Engagement through Motivation: Why Boredom Prevails over Engagement?

1. International HRM: 2018Engagement through motivation:- Why is boredom more common than engagement? - What is motivation? - What are needs theories and why might they be wrong? - How are people really motivated?

2. Recap

3. Employee Engagement Engagement involves: • vigour (energy, resilience and effort) • dedication (enthusiasm, inspiration and pride) • absorption (concentration, resilience and being engrossed in work)

4. Two key pillars of employee engagement 1) Consultation, Involvement and Participation 2) Motivation and job satisfaction

5. A Framework for Understanding CI&P

6. Engagement through motivation

9. “Why do workers work so hard? “Work betrays an excessive enthusiasm that cannot be explained by the whip of economic necessity alone” Burawoy (1979)

10. The problem of engagement Companies continually struggle with engagement. Their employees don’t seem to care about the work itself: they gossip and chatter; they feel bored; they get tired easily; their minds are mostly half on something else; they don’t come in each day eager to overcome problems; they do the minimum they can get away with; they are always dreaming of days off and holidays; they live for the weekend. They seem to get sick a lot – and leave regularly. They want promotion, not because they really would be good at shouldering extra responsibility, but because it’s the way to get more money …

11. … organisations are constantly playing around with the levers of financial motivation; offering or withholding money as an inducement or a threat. They use individual and team bonuses, cash rewards, profit sharing and company stock as ways of using economic factors to enhance motivation. But there are some very striking examples of motivation outside this system. The military is a central case. In the armed forces – often for very modest pay – people will do extraordinary things. Even die. It’s an astonishing contrast. You can pay someone £18,000 a year to die for you. But you struggle to pay someone £22,000 a year to sit in a room and fill in forms …

12. … The more the worker feels they are contributing to the Good, the less there is a problem of motivation. They see their work as being something important; they want to do it right. They believe deeply that it needs to be done and they feel proud of their role (however modest) in making it happen. Money is a vital active ingredient here. But it’s the worth of the undertaking that moves people. And if an organisation can convincingly present itself as serving the Good, there’s less need to use the instrument of money as the primary source of motivation (either through punishment or reward) …

13. … There are plenty of organisations that serve the Good directly – even if they don’t entirely live up to this task – like schools and hospitals. But what about a company that manufactures and supplies paper clips? Are they connected to the Good? The explicit service they provide is very modest: preventing sheaves of loose paper getting muddled. But the human territory in which it operates is large: the longing to bring and maintain purposeful order. It is the same end that is served, with greater public recognition, by libraries, museums, maps, statistics and logic. The makers of paperclips make a small but significant contribution to the noble cause of Order in human life. deBotton, A. (2015) The Book of Life

14. Intrinsic and extrinsic engagement • Fundamental questions: • Why work? • Why work harder? • Employment brings intrinsic and extrinsic rewards …“The weak capacity of all material goods to alter our levels of happiness, as compared with the overwhelming power of emotional events” (deBotton, A., 2008) • Extrinsic rewards? (what do you look for in a job?) • Intrinsic rewards? (what do you look for in a job?)

15. Intrinsic and extrinsic engagement - rewards

16. Early approaches to engagement “Carrot or stick”: • Incentives (carrot) to do work and to work harder • Disincentives (stick) to laziness Scientific management (first half C20): Assumed that work was unpleasant and workers would want to do the minimum work but seek the maximum wage Assumed that motivation was simple: • Scientifically specify and design the work • Scientifically select the worker • Scientifically control the work by machines and supervisors • Scientifically reward effort and accomplishments:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfGs2Y5WJ14

18. Case-study: Working for Amazon Watch the following short videos, from the perspectives of: Amazon management https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-lBvI6u_hw Amazon workers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQATFbLvIHk [5’28”] • Amazon has been criticised for having an “aggressive work regime”: identify the characteristics of this regime • In terms of the models of Strategy and Strategic HRM, explain why Amazon adopts such a work regime • identity three aspects of the institutional and cultural environment sin the UK and the USA (as featured in the case-study) that enable Amazon to ‘get away with’ such an aggressive work regime • Amazon’s practices might be explained in terms of workforce composition: what is the likely composition in the blue and white collar areas? • Identify solutions for replacing the control based aggressive work regime in the fulfillment centers with a high commitment work regime that ensures employee engagement.

19. Motivation and reward • Needs theories of motivation • Maslow’s hierarchy of need: • ‘the only motivating need is an unfulfilled need’

20. Needs theories of motivation: Herzberg’s 2 Factor theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o87s-2YtG4Y

22. Needs theories of motivation Herzberg’s two factor theory • Four possible combinations: • High Hygiene + High Motivation: The ideal situation where employees are highly motivated and have few complaints • High Hygiene + Low Motivation: Employees have few complaints but are not highly motivated. The job is viewed as a paycheck • Low Hygiene + High Motivation: Employees are motivated but have a lot of complaints. A situations where the job is exciting and challenging but salaries and work conditions are not up to par • Low Hygiene + Low Motivation: This is the worst situation where employees are not motivated and have many complaints.

