Page 370 - Business Principles and Management

Chapter 14 • Implementing and Controlling

Success tip
communications. Encouraging employees to contribute their ideas and involving
them in deciding the best way to do the work will help gain their commitment
to achieving the goals.
Managers can motivate
EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION employees with their actions
more effectively than with
Motivation is a set of factors that influence an individual’s actions toward accom- monetary rewards. Provide
plishing a goal. Employees may be motivated to achieve company goals, or they lots of encouragement, don’t
may be motivated to pursue other goals that do not benefit the company. Man- harshly criticize one-time
agers don’t actually “motivate” employees, but they can use rewards and punish- errors, add fun and variety
ments to encourage employees to motivate themselves toward pursuing company to routine work, offer lead-
objectives. A key to motivation is to know what employees value and give them ership opportunities, allow
those things for achieving company goals. A reward is not motivating unless it is employee input and choice
something the employee values. The reward need not be money. People also value when possible, and encour-
things like praise, respect, an interesting job assignment, or extra time off. age social interaction as
Motivation comes from influences both inside and outside the individual. part of the job.
Internal motivation arises from a person’s beliefs, feelings, and attitudes that
influence the person’s actions. For example, many workers are motivated to
do a good job because they get an internal sense of satisfaction from a job well
done. External motivation comes from rewards and punishments supplied
by other people. For example, doing a good job may result in a pay increase,
coworkers’ admiration, or praise from the boss.
Sometimes internal factors have the most influence on behavior. If an employee
believes that the work is boring, she will not be motivated to do a good job.
At other times, external factors have the strongest influence on performance.
An employee who values praise would likely be motivated to greater perfor-
mance when he sees his name posted on the bulletin board as “employee of
the week.” Simply repainting the work area can serve as a motivating reward
for employees who value a pleasant work environment.
All people have their own needs, and they will choose to do things that satisfy
their needs and avoid doing things that don’t. Managers can influence employee
performance by understanding individual needs and providing rewards that sat-
isfy those needs when employees accomplish work goals. Psychologists have
studied behavior to try to understand what motivates people to do what they do.
Several theories of motivation will be reviewed in the next lesson.

WORK TEAMS

Seldom do people complete all of their work alone. Most people are part of a
work group and rely on cooperation from others to perform their work. It has
been said that groups can accomplish more than the same number of people
working independently. Managers need to be able to develop effective work
teams. A work team is a group of individuals who cooperate to achieve a com-
mon goal.
Effective work teams have several characteristics, as shown in Figure 14-1.
First, the members of the group understand and support its purpose. They clearly
understand the activities to be completed, know which activities they must per-
form, and have the knowledge and skills necessary to complete them. Group
members are committed to meeting the expectations of others in the group and
helping the group succeed. Finally, group members communicate well with each
other and work to resolve problems within the group.
Just because several people work together does not guarantee that they will be
an effective work team. In fact, there are many reasons why they may not be an
effective team. They may not know each other well or trust each other. They may

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