Case Study Of Low Supervised Setting: Improvement Of Worker Morale
Improvement of Worker Morale in a Low Supervised Setting
Prepared for
Ben Thompson
Student Supervisor
University of Minnesota Duluth Housing Maintenance Staff
Prepared By
James Carlberg
Maintenance Staff Employee
University of Minnesota Duluth Housing Maintenance Staff
December 7, 2012
Memorandum
Date: December 7, 2012
To: Ben Thompson, Student Supervisor, Maintenance Staff
From: James Carlberg, Maintenance Staff Employee,
Subject: Improvement of Worker Morale in a Low Supervised Setting
The University of Minnesota Duluth Housing Maintenance Staff is suffering from poor worker performance in a relatively low supervised setting. The purpose of this report …show more content…
is to first identify and acknowledge that the UMD Maintenance Staff has a worker morale problem that is affecting its overall performance and reputation. This report’s second purpose is to explain to you the great lengths I have gone to study this problem. Finally, this report’s last purpose is to list my findings from my research and offer valuable recommendations for a solution to this problem.
After working for UMD Maintenance Staff for eighteen months, I have learned how to become a more efficient worker and because of that I have taken notice that our staff’s full potential is not being met. I chose to bring this problem to light for one simple reason, and that is, here at UMD we strive towards excellence and seek to better ourselves. This directly applies to our work ethic and should not be taken lightly. By identifying this low morale problem we are taking the first step in solving it.
The research you will read about further on in this report was completed between the 27th of September and the 7th of November. In this span of time I conducted primary research, including several interviews with both employees and supervisors. I also completed secondary research on the schools databases finding several scholarly journals that gave great insight into our problem. The research that I have completed for this report is valuable to both employees and supervisors alike. At this point I would like to take the time to recognize and thank several people; who without their help this project would have lacked the insight needed to make my research solid enough to find a solution. First I would like to thank my supervisor Ben Thompson for both granting me the permission to complete this research and for the insight on the subject. To Andrew Kilness, Thank you for both your time and patients. With your knowledge of the problem at work I was able to see it from a different perspective than I previously had seen. To Nate Hanson, Thank you for sharing your previous work experience with me. Your information added credibility to the whole research project. Finally to Vincent Ranallo, thank you for being flexible and understanding.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Figure 1: Do you think employees would work harder with higher wages?............6
Executive Summary The purpose of this report is to analyze the current low morale problem with the U.M.D. Maintenance Staff. By raising the overall morale of the employees will increase productivity and sharpen the image that Maintenance Staff hopes to achieve. To raise the employee morale I have researched three different components that I believe to be the root cause of the morale problem.
Accountability
A key contributing factor in the current moral problem among employees is the lack of accountability. Accountability is a slippery slope that is easy to fall down. From the Broken Window Theory by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, we take the simple lesson that if one person starts to pass the responsibility off to another person, soon many others will follow. By holding each employee accountable for their own work creates a sense of pride in one’s work.
Incentives
Goal setting is important for any employee; it creates a sense of accomplishment when a goal is achieved.
Installing an employee of the month program creates a health amount of competition between employees and is a great way to distinguish hard working employees. Surveys handed out to customers can help create quantifiable data that makes the task of identifying the hard working employees easier. Wages are an incentive that can change the morale of the staff in a quick manner. By raising employee’s wages, this makes the employees feel appreciated and noticed.
Discipline Discipline is a way of setting boundaries with employees so that they understand the rules. With the lack of discipline among Maintenance Staff the options are fairly open to several types of implementation.
Recommendations
I have proposed two recommendations to raise employee morale in a low supervised setting. First by installing a three strike discipline program will allow the supervisor to trust his employees, even when he is not around. The second recommendation I have for Maintenance
Staff is to create an employee of the month program. In addition rewarding good behavior by treating employees with paid lunch reinforces what the boss expects from his employees. By implementing these recommendations Maintenance Staff should see a rise in employee …show more content…
morale.
