Motivational Strategies Involving Productivity in the Workplace

Motivational Strategies involving Productivity in the Workplace

Do you ever wonder how your superiors or owners of companies motivate you as an employee to be more productive? Companies use various methods to motivate their workforce; the one that comes to mind for me is "incentives". These can be used in both a positive and negative manner. Every company strives to become productive, as leaders or those of us working to become leaders we search for ways to improve a company's productivity and longevity. Ultimately, a happy and wonderful work environment with a motivated workforce will eliminate a company's turn around and increase productivity and revenue.

The field that I have experienced the most motivational, encouragement training and incentives is any business related to "Customer Service" and "Retail Management". Not only did I have to motivate myself to become productive, I as responsible for the motivation of the employees that reported to me. My experience with managing others is that as part of the Management team, I found it important to emphasis the expectations of each position held and reinforce that these positions were a job and not a place to hang out at when it came to the younger employees. Some of the methods used were motivational strategies and incentives to encourage productivity as an employee. The company I worked for was Blockbuster Video, a well known video retail and rental company. I worked for this company in my early twenties and was responsible for the everyday operations for five different stores and over 100 employees. Each different location had employees with different backgrounds, cultures and economic status. Due to the diversity of each location, I had to use different types of incentives and goals. At times I found myself having to be very assertive and had to use negative incentives in the form of verbal warnings, written and final action plans set in place by the company. Depending on the situation and the different personalities such as described in our assigned reading, different methods were used. Personnel could be identified as referred to in our classroom reading "Understanding Motivation and Emotion" as having an Extraverts or Introvert personality, therefore had to be motivated at different capacities to reach the productivity goals. Of course as most people in a leadership position, I preferred to use positive motivational strategies and incentives to encourage my workforce to perform at the highest quality of customer service and highest quality work. Setting and giving my employees attainable goals helped my staff succeed in reaching these goals. Looking back at the motivational methods used for employees at Blockbuster, the most effective and popular methods were positive incentives. These incentives came in form of raises, promotions, and rewards. These motivators encouraged our employees to be productive and courteous to our customers when they were on the clock. Reviews and training paths were also used as motivators of higher productivity of an employee. At times, unfortunately these incentives were not always positive and this type of feedback would have a negative impact on person's demeanor. However, every company must have a some sort of policy and procedure in place in form of motivational strategies in order to be successful. Feedback in any form will produce an outcome that is hoped to be productive and effective.

Company motivational procedures are essential and more so when having to deal with productivity resistance. This can be true of both working peers or any employee resisting to change or expectations to produce more. One of the most common reasons for resistance is that "people don't like change". Research shows that the main for factors for such resistance are 1. The unfamiliarity of company initiatives 2) Lack of understanding of change affects employees 3) Concern regarding change in individual roles and responsibilities 4) the lack of confidence to master skills and knowledge needed in a changed environment. As a former Manager, I find methods that are put in place to help employees understand change in the workplace and can address any concerns that they may have. Methodologies such as "People & Performance Solutions" are management tools that assist in these areas of concern. Although with every methodology put in place and practiced by employers, employers will always have tough decisions to make when there is lack of motivation and the employee is only there for a pay check. This type of mentality automatically puts the employee into a "this is a boring job but I need it". In addition this is usually followed by

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