According to the Frederick Hertzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory, in Compasol Ltd., employees are satisfied with the hygiene factors on the whole. The main reason why employees leave the company because they are not satisfied with some motivation factors.
There are some factors affecting employee’s attitude (see list below).
Figure1: Factors affecting employee’s attitude in the Compasol Ltd.
2.2 The Bath model of people and performance
Figure 2: The Bath model of people and performance
According to the Bath model of people and performance developed by Purcell (Armstrong, 2003, p.16), the analysis in Compasol Ltd. is listed below.
Career opportunity
Because there are no formal appraisal system and suitable promotion policy, the promotion is difficult to employees. The employees feel career opportunities are very few, so they are not satisfied with their job.
Performance appraisal
Performance appraisal is the process of designing and negotiating the method and criteria for the appraisal of performance, applying the method, and giving evaluation and developmental feedback to the person concerned (Fisher et al, 2003). The purpose of this performance appraisal is developmental as it aims to improve employee performance, employee relationships and identify training needs (Graham and Kramer, 1995). Performance appraisal deals with managing, monitoring and motivating the employees in an organization.
There is no formal appraisal system for employees. Therefore, the employees did not know their work is done, or do worse. If they do a good job, where the good factor is; if they have done worse, where the poor factor is. Without a formal appraisal system, there is little chance that the judgments will be made lawfully, fairly and accurately. Without a formal appraisal system, the employees can not feel the pressure of work and power.
According to Torrington and Hall (1991, p.480), “appraisal done well can improve motivation and performance for both appraiser and appraise, and can greatly assist both individual development and organizational planning”, the company is facing the problem of how to build an efficient appraisal system.
Training and development
Training is a specific activity, which provides employees with knowledge, and activities, which provides employees with knowledge and skill to satisfy job requirements. Development refers to more general activities, which prepare employees for long-term opportunities. Training plans are a useful tool for identifying and planning the training activities of a work area.
In Compasol Ltd., the formal training opportunities are made use of occasionally. And there are no any training plans. It makes employees are difficult in developing their working skills.
Recruitment
Job description is a “Summary report of information relating to a particular job” (Torrington & Hall, 1991, p.246), and it becomes “out of date very quickly as there is always a drift in job content” (Torrington & Hall, 1991, p.260). So the company should change the job description frequently and individually. And because some employees are recruited from the local further education college which runs computer courses, they may be affected to local IT characteristics and work spirit and so on. Therefore, the company should expand the scope of the recruitment, try to find some external new employees who have different IT characteristics and work spirit.
Pay satisfaction
According to Armstrong (2001, pp.521-541), a pay structure basing on grading job should be built after salary surveys; then using salary control systems to avoid inappropriate payment, and combining performance-related pay and payment by results to keep the work motivation of employees. Obviously, the company does not design a good pay structure. So, in the affair, the one important reason why many employees leave the company is because the company has no a good pay structure, the employees feel they do not get an ideal reward.
Job challenge
Commonly, people want different levels of job challenge. Some employees may prefer complex and challenging jobs; other may prefer simple tasks. Task complexity needs to be differentiated to reflect the technical and psychological qualifications of employees. In the company, each employee is responsible for a fixed job. Unchangeable work is unattractive and low challenge. It makes many employees to feel their jobs insipid. So the company should think about the job design. Job design is defined to be “the process of combining tasks and responsibilities to form complete jobs and relationships of jobs in the organisation” (Bratton., et al 1999). The goal of job design is “to satisfy the needs of the individual for interest, challenge and accomplishment” (Armstrong, 2001, p.494).
Teamworking
According to Armstrong (2001, p.28), “Teamworking becomes more significant when the technology or operating processes require ‘cellular’ working or considerable interaction between people carrying out different functions but with a common purpose. Effective teamwork is more important during periods of rapid change or crisis”. So teamwork should be built up and designed to enhance the team cooperation capabilities, and to improve the atmosphere of unity and cooperation of the company.
Communication
There is not communication on work, and workers are easily dissatisfied with their work because they “could not see how their efforts related to the whole” (Rollinson, 2005, p.207). This is also the problem of job design.
Good communication is vital in organisations and lies at the heart of effective management effective communication is essential for organisations without it employees do not know what to do, how to do it or when to do it by. (Mullins, 2002)
The company should think a plan to improve communication. The objective is to create a positive and motivated work situation under which employees can discuss about the development of the company each other or with boss freely.
Management behaviour
Leadship is vital for the development of the company. An experienced manager who is good at coordinating the relationship between the staff with himself, and has a strong personal charisma is very important to ensure a company sustainable development. An excellent manager is able to arouse passion and potential of the staff to try their best to develop the company enthusiasticly. So it is a big challenge to a professional manager how to maintain an appropriate balance, neither too harsh, nor too casual in management behaviour.
According to Rollinson (2005, p.343) describes the action-centered theory of leadership, there are three functions a leader must have, including the task-related, the team-related and the individually orientated; an effective leader is “arriving at an appropriate balance between the three functions”. Strategic management should be used to decrease the degree of dissatisfaction in the period of change. The boss of the company, John Reed, should study a lot of knowledge about human resources to apply it in his management behaviour.
