Reasons behind Employee Motivation Issues

Question:

Discuss about the Organizational Behavior for Theories and Principles.

Organization Behavior is a very vast topic and basically comprising of the study of the behavior of the people in any organization. As it is already known that that the most important asset for any organization are their employees. It is very important for the organization to keep their employees happy and satisfied so that they can deliver as per their maximum potential. To ensure this happens, it is necessary to understand their behavior and act accordingly. It is not an easy task as there are many challenges that are associated with this. Every individual in an organization is different from each other and to manage all of them at once with same rules and guidelines is taxing for the management of any organization. It is very important for any organization that their employees work as a team and deliver (Arvey, 2016). Organization Behavior deals with the study and analysis of behavior of the employees in any organizational environment. It is basically the study of the linkage between the organizational setup and related human behavior. The employees send most of their time in the organization, hence they need to have a friendly and vibrant environment for work otherwise it will be a very monotonous and boring schedule. For this, every organization should take steps and help the employees to always remain motivated.

Background of the Organization

The organization selected for this assignment is Barclays Shared Services which is located in Noida, India. It is ones of the subsidiaries of the Barclays bank PLC which is headquartered in UK. It is considered as one of the largest firm in UK comprising of more than 12k employees in various sectors like technology, banking, and shared services operations. BSS is basically responsible for providing support to the operations throughout Barclays. The main services of BSS consists of providing and ensuring seamless, sustainable and scalable operations. They also ensure that the services are delivered in a controlled environment (Langeberg, 2015). This is done by maintaining proper governance and complying the rules and policies of the company. They also facilitate process design and re-engineering services. BSS has its centers in various cities in India like Chennai, Noida, Mumbai, etc. It is also located in South Africa. BSS was born in India in the year 2007. From the beginning, the company has evolved and have grown to a large extent. It now have more than 9K employees. In South Africa as well, it has grown enormously since 2012 and it already have around 4k employees.

Problems faced in Organizations

One such problem that Barclays have been experiencing from over decades now and have never been able to overcome with numerous efforts is motivation about employees which is leading to fear of failure and lack of trust in management. This is extremely affecting on Emotions and Moods and satisfaction on job. There are many problems that are being faced by the employers in any organization. These problems comprise of employees leaving the organization, low motivation for work, dissatisfied with the working environment, disputes with the managers and the co-workers, customer dissatisfaction, etc. There problems which are being faced by the organization has to be handled with proper care and there has to be proper setup to deal with such problems (Coghlan, 2014). The most prominent issues out of the ones mentioned earlier is lack of motivation to perform better. Motivation issues can occur at any level of the organization whether it is shop floor labors or the line managers. These issues of motivation occur due to many reasons like lack of adequate tools to achieve the goals, lack of proper support from the team members, lack of employee’s recognition for good work, no perks for the employees, etc. All these issues require utmost attention and has to be dealt with proper care (Schunk, 2012).

Impact on the Organization

Reasons behind these issues in any organization

There are many root cause behind such issues. Some of them comprises of mainly not providing the employees with what they expect from the organization and their managers. In BSS also, it is often found that the employees are not satisfied with the hike they are offered or they are not properly recognized for their good work in the organization (Robbins, 2015). Different reasons for such dissatisfaction can be classified in different categories. Some of them can be discussed as below:

Expectation not correctly setup: The employers do not setup the right expectation to the employees and then there is a gap between what is expected and what is delivered. It’s very important for any manager to first setup defined goals, guidelines and tasks for the employees so that they should have proper knowledge as to what is expected out of them. In Barclays, this is one problem which is faced by some of the employees.

Lack of proper Rewards, Recognition, and Bonus to the employees: This is one of the most important factor for the employees where they are not provided with proper recognition for the work they have done. Recognition has many forms ranging from verbal recognition in front of the co-workers or a certificate for the same (Scandura, 2016). This is also reflect somewhere as a financial gain for the employees for their better services.

No proper groups, circle: It is very important for the people in any team to gel among themselves and create a friendly working environment. This can be done by ensuring they the company have proper team building activities, they should provide a setup where team members can easily approach each other and create a healthy working environment. Places where such setup is missing create problems and people do not work properly in teams. This is also a problem in BSS at times.

Impact on the organization

Many factors like capital, human resources and environmental facte capital, human resource and environmental factors influence performance of ors influence performance of organizations. The absence of the solution to the above problem has always been a matter of concern for the management. Due to low motivation there is hardly any interdependency between members of the same team. As a result, a conflict of interests rises between different team members which regarding multiple aspects, which eventually hurts the team as a whole (Czaplewski, 2016). The company has to suffer client dissatisfaction, work not getting competed within deadlines, low energy among employees and a dull working environment in the organization.

There have been times when multiple members of the same team takes a leave which further affects the abandon rate of the calls coming in, thus, resulting in loss for the company. With a high attrition rate, there has always been a shortage of head count for occupying the available seats. This forces the organization to offer over time to existing employees to meet the business requirement (Benesch, 2014).