Improvement of Worker Morale in a Low Supervised Setting
Introduction To anyone who has ever lived in on campus housing while attending college knows that it is a special time in every young adult’s life. For many it is there first time away from home and it may be a bit terrifying. To some it is a time to find what they want to do with their lives and continue their quest for higher education. All of these students share one commonality and that is at some point while living in on campus housing something will break and they will need to call Maintenance Staff for assistance. My name is James Carlberg and I work for the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Maintenance Staff. My duty as an employee of Maintenance Staff is to maintain and fix any problems with any of our facilities on campus. These duties can include, but are not limited to, plumbing, fixing appliances, some painting, cleaning and general maintenance of the rooms to keep them in the best possible condition. I have worked on Maintenance Staff for 18 months and in that time I have learned all the various skills to become the best worker I can. I work part time with 8 other student employees like myself during the school year and I work full time with anywhere from 12 to 16 other student employees during the summer months. While working here over the past year and a half I have noticed that our staff of employees is not working to their true potential. This is caused by a worker morale problem that is a toxic element in the work place that has to stop. The morale problem that I speak of is due to a lack of supervision for several hours of the day.
Purpose
I believe that I have both the necessary skills and determination to solve this problem. That is why I have asked you for your permission to conduct a period of research and formulate what I believe are the best possible solutions to this problem. The purpose of this report is to first identify and acknowledge that the UMD Maintenance Staff has a worker morale problem that is affecting its overall performance and reputation. This report’s second purpose is to explain to you the great lengths I have gone to study this problem. Finally, this report’s last purpose is to list my findings from my research and offer valuable recommendations for a solution to this problem.
Methodology
In order to find a solution to this problem I made a set schedule of times for interviews with employees and supervisors as well as time for research to help me understand this problem.
This schedule first began on September 27 when I collected a large amount of secondary research from the University’s library data base. I continued this research in the school’s library until the second week of October. From this point on in my research I found exclusively primary research in the form of Interviews. The second week of October is when I had my first interview of my research processes. This interview was with Nate Hanson, who is a former University of Minnesota Duluth Maintenance Staff employee and a former employee of the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire’s Maintenance Staff. The next interview took place the following week of October on Wednesday the 17th. In this interview I interviewed Andrew Kilness, who is current employee of Maintenance Staff. The next interview was held on Friday October 26th, with Assistant Student Supervisor, Vincent Renallo. The last interview took place of November 7th with the Student Supervisor, Ben Thompson. This ended my research and I began my analysis of the information until the end of
November.
Scope
Unfortunately I was unable to research this topic as thoroughly as I had hoped, due to the constraints of time. If allowed more time I would have interviewed Maintenance Staff employees from St. Scholatica as well as from University of Wisconsin Superior. I would also have made a survey to hand out to the current residents of all on campus housing units. With this additional information I would have further understood if this problem is contained at U.M.D. or if it is a problem with other Maintenance Staffs.
Analysis: Accountability
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” (Aristotle) At UMD Maintenance Staff we do not demand perfection but simply ask for your best effort. Recently the best effort has not been given and motivation on Maintenance Staff is low.
Pass the Buck Working on Maintenance Staff means that you are working with several other students as well as many different departments. Accountability can be lost when responsibility on a certain project is transferred between other departments and other employees. This “pass it on to someone else” mentality is a dangerous mentality to have spread throughout Maintenance Staff.
This mentality can be compared to the Broken Window Theory by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in which they state that. “Consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars.” (Moyer). This theory is talking about the setting of a rundown neighbor hood, but the lesson it teaches couldn’t apply more to our own Maintenance Staff. With even one employee not working to their full potential, others soon start to rationalize that it is ok for them to act this same way. Andrew Killnes, employee of Maintenance Staff for 18 months said in a recent interview “If we don’t fix a clogged sink, or a broken outlet we can always send it to Facilities Management.” What Andrew is speaking of is if he could not or did not feel like fixing the sink himself he could send the problem to another department. The lack of accountability is disturbing and needs to be addressed.
