Performance Issues and Motivation

Posted by Melda Research on March 18th, 2019

 Introduction

The staff or employees are a critical aspect of every profit or non-profit organization. They determine the level of performance of a business. It is common for an employee to lose focus. A motivational issue refers to a situation where an employee fails to perform to the expected standards regardless of having all the resources for the process. The problems that cause the person to lose focus from the organization's targets are inherent to the person, not the business. Therefore, it is the duty of the administration to an organization to motivate its workers. The paper analyzes and describes a performance issue that results from a motivation problem and an intervention method that fixes the performance problem.

Problem resulting from the lack of motivation

During as summer vacation, I worked as a salesperson in a retail shop in the city. The retail shop specialized in the sale of clothing and apparels. The company had a tight competitive market as such the management of the shop required that the employees be at their best performance. At the beginning of the period the performance of the personnel was high; however, as time went by the performance of the employees continued to dwindle. The creativity and vigor expressed in the beginning were not there anymore. The number of clients in the shop was steadily lessening as the shop was losing its customers to the neighboring shops.

Relation of the Maslow's theory to the lack of motivation

There are multiple theories that can reveal the reason the performance was declining and the poor motivational levels of the employees, however, the following theories seem best fit. The best theory to explain the problem arising in the organization is the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory. The theory states that there is a systematic arrangement of needs that get categorized into five levels self-actualization of needs, esteem needs, social needs, safety needs and psychological needs (Maslow, A.1943). The management of the shop failed to recognize that the people did not like the work they only participated in the benefits. Therefore, the people in the shop need to get coerced to get coerced controlled and directed. At times, the people in the job require stringent measures for non-performance that pummels them to input more effort to conform to the achievement of organizational objectives (Neher, A. 1991).  The management of the organization also failed to appreciate other methods that could boost the performance of the employees such as the establishment of rewards for good performance. It was also clear that the capability to search for and develop innovative problem-solving approaches gets broadly distributed across the whole population. Therefore, the management was only utilizing a small portion of the potential of the employees in the retail shop (Maslow, A.1943).

The poor management of the organization that failed to meet the growth and the deficiency needs resulted in poor employee engagement (Neher, A. 1991). The engagement theory in the retail industry states that engaging employees develop commitment that subsequently leads to the high performance of the personnel. Since the management barely engaged the staff, the extent of the commitment of the staff diminished. The result was the reduced effort and desire to stay in the retail shop. The employees displayed this characteristic by barely appealing to the customers in the retail shop. The creativity and imagination depicted through the marketing ploys reduced significantly. These events led to the overall reduction in the shops total revenue and net profit.  To sum it up the management of the shop did not meet the needs of the personnel as such there was a regression in the number of sales and the performance of the employees. 

 Solutions for Lack of Motivation in the Retail Shop

I deduced that the organization requires a few modifications especially in the management practices after assessing the performance of the business. The leadership of the retail shop was at fault I this case as it did not express the recommended strategies to keep the staff motivated. The retail shop management is responsible for the productivity of the business. As such the management should develop mechanisms for assessing the needs of the staff and making sure that they meet these needs. The management should also ensure that they constantly monitor the staff to ensure that they perform effectively. The following are tactics that the management of the shop would employ.

The first ploy would be applying employee empowerment. Employee empowerment entails creating opportunities for growth and development of the personnel in the retail shop. In essence, the job should allow the elevation of the employee’s knowledge and tactics through exposure to seminars, workshops and other training programs for learning (Kanfer, R.1990).  The retail shop should also allow these employees to apply the skills and knowledge they acquired that elevates their experience and gives them a feeling of self-satisfaction. The empowerment results in high self-esteem that is mandatory for the organization (Kanfer, R. 1990).  The new skills and knowledge encourages the employees to define their jobs broadly; hence, it increases their readiness to tackle new challenges. The employees also acquire willingness to take risks for the betterment of the retail shops sales and are willing to take accountability for the consequences of the choices they make during the sales.

One of the most efficient techniques of motivating employees in the retail shop is the application of a reward system for the staff. The tactic has proven successful in many organizations. It employs the concept of Maslow’s theory that the management of an organization requires to coerce the employees to perform since they naturally lack motivation to execute functions in an organization. There are very many reward systems that the retail shop can apply to boost the psyche of the sales staff to sell more products (Kanfer, R. 1990). Some of these tactics include introducing a reward package such as a shopping coupon or simply a small monetary token of appreciation for the best sales person of the month or year. The retail shop could also offer a commission to the staff as a 1% commission on every profit earned in the event of a sale of a commodity. The retail shop could also offer promotion opportunities for the best sellers in the retail shop. Another policy the company could employ is creating a minimum sale for the staff in the retail shop and a penalty if they do not meet this minimum standard (Kanfer, R. 1990).

Conclusion

Many organizations gauge the level of productivity by the amount of output in the organization. Lack of motivation causes a lot of problems for organizations and their stakeholders. One of the common problems experienced in an organization due to motivational problems is the reduced level of output in an organization. There are several motivational problems that cause this scenario however the most common is due to the lack of interest in the field of interest. Employees utilize motivation as a driving force that propels him to take action in the field assigned to a workplace. The interest built in the area elevates the curiosity of an employee about a task and vigor to attempt to perform it well. It is, therefore, mandatory that the management of an organization monitors and maintains high self-esteem as well as inspirational levels in an organization.

 References

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological review, volume 50, issue 4, page 370.

Neher, A. (1991). Maslow's Theory of Motivation A Critique. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, vol. 31, issue 3, page 89-112.

Kanfer, R. (1990). Motivation theory and industrial and organizational psychology. Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology, vol. 1, issue 2, page 75-130.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in nursing essay writing service services. If you need a similar paper you can place your order from research paper services.