Challenges for Management

Challenges to management

The work force management has to be on the toes to ensure every minute and seconds are utilized appropriately, which leads to extra pressure for everyone, from the call center executive to the process manager as they have to be accountable for any type of delay. To add cherry to the ice cake, since employees are hardly motivated, they develop a lax attitude and act unprofessionally while dealing with the clients, internally and externally, thus resulting in low quality of service. This increases workload for the quality department and extra cost on new projects (Weick, 2016).

One of the challenge that favors against the organizations strategy in terms of motivation is output. The success for any organization is measures by the output is it producing within specified timelines. It is a big challenge for them to increase productivity as this will affect the motivation and expectations from the employees.

Motivation to Employees:

There are different theories for keeping the employees motivated and what are the factors on which the motivation for any individual depends. These different theories are Maslow’s hierarchy theory for needs, Vroom expectancy theory, McGregor’s theory X and Y (Beck, 2003). These theories are helping in providing insight to the employees as to how they can keep their employees motivated for BSS. Let us understand each of the theories as below:

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Maslow has very well explained how employees have different needs and how these needs can be classified in the form of a hierarchy. These needs are divided into different levels of this hierarchy. Same applies to BSS, different employees of BSS have different needs. These needs are:

Psychological needs: These are the first level of needs where the employees are having the basic need of food, water, sanity, etc. Then when these needs are satisfied, next level of needs are the safety needs (Locke, 1986). These needs comprise of the need where employees demand their security after their psychological needs are satisfied. Especially for women, company provide special security facilities. Then next we have the esteem needs, like when the employees need recognition for the work they do. After the psychological and safety needs are fulfilled, they have the need to satisfy the esteem needs. As shown in the figure the next level of needs are the cognitive needs as to understand and explore in the organization. Next level of needs are the aesthetic needs where they have needs to look beautiful, order, symmetry, etc. The last one is the self-actualization needs where the employees do not care anymore about money, safety, etc. As these needs are already fulfilled, now the needs of the employees are self-fulfilment and realize one’s potential.

This theory is defined as the motivation theory where behaviour of the employee is based on their motivation levels. This model is basically comprising of Valence, expectancy and instrumentality. Valence is the recognition and reward which is provided to the employees in return of the work they have done. Expectancy is basically defined as the efforts any employee put in in return to the expectation that they will get in return for the work they do. Instrumentally on the other hand, employees confidence to get any reward.

Theories for Employee Motivation

These theories can be used to keep the employees motivated based on Maslow’s hierarchy needs and Vroom’s expectancy theory.

Strong leadership and following Supportive model.

This means providing employees freedom to work according to their comfort till the time the deliverables of the company are not affected. They should have a proper guidance and strong leadership. This is what is expected as BSS as well where the leaders should always motivate the employees to perform better and work according to their preferences. Their consent should be taken while making any decisions of the organization and they should feel that they are an important asset to the organization. There are different aspects where freedom can be given to the employees like Job rotation, flexible working hours, and work from home facility, etc.

There are different processes which can be used for implementation of the recommendations:

Training of the employees: it is very important to provide training to the employees on different new technologies so that the employees always get to learn new things and be competitive.

Job Design: every job should be properly described and the expectation from the employees should be properly set.

Rewards/recognition: Timely and periodically proper rewards should be provided to the employees which will require a robust performance management system. BSS has a proper performance management system and this should also result in providing bonuses, perks, hikes when the employees perform well.

Conclusion

BSS is performing well till time but the employees somehow can be dealt with more care. It is very important for any company to help their employees to grow and keep them motivated to give their 100 percent efforts for achieving the goals of the organization. This can be done by following the recommendation provided in the paper.

References

Arvey, R. D., Li, W., & Wang, N. (2016). Genetics of Attitudes and Behavior at Work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 3(1).

Beck, R. C. (2003). Motivation: Theories And Principles, 4/e. Pearson Education India.

Benesch, M. G., Mannock, D. A., Lewis, R. N., & McElhaney, R. N. (2014). A DSC and FTIR spectroscopic study of the effects of the epimeric 4-cholesten-3-ols and 4-cholesten-3-one on the thermotropic phase behaviour and organization of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine bilayer membranes: Comparison with their 5-cholesten analogues. Chemistry and physics of lipids, 177, 71-90

Czaplewski, A. J., Key, T. M., & Van Scotter II, J. R. (2016). The Role of Positive Organizational Behavior in Building a WorldClass Service Organization. Leading The Positive Organization: Actions, Tools, and Processes, 58.

Langeberg, L. K., & Scott, J. D. (2015). Signalling scaffolds and local organization of cellular behaviour. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology,16(4), 232-244.

Coghlan, D., & Brannick, T. (2014). Doing action research in your own organization. Sage.

Locke, E. A., & Henne, D. (1986). Work motivation theories. International review of industrial and organizational psychology, 1, 1-35.

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2015). Perilaku Organisasi Edisi 16.

Schunk, D. H., Meece, J. R., & Pintrich, P. R. (2012). Motivation in education: Theory, research, and applications. Pearson Higher Ed.

Scandura, T. A. (2016). Essentials of organizational behavior: An evidence-based approach. SAGE Publications.

Weick, K. E. (2016). Perspective Construction in Organizational Behavior. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 4(1).