Analysis: Incentives
Why should I work harder than I have to? This is a statement heard too often in Maintenance Staff. The idea that we have no reason to work harder than we already do proves to me that employees are lacking proper Incentives. Incentives are a powerful tool to help boost worker motivation and output. (Get Everyone to Pull Their Weight). In order to provide incentives to employees you must first have a means of knowing how well the employees are doing, even when the boss is not watching. Surveys are a power tool to getting real information directly from the students that our company is offering our services to. “Nothing shows effectiveness like data, and nothing generates broad-based data as quickly and cheaply as an online student survey, which, with an array of tools, anybody can now do.” (Lipka). With data form surveys you have the means to know which employees are performing and which ones are not. Now all surveys are not created equal. One important detail to consider is that surveys may not be filled out with the most accurate information. “Students don 't respond fully, to the best of their ability, because they just want to finish.” (Lipka). An Incentive to motivate employees can be as little or as large as necessary. For our student employees who are used to being fairly tight on cash, even a small gesture can create a large competition between employees for the incentive. Incentives can also be a simple gesture of recognition. Employee of the month is something that does not exist on Maintenance Staff and could be used for worker motivation. When interviewing Nate Hanson, a former employee of the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire’s Maintenance Staff, I asked him if they had any incentives to work harder. This was his response. “Yea, we had a monthly contest for employee of the month. No one tried especially hard for it but it did make the job a little more competitive and fun.” By adding a little friendly competition to a job can make the work seem more like play.
Wages
“I don’t get paid enough to do some of this stuff.” (Andrew Kilness). Working on Maintenance Staff has its benefits, such as learning valuable skills that you will use the rest of your life such as unclogging a sink or patching a hole in the drywall. While these benefits are valuable there is still the undeniable fact that we all receive minimum wage and are not allowed to work any overtime. In four separate interviews with both employees and supervisors, I had asked the question “Do you feel that employees here are being fairly compensated for the work they are doing?” This was one question that I saw several different types of responses to. The general attitude I received from the two employees that I interview was that they both thought they deserved some type of raise after the amount of time they had been working for Maintenance Staff. “When you are getting paid minimum wage it makes it easier to justify working slower.” (Nate Hanson). In response to hearing this during an interview from Nate, I then asked him what did he think was a fair amount of pay for the job. “I don’t know, anything besides minimum wage. It kind of sucks to know that they are paying you the absolute least amount of money they have to.” (Nate Hanson). I handed out a simple survey to 11 people who work in the maintenance office. (Refer to figure 1) I received all 11 surveys back and to no surprise most people believed that they would work harder with more pay. The general tone I heard from both students I interviewed was that they felt that they deserved somewhere between 9 and 10 dollars per hour. The last interview I conducted in my research was with Student Supervisor Ben Thompson. I saved this interview for last so I could take all the input from the interviews with the employees and use that to ask Ben about specific problems and concerns the staff had. I used this time to ask Ben the same question I had asked the employees, “Do you feel that employees here are being fairly compensated for the work they are doing?” His response was “When employees first start on staff, they all start at the minimum wage. Then for every semester they work for Maintenance Staff they will receive a 50 cent raise. It is just in the past year or two that the university has been on a pay freeze. So because of that no one has received any raises in the past two years.” (Ben Thompson). In a journal I was reading in my research process one expert suggested that overtime pay is the easiest and fastest way to boost worker morale and satisfaction. (Snow).
Analysis: Disciplinary Action
Supervision on Maintenance Staff has always been low, with the intent that everyone is honest and is telling the truth. There are several times when the Student Supervisor cannot be around to make sure that everyone is working at their full potential. With this time is when employees abuse the privilege and tend to let their work habits slide. In the 18 months I have worked for Maintenance Staff I have yet to see a single employee receive any severe disciplinary action. Discipline is a way to motivate employees even when the boss is not present. While discipline can be a useful tool to help boost employee performance it can also crush employee morale. At Maintenance Staff discipline has been almost not existent, and it shows in employee’s performance. I asked Andrew Kilness what kind of discipline is enforced at work. “I don’t really know of anything that would piss off Thompson. I guess he has threatened to send us home without pay for the day.” (Andrew Kilness). With no disciple in the work employees have no reason to work harder than they feel is necessary.
