Managing Motivation in Economy Essay

The firm has had to close ceasee a fewer locations, reversing its expansion plans for the first time since it incorporated. Being that this is uncharted territory for the guild, Jim Claussen, offense president for human dealing, had been struggling with how to address the issue with employees. As the social clubs fortunes worsened, he could see that employees were becoming more(prenominal) and more disaffected. Their risk active their jobs was taking a toll on attitudes. The comp eachs downsizing was big in the altogethers, and the employees didnt like what they were hearing.Media reports of Morgan-Moes store closings experience focused on the lose of advance notice or discourse from the companys corporate offices, as well as the lack of severance payments for departing employees. In the absence of official teaching, rumors and gossip mystify send like wildfire among remaining employees. A few angry blogs developed by laid-off employees, like IHateMorganMoe. blogspot. com, fox made the morale and public relations picture even worse. Morgan-Moe is changing in other r placees as well. The average age of its formulateforce is increasing fastly. A couple of factors have contri notwithstandinged to this shift.First, fewer qualified young wad argon around because many families have moved south to find jobs. Second, stores have been actively advance to hire older workers, such as retirees looking for nearly adjunct income. Managers are very receptive to these older workers because they are more mature, recede fewer days of work, and do not have child-care responsibilities. They are likewise often more qualified than younger workers because they have more experience, sometimes in the managerial or executive ranks. These older workers have been a great asset to the company in troubled times, moreover they are especially likely to choke if things get bad.If these older workers start to leave the company, taking their hard-earned experience wi th them, it seems likely that Morgan-Moe will sink deeper toward bankruptcy. The System Claussen wasnt quite sure how to respond to employees sense of hopelessness and fear until a friend gave him a book entitled Mans attempt for Meaning. The book was written by a psychologist named Victor Frankl who survived the concentration camps at Auschwitz. Frankl found that those who had a clear sense of purpose, a reason to live, were more likely to persevere in the face of nearly unspeakable suffering.Something close this book, and its advocacy of finding weting and direction as a way to triumph over adversity, really stuck with Claussen. He thought he great power be able to apply its lessons to his workforce. He proposed the idea of a new direction for management to the companys executive committee, and they reluctantly agree to try his suggestions. Over the last 6 months, stores throughout the company have used a performance management system that, as Claussen says, gets people to buy into the idea of performing so that they can see some real results in their stores.Its all about seeing that your work serves a broader purpose. I read about how some companies have been manduction store performance cultivation with employees to get them to understand what their jobs really mean and participate in making changes, and I thought that was something wed be able to do. The HR team came up with five options for the management system. incorporated allowed individual managers to choose the option they thought would work best with their employees so that managers wouldnt feel too much like a rapid change was being forced on them. political program I is opting out of the new idea, continuing to stay the course and providing employees with little to no information or opportunities for participation. Program II tracks employee absence and sick leave and shares that information with individual employees, giving them feedback about things they can control. Management takes n o further action. Program III tracks gross sales and inventory replacement rates crossways shifts. As in Program II, information is shared with employees, but without providing employee feedback about absence and sick leave. Program IV, the most comprehensive, tracks the same information as Programs II and III.Managers communicate it in weekly cerebrate sessions, during which employees try to dress what they can do better in the future and make suggestions for up(a) store performance. Program V keeps the idea of brainstorming but doesnt provide employees with information about their behavior or company profits. Since implementing the system, Claussen has intercommunicate with several managers about what motivated them to choose the program they did. Artie Washington, who chose Program IV, said, I want to have my employees input on how to keep the store trail smoothly.Everybody worries about his or her job security in this economy. Letting them cognize whats going on and givi ng them ways to change things keeps them involved. Betty Alvarez couldnt disagree more. She selected Program I. I would rather have my employees doing their jobs than going to meetings to have words about doing their jobs. Thats what management is for. Michael Ostremski, another proponent of Program I, added, Its okay for the employees to feel a little uncertainif they think were in the clear, theyll slack off. If they think were in trouble, theyll give up.Cal Martins also questions the need to provide information to the whole team, but he chose Program II. A person should know where he or she stands in the job, but they dont have to know about everyone else. It creates unnecessary tension. This is slightly similar to Cindy Angs reason for picking Program V. When we have our brainstorming meetings, I learn what they the employees think is most pressing, not what some spreadsheet says. It gives me a better feel for whats going on in my store. poesy count, of course, but they d ont tell you everything.I was also a little worried that employees would be upset if they saw that we arent performing well. Results to Date Claussen is convinced the most elaborate procedure (Program IV) is the most effective, but not everyone in the executive committee is won over by his advocacy. Although they have supported the test implementation of the system because it appears to have relatively low costs, others on the committee want to see results. CEO denim Masterson has asked for a complete breakdown of the performance of the various stores over the departed 4 years.Shes specially interested in seeing how sales figures and turnover rate rates have been affected by the new program. The company has been collecting data in spreadsheets on sales and turnover rates, and it ready the following report, which also estimates the dollar cost of staff time taken up in each method. These costs are based on the number of hours employees spend working on the program multiplied by their wage rate. Estimates of turnover, profit, and staff time are collected per store. Profit and turnover data include means and standard deviations across locations profit is displace of the monthly time cost.Turnover information refers to the percentage of employees who either quit or are terminated in a month. To see if any patterns emerged in managers natural selection of programs, the company calculated relationships between program selection and various attributes of the stores. Program I was selected most often by the oldest stores and those in the most economically distressed areas. Programs II and III were selected most frequently by stores in urban areas and in areas where the workforce was younger on average. Programs IV and V were selected most frequently in stores in plain areas, and especially where the workforce is older on average.