23. Self Determination Theory

24. Deci, E.L. and Ryan, R.M. (1985), Intrinsic Motivation and Self Determination in Human Behaviour

25. Herzberg’s two factor theory • Internal job factors are the real motivating forces for employees • Job enrichment is the key motivator: • Decreasing management control • Increasing employee autonomy , accountability and responsibility • Creating complete and natural work units / jobs • Providing regular and continuous feedback on productivity and job performance directly to employees • Encourage employees to take on new and challenging tasks and becoming experts at their task • Motivational formula:Ability + Opportunity = Motivation • In essence:“money is the most expensive way to motivate people”

26. Needs theories: the limitations • Assumes that individuals are similarly motivated regardless of variables such as: • Socio-economic background • Personality • Age / life-stage • Gender • Culture • Employment conditions • Avenues external to work for achieving satisfaction / fulfilment • Motivation and satisfaction are only weakly correlated with productivity • Methodology created the theory (in the case of Herzberg): asking for “critical incidents” of motivators and de-motivators at work resulted in two, artificially distinct, factors

27. Needs theories: the limitations Prevailing assumption: Satisfied and stimulated employees will be productive employees Considerable comparative research: - Comparable units (e.g. stores, offices or factories) - Least satisfied employees … - Most productive workers … - Unit more profitable than its comparator Why is it assumed that satisfaction and productivity are correlated, even causal?

28. Motivation and reward • Psychological process theories of motivation • Expectancy theory: expectation + value: • Can I perform at a high level if I try (E1)? • If I do perform at this level what are the consequences (E2)? • What do I feel about those consequences (V)? • Equity theory: balance between your input and gains and others’ inputs and gains • People are most concerned with their relative, rather an absolute, income • When people compare rewards it tends to be with people close to themselves…..

29. Motivation: expectancy theory Valance Value

30. Motivation: equity theory

31. Motivation: equity theory

32. Equity theory in practice • deBotton, A. (2008) Status Anxiety: • “The superior achievements of those we take to be our equals generate anxiety and resentment. If we are small and live among people who are all of our own height, we will not be unduly troubled by questions of size. But if others in our group grow so much as a little taller, we are liable to feel sudden unease and fall into dissatisfaction and envy – even though we have not ourselves diminished in size by even a millimetre … There are people whose enormous blessings leave us wholly untroubled, others whose minor advantages act as sources of relentless torment. We envy only those who we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends” In the first few minutes of this video, deBotton explains more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1MqJPHxy6g

33. Comparisons are proximate • We use our income compared to others as a measure of how we are valued and (if we are not careful) a measure of how we value ourselves • When people compare their wages, it is generally with people close to themselves, rather than with film stars or paupers. What matters is what happens to your reference group because what they get might have been feasible for you … that is why Olympic bronze medallists are happier about their result than the silver medallists are about theirs – the bronze medallists are comparing themselves with people who got no medal while the silver medallists believe they might have got the gold • Your neighbour buys a Rolls Royce. What’s your reaction? • If people change their reference group upwards, this can seriously affect their happiness … there are many clear cases where people become objectively better off but feel subjectively worse off

34. Comparative income v. Absolute income • When people become richer compared with other people they become happier.But when whole societies have become richer, they have not become happier

35. The Harvard Comparative Income Experiment • Suppose you were asked to choose between living in two imaginary worlds in which prices were the same: • In the first world you get $50,000 per year, while other people get $25,000 average • In the second world you get $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000 average

36. The Harvard Comparative Income Experiment • A majority preferred the first type of world. They were happy to be poorer provided their relative position improved.People care greatly about their relative income and they would be prepared to accept a significant fall in living standards if they could move up compared with other people ....

37. Engaging intrinsically through job design

38. Engaging intrinsically through job design • Enhancing intrinsic rewards through: • Job rotation • Defined jobs – movement of individuals • Job enlargement • Horizontal task extension • Job enrichment • Vertical task extensions • Team working • Degree of autonomy over processes and responsibility for outcomes • Evaluate each of these from management and employee perspectives

39. Effectiveness of intrinsic engagement • Creating a … challenging and empowered work environment in which individuals are able to use their abilities to do meaningful jobs for which they are shown appreciation is likely to be a more certain way to enhance motivation and performance – even though creating such an environment may be more difficult and take more time than merely turning the reward lever’[Pfeffer, 2016]

40. Pablo is a 26 year old international business graduate who specialised in HRM at a US college and now works as HR Assistant in the HRM&D Directorate of a large multi-national pharma firm headquartered in Switzerland. Pablo works largely independently and has sole responsibility for the design and delivery of cross-cultural training programmes for the extensive number of European and US staff the company expatriates each year to manufacturing and marketing positions in the BRICS economies and in eastern & southern Africa. Pablo has been in this role for 24 months and his six-monthly performance ratings have been satisfactory but not outstanding. While Pablo feels that he is ready for a new challenge, his boss, the Director of HRD, believes that Pablo still has a lot to learn in his current role and that his training programmes could be “a whole lot more imaginative” and “much less classroom based by using embedded learning methods”. Pablo on the other hand believes that he should be given more responsibility to better use his academic knowledge of strategy and HRM and to stretch himself by moving into what he sees as more strategic HR work with more status in the areas of expatriate reward management or legal work. Outside of work Pablo is politically active in the Green Party and so he feels he would be good at employment law despite not having any direct experience of this. In 3 week’s time, the Director will meet with Pablo for his next performance review. The Director is under pressure to train more staff for international assignments and has very limited spare capacity within the Directorate. In the role of Director: • Using motivation theory, interpret Pablo’s likely motivational drivers and deficiencies • Make specific recommendations for how Pablo’s performance can be improved • Prepare notes for how you will conduct the performance review interview