Over the years, changes have been made in motivating workers but can we speak of progress?

Thèmes abordés

Motivation, workers, Progress

Résumé du document

Nowadays, in any company, there are three main groups of people involved, who all have different objectives for the business: the owners, managers and employees. Employees' objectives basically include firm's survival which is a priority as their jobs are at stake according to the stability of the business. Nevertheless, most employees are very concerned with their own salary level, depending on the firm's performance which can decide to run an incentive scheme. By definition, an incentive scheme is a formal program used to promote or encourage specific actions or behavior by a specific audience during a defined period of time.

In concrete terms, a reward is presented to the worker after the occurrence of an action with the intent to cause the behavior to occur again, by associating positive meaning to the behavior (Wikipedia – motivation). In the first part, we will look closer at the different changes in management styles, from the view of the Classical School to the theory of the Human Relation School. Then, we will see if those tends has brought any progress by analyzing workers behavior facing those schemes.

Since the 20th century, many companies have realized that motivation was a key factor to enhance productivity throughout new social organizations on the workplace based on social and psychological schemes.

Extraits

[...] It is represented by a pyramid consisting of five levels: primitive physiological needs, safety needs such as personal and financial security and health, social needs like belonging to a group, an affiliation or a status, self-esteem that includes respect, recognition or sense of contribution and finally self-realisation which implies chances of evolution and promotion. The interest of the pyramid lies on the fact that the higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are met. Therefore, if a need is not satisfied, it leads to frustration and a lack of motivation. [...]

[...] We can gather that at lower levels, money is a motivator. However, it tends to have a motivating effect on staff that lasts only for a short period in so far as at higher levels of the hierarchy, praise, variety, ability to listen, empowerment and cohesiveness are far more powerful motivators than money. In practice, managers have the task to influence employees to apply their efforts to obtain organisational goals within the firm and attention must be given to the level of motivation of its members. [...]

[...] The first one was an American engineer who studied component motions in the 1920's and introduced the idea that people are basically lazy, they need to be closely supervised, they inherently don't like working and their only motivation is money. According to these principles, he created the “one-motion one-job concept”, based on the decomposition of work into highly specialised tasks. Following this trend and even pushing it to the extreme, Henri Ford implemented mass production in his car factories. This method relies on an assembly-line work divided into a large number of simple operations. [...]

[...] Nowadays, it is obvious that participation occurs when employees have a word in decisions about their own work. Although money remains the most important form of reward, workers place emphasis on setting their own work goals, making decisions and solving problems within their spheres of responsibility. References Michael Bourne, Pippa Bourne - Motivating People (2009) Thomas W. Malone - The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life (20104) Robert C. [...]

[...] Over the years, changes have been made in motivating workers but can we speak of progress? Nowadays, in any company, there are three main groups of people involved, who all have different objectives for the business: the owners, managers and employees. Employees' objectives basically include firm's survival which is a priority as their jobs are at stake according to the stability of the business. Nevertheless, most employees are very concerned with their own salary level, depending on the firm's performance which can decide to run an incentive scheme. [...]