Conclusion
While researching worker morale in a low supervised setting I was able to conclude that there were three major components missing from the work place. The first component missing was accountability. Employees are able to work at any speed without any superior knowledge. The second component is that employees are lacking an incentive to work harder than they believe is necessary. Due to low wages and no overtime pay employee’s morale and work ethic tend to slide. Without any acknowledgement from supervisors, employees tend to feel as if their work is going unnoticed. The last component missing from Maintenance Staff is discipline. With limited disciplinary action employees will continue to push the boundaries of what is acceptable or not. From these examples we must use what we know to formulate a plan to address the problem of low work morale.
Recommendations
With months of research behind me I have prepared two recommendations that I believe are crucial to improving employee morale at Maintenance Staff. To hold employees accountable for their actions a more serious disciplinary plan of action must be instilled. I suggest implementing a three strike policy that allows employees to learn from their mistakes twice before being severely punished at the discretion of the supervisor. With employees being held accountable for their mistakes, time and resources wasted on a project will be reduced. A lack of incentives for Maintenance Staff is a common theme among employees that I have interviewed. I suggest that several steps be taken to instill incentives in Maintenance Staff. First installing an employee of the month program creates healthy competition among employees for a title that may come with a money incentive or even a food incentive. Since the university is on a pay freeze at the moment and employees wages cannot be raised this can be a way to boost overall morale. Secondly by adding a paid lunch when the employee’s performance calls for it is a cheap and easy way to give employees an incentive to reach for. If Maintenance Staff adopts these ideas, employee moral will rise and then result in a rise in production in a low supervised setting.
Works Cited
Balasubramanian, Sridhar, Aleda V. Roth, and Enno Siemsen. "Incentives that induce task-related effort, helping, and knowledge sharing in workgroups." Management Science 53.10 (2007): 1533+. Academic OneFile. Web. 4 Dec. 2012.
Egrot, Margaret. “How to Tackle Poor Performance.” Community Care 8 April. 2010. Academic OneFile. Web. 27 Sep. 2012.
“Get Everyone To Pull Their Weight.” Financial Advisor 2 Aug. 2012. Academic OneFile. Web. 27. Sept. 2012
Hanson, Nate. Personal Interview. 3 Oct. 2012
Kilness, Andrew. Personal Interview. 16 Oct. 2012
Lipka, Sara. "Want Data? Ask Students. Again and Again." The Chronicle of Higher Education 57.43 (2011). Academic OneFile. Web. 4 Dec. 2012.
Moyer, Don. Harvard Business Review 83.2 Feb. 2005. Academic OneFile. Web 4 Dec. 2012
Ranallo, Vincent. Personal Interview. 25 Oct. 2012
Snow, Tamsin. “Little Things are Vitally Important to Staff Wellbeing, Says DH Report.” Nursing Standard 22.42 (2008): 5. Academic OneFile. Web. 27. Sep. 2012.
Thompson, Ben. Personal Interview. 7 Nov. 2012
Prepared for
Ben Thompson
Student Supervisor
University of Minnesota Duluth Housing Maintenance Staff
Prepared By
James Carlberg
Maintenance Staff Employee
University of Minnesota Duluth Housing Maintenance Staff
December 7, 2012
Memorandum
Date: December 7, 2012
To: Ben Thompson, Student Supervisor, Maintenance Staff
From: James Carlberg, Maintenance Staff Employee,
Subject: Improvement of Worker Morale in a Low Supervised Setting
The University of Minnesota Duluth Housing Maintenance Staff is suffering from poor worker performance in a relatively low supervised setting. The purpose of this report …show more content…
is to first identify and acknowledge that the UMD Maintenance Staff has a worker morale problem that is affecting its overall performance and reputation. This report’s second purpose is to explain to you the great lengths I have gone to study this problem. Finally, this report’s last purpose is to list my findings from my research and offer valuable recommendations for a solution to this problem.