Respect from manager
If the staff can get more respect from manager, it can make the staff work boldly and passionately under an equal and harmonious atmosphere.
If manager can give more concern to staff, such as family factor, the staff will feel the company like a big family. And then, they will contribute their power to the company more actively. If the employees are willing to keep the reliance and symbiosis with the company, it will be very significant for the company long-term developed. So, the company should strive to make its staff willing to keep the reliance and symbiosis with company.
All the problems above are interacted by each other. At last, the poor performance is formed, basing on the motivation-hygiene theory and the Bath people and performance model. Therefore, how to solve those problems to improve the performance is the key point of developing the company continuously.
3. Recommendations
According to the forenamed analysis, appraisals, job design, recruitment, reward and training should be improved in the company.
Firstly, an efficient appraisal system should be planed and designed by human resources department as soon as possible. Actually, caused by the current poor performance is mainly due to human resources department. It should play a very important pole in the performance management.
According to Torrington and Hall (1991, p.481) “Appraisal can be used to improve current performance, provide feedback, increase motivation, identify training needs, identify potential, let individuals know what is expected of them, focus on career development, award salary increases and solve job problems. It can be used to set out job objectives, provide information for human resources planning and career succession, assess the effectiveness of the selection process, and as a reward or punishment in itself”.
Secondly, job design again is also necessary to improve the performance. The job redescription will affect the improvement of recruitment and reward immediately. The job redesign should be thought carefully. It can be based on Herzberg’s two-factor theory (Rollinson, 2005, p.199) to present hygiene factors (such as pay satisfaction, job security, communication). To reduce the job negative nature, such as vapidity, lack of challenge, it can make employee feel no dissatisfaction. And to present motivation factors (such as job challenge, career opportunity, training, involvement and teamwork), it can make employee feel satisfied. At the same time, the main job-design techniques should be taken into account, such as job rotation (move from one task to other task), job enlargement, job enrichment, self-managing teams (autonomous work groups) and high-performance work design (Armstrong, 2001, p.496). In addition, the company can also apply the Hackman and Oldham’s Job Characteristics Model to redesign jobs. Hackman and Oldham’s Job Characteristics Model is one of the most influential theories of job redesign.
Thirdly, recruitment skill should be improved, especially the update of employment documentations, such as job description, advertisement, recruitment literature, internal control documentation, correspondence and miscellaneous information (Torrington & Hall, 1991,p.578). With the company developing continuously, the company should change the job description frequently and individually, in order to meet its development needs. The new job description is a direction to employees improve themselves. In order to diversify employees, the company should expand the scope of the recruitment of employee. The task is to try to find some new employees who have different technical characteristics and work spirit. And then, to assign these employees who have different characteristics work together through human resources giving appropriate guidance, it can make these employees to study each other and improve their working methods and work spirit by themselves.
Fourthly, using reward to fulfill organizational policies and practices, and adapt to the development of external social and economic environment. The basis decisions of payment are fairness and performance (Torrington & Hall, 1991, pp.571-589), so how to use payment to improving performance is a key issue. There are three kinds of payment that can be used-- basic pay (like basic salary), fixed pay (such as plus salary, benefits and contractual premia), and variable pay (such as occasional premia, overtime payment, group and individual incentive, profit and discretionary bonus) (Torrington & Hall, 1991, p.578).
The company should establish a reward policy that can ensure a reasonable increase in salary and bonus and has a good pay structure. For example, except the salary increase in promotion, the company should also consider the reasonable salary increase or paid holiday for the employees who have did the good job for some years in the company; and for the employees who have made outstanding contributions to some important project or new product design or product sale, the company should give them additional bonus or even a car reward and publicize their deeds. The effective reward policy is vital to retain and stimulate employees to work hard for the company.
Fifthly, a systematic training should be ruled, including identify the needs and objectives, prepare the plan, measure and analysis the result, validate and evaluate the training (Torrington & Hall, 1991, p.543-545). Providing training and development usually follows four steps:
(a) Identifying employees training and development needs;
(b) Developing a training plan for each individual;
(c) Selecting or designing or conducting training activities;
(d) Evaluating the results.
The systematic training can improve employees’ skills for job new requirements and promote efficiency and reduce cost for the company. And during the systematic training, the human resources can arrange some topics about the company and job development discussed by employees and managers, in order to improve the communication between employees and managers.
4. Conclusion
There are many problems in Compasol Ltd., but these problems are both related to human resources management. So, if the company enhances the human resources department and applies more professional human resources management, the performance will be improved and the company will develop more quickly.
References
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Rollinson, D. Broadfield, A. and Edwards, D. (2005) Organisational Behaviour and Analysis—an integrated approach. 3rd edition. Addison-Wesley. Pearson Education Limited
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Herzberg, F. Snyderman, B.B. (1993) the Motivation to Work. 10th edition, Transaction Publishers
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Armstrong, M. (2003). A Handbook of Human Resources Management Practice: Fully Updated to Reflect Current Thinking, Practice and Research. 9th edition. Kogan Page Publishers
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(Nigel, S. Stuart, C. Robert, J. (2007). Operations Management. 5th edition. Essex: Pearson Education Limited)