Theories and Concepts in HR Management

I believe; one of the major components of the performance is a motivation. I always share the formula of K*A*M*=P with my colleagues. People need to have knowledge, application skills and motivation to be successful. In the book, work motivation is defined as “variations in the intensity, quality, direction, and duration of work-related behavior”.  Variations in the quality of work produced by employees may arise from either motivational or knowledge differences.

The biggest motivation is the intrinsic one – being a self-leader. Self-leaders motivate themselves with the responsibility, achievement, advancement, and the growth. These are primary factors of satisfaction for them. I do not believe that I can rely only on this since there are too many people who do not own self-leadership skills.

Another way of keeping teachers motivated is setting goals and following the results in a consistent manner. Some people are motivated by achieving their goals. While determining the goals, teachers should be careful to clearly define an attainable goal in an expected timeline.

Additionally, I believe, selecting the right employee, giving them the needed training, and keeping two-way communication open all the time have a major impact on keeping your staff motivated.     

Finally, while trying all possible ways of keeping staff motivated, we need to make sure that some hygiene factors - company policy and administration, supervision, relations with supervisor, work conditions, salary, relationship with peers, status, and security- do not create unhappiness and dissatisfaction in the workplace. 

During this course I was able to learn following theories and concepts about Motivation. 

Expectancy theory – people are motivated by the opportunity to earn incentives. Expectancy theory shows that it has a place if correct guidelines are followed. To motivate teachers; (1) select incentives that are valued by teachers, (2) be sure that teachers understand the connection between work outcomes and incentives, (3)  Select work outcomes that are attainable, (4) incentives are not effective when used to reward behavior that is expected or required of all employees.

Equity theory – people expect a balance between effort expended and rewards received and lose motivation when that balance is missing. If no objective and valid way of measuring performance exists, managers are vulnerable to charges of unfairly rewarding favorites. To avoid the charge, appoint a committee of teachers to set standards for deciding which individuals shall receive rewards. Equity theory resembles to Hygiene where some job related factors do not satisfy employee, it will cause unhappiness or dissatisfaction.  The correlation between employee satisfaction and worker productivity is low, and the direction of the relationship is not clear.

Goal-setting theory – people are motivated to achieve identified goals. Goal setting is a form of self-leadership. Organizations use a variety of external control mechanisms for influencing employee behavior, including evaluation, rules, policies, and supervisory oversight. In recent years, however organizations have begun to place more emphasis on internal controls. By working to achieve commitment by employees to the organizational mission and goals, these organizations hope that the need for external mechanisms of control will diminish.