After working for UMD Maintenance Staff for eighteen months, I have learned how to become a more efficient worker and because of that I have taken notice that our staff’s full potential is not being met. I chose to bring this problem to light for one simple reason, and that is, here at UMD we strive towards excellence and seek to better ourselves. This directly applies to our work ethic and should not be taken lightly. By identifying this low morale problem we are taking the first step in solving it.
The research you will read about further on in this report was completed between the 27th of September and the 7th of November. In this span of time I conducted primary research, including several interviews with both employees and supervisors. I also completed secondary research on the schools databases finding several scholarly journals that gave great insight into our problem. The research that I have completed for this report is valuable to both employees and supervisors alike. At this point I would like to take the time to recognize and thank several people; who without their help this project would have lacked the insight needed to make my research solid enough to find a solution. First I would like to thank my supervisor Ben Thompson for both granting me the permission to complete this research and for the insight on the subject. To Andrew Kilness, Thank you for both your time and patients. With your knowledge of the problem at work I was able to see it from a different perspective than I previously had seen. To Nate Hanson, Thank you for sharing your previous work experience with me. Your information added credibility to the whole research project. Finally to Vincent Ranallo, thank you for being flexible and understanding.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Figure 1: Do you think employees would work harder with higher wages?............6
Executive Summary The purpose of this report is to analyze the current low morale problem with the U.M.D. Maintenance Staff. By raising the overall morale of the employees will increase productivity and sharpen the image that Maintenance Staff hopes to achieve. To raise the employee morale I have researched three different components that I believe to be the root cause of the morale problem.
Accountability
A key contributing factor in the current moral problem among employees is the lack of accountability. Accountability is a slippery slope that is easy to fall down. From the Broken Window Theory by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, we take the simple lesson that if one person starts to pass the responsibility off to another person, soon many others will follow. By holding each employee accountable for their own work creates a sense of pride in one’s work.
Incentives
Goal setting is important for any employee; it creates a sense of accomplishment when a goal is achieved.
Installing an employee of the month program creates a health amount of competition between employees and is a great way to distinguish hard working employees. Surveys handed out to customers can help create quantifiable data that makes the task of identifying the hard working employees easier. Wages are an incentive that can change the morale of the staff in a quick manner. By raising employee’s wages, this makes the employees feel appreciated and noticed.
Discipline Discipline is a way of setting boundaries with employees so that they understand the rules. With the lack of discipline among Maintenance Staff the options are fairly open to several types of implementation.
Recommendations
I have proposed two recommendations to raise employee morale in a low supervised setting. First by installing a three strike discipline program will allow the supervisor to trust his employees, even when he is not around. The second recommendation I have for Maintenance
Staff is to create an employee of the month program. In addition rewarding good behavior by treating employees with paid lunch reinforces what the boss expects from his employees. By implementing these recommendations Maintenance Staff should see a rise in employee …show more content…
morale.
Improvement of Worker Morale in a Low Supervised Setting
Introduction To anyone who has ever lived in on campus housing while attending college knows that it is a special time in every young adult’s life. For many it is there first time away from home and it may be a bit terrifying. To some it is a time to find what they want to do with their lives and continue their quest for higher education. All of these students share one commonality and that is at some point while living in on campus housing something will break and they will need to call Maintenance Staff for assistance. My name is James Carlberg and I work for the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Maintenance Staff. My duty as an employee of Maintenance Staff is to maintain and fix any problems with any of our facilities on campus. These duties can include, but are not limited to, plumbing, fixing appliances, some painting, cleaning and general maintenance of the rooms to keep them in the best possible condition. I have worked on Maintenance Staff for 18 months and in that time I have learned all the various skills to become the best worker I can. I work part time with 8 other student employees like myself during the school year and I work full time with anywhere from 12 to 16 other student employees during the summer months. While working here over the past year and a half I have noticed that our staff of employees is not working to their true potential. This is caused by a worker morale problem that is a toxic element in the work place that has to stop. The morale problem that I speak of is due to a lack of supervision for several hours of the day.
