Angelica\'s Sweets and Pastries is in the city of Lancaster. The business does a
ID: 424115 • Letter: A
Question
Angelica's Sweets and Pastries is in the city of Lancaster. The business does a good trade in custom pastries, pies, and cakes. Lately, though, business seems to be slowing. It really is not the customer count as the “old stand-bys” still come in regularly. No, the problem seems to be with the employees. The shop has bakers, frosting decorators, packagers, service counter personnel, and a maintenance crew. You have been asked to come in and help advise Angelica on getting her business to flow once again. You talk with all the employees and have discovered they lack motivation.
Use each of the theories below to create a plan to motivate just ONE of the groups of the employees:
a. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
b. Expectancy Theory
c. Goal-setting Theory
d. Reinforcement Theory
e. Equity Theory
Explanation / Answer
The service counter personnel group is selected to develop a plan to motivate them.
According to this theory, each employee has a specific need and work in an organization to satisfy their needs. A need arises when there is a lack of something that is required essentially for an individual to survive in the society. This ultimately results in the desire that motivates to achieve that need. Assuming that the service counter personnel are seeking employment to meet their basic needs to satisfy their hunger, feeling secured, live under a shelter and work to earn money, their psychological needs are to be met. Once, their psychological needs are met, they have a requirement to be accepted and recognized for their achievement. Based on this, Angelica has to pay them sufficiently to meet the market scenario, offer a safe work environment with appropriate timings, set achievable goals, provide incentive like employee of the month and treat them as individuals.
An employee’s performance is dependent on personal traits such as personality, knowledge, skills, experience and ability to perform a job. This implies than an individual’s motivation is linked to effort and performance. Expectancy theory focuses on the association between an individual’s performance outcome and their contribution towards the same rather than on their self-interest to perform a specific activity. Angelica has to set a clear set of rules for the rewards program, implement transparent processes to assess employee performance and determine employee priority- whether they need monetary rewards or non-monetary benefits like time-offs.
According to this theory, employees willingness to work to achieve organizational goal is the main source of their job motivation. Hence, Angelica has to set specific and clear goals which are measurable and include a deadline for completion. The goals are to be reasonable and challenging which encourages employees to accomplish it and strive for more. The attainment of goals is to be linked to the rewards. This has to be support with a feedback system to manage challenges arising in reaching goals and encourage employee involvement.
As per this theory, employee behaviours is defined through environmental consequences. The focus is given on rewarding desirable behavior. Angelica has to set clear and realistic expectations. Also, she has to work with employees in identifying their personal motivating factors and determine personalized rewards. The reward has to be timed intermittently to boost employee performance rather than instant rewards.
This theory is based on the fairness showcased by employers on their employees. So, Angelica has to ensure that fairness is maintained among the service counter employees. For instance, she has to ensure that the number of hours they work, remuneration, recognition and performance assessment are similar among the group of employees to avoid a sense of inequity among them. As employees tend to compare themselves with others, Angelica has to treat everyone equally and create transparent processes to indicate the reason for differences, if any occur.