency, maximising profit etc.. KFC and other big organisations have enhanced their company’s image a lot with the help of their employees only by motivating its staff to bring out the best out of them so that they deliver the best to the people. Apart from this topic clearly tells and explains how the organisations are also benefiting by motivating its employees.

References:      
http://redriverpak.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/motivation1.jpg   Accessed on 8-04-2011
‘’Introduction to Organisational Behaviour’’ by Richard Pettinger published in 1996 (Macmillan press LTD). Page no 94-133.
http://careers.kfc.co.uk/ (Accessed on 10 april 2011)

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