Purpose
I believe that I have both the necessary skills and determination to solve this problem. That is why I have asked you for your permission to conduct a period of research and formulate what I believe are the best possible solutions to this problem. The purpose of this report is to first identify and acknowledge that the UMD Maintenance Staff has a worker morale problem that is affecting its overall performance and reputation. This report’s second purpose is to explain to you the great lengths I have gone to study this problem. Finally, this report’s last purpose is to list my findings from my research and offer valuable recommendations for a solution to this problem.
Methodology
In order to find a solution to this problem I made a set schedule of times for interviews with employees and supervisors as well as time for research to help me understand this problem.
This schedule first began on September 27 when I collected a large amount of secondary research from the University’s library data base. I continued this research in the school’s library until the second week of October. From this point on in my research I found exclusively primary research in the form of Interviews. The second week of October is when I had my first interview of my research processes. This interview was with Nate Hanson, who is a former University of Minnesota Duluth Maintenance Staff employee and a former employee of the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire’s Maintenance Staff. The next interview took place the following week of October on Wednesday the 17th. In this interview I interviewed Andrew Kilness, who is current employee of Maintenance Staff. The next interview was held on Friday October 26th, with Assistant Student Supervisor, Vincent Renallo. The last interview took place of November 7th with the Student Supervisor, Ben Thompson. This ended my research and I began my analysis of the information until the end of
November.
Scope
Unfortunately I was unable to research this topic as thoroughly as I had hoped, due to the constraints of time. If allowed more time I would have interviewed Maintenance Staff employees from St. Scholatica as well as from University of Wisconsin Superior. I would also have made a survey to hand out to the current residents of all on campus housing units. With this additional information I would have further understood if this problem is contained at U.M.D. or if it is a problem with other Maintenance Staffs.
Analysis: Accountability
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” (Aristotle) At UMD Maintenance Staff we do not demand perfection but simply ask for your best effort. Recently the best effort has not been given and motivation on Maintenance Staff is low.
Pass the Buck Working on Maintenance Staff means that you are working with several other students as well as many different departments. Accountability can be lost when responsibility on a certain project is transferred between other departments and other employees. This “pass it on to someone else” mentality is a dangerous mentality to have spread throughout Maintenance Staff.
This mentality can be compared to the Broken Window Theory by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in which they state that. “Consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars.” (Moyer). This theory is talking about the setting of a rundown neighbor hood, but the lesson it teaches couldn’t apply more to our own Maintenance Staff. With even one employee not working to their full potential, others soon start to rationalize that it is ok for them to act this same way. Andrew Killnes, employee of Maintenance Staff for 18 months said in a recent interview “If we don’t fix a clogged sink, or a broken outlet we can always send it to Facilities Management.” What Andrew is speaking of is if he could not or did not feel like fixing the sink himself he could send the problem to another department. The lack of accountability is disturbing and needs to be addressed.
Analysis: Incentives
Why should I work harder than I have to? This is a statement heard too often in Maintenance Staff. The idea that we have no reason to work harder than we already do proves to me that employees are lacking proper Incentives. Incentives are a powerful tool to help boost worker motivation and output. (Get Everyone to Pull Their Weight). In order to provide incentives to employees you must first have a means of knowing how well the employees are doing, even when the boss is not watching. Surveys are a power tool to getting real information directly from the students that our company is offering our services to. “Nothing shows effectiveness like data, and nothing generates broad-based data as quickly and cheaply as an online student survey, which, with an array of tools, anybody can now do.” (Lipka). With data form surveys you have the means to know which employees are performing and which ones are not. Now all surveys are not created equal. One important detail to consider is that surveys may not be filled out with the most accurate information. “Students don 't respond fully, to the best of their ability, because they just want to finish.” (Lipka). An Incentive to motivate employees can be as little or as large as necessary. For our student employees who are used to being fairly tight on cash, even a small gesture can create a large competition between employees for the incentive. Incentives can also be a simple gesture of recognition. Employee of the month is something that does not exist on Maintenance Staff and could be used for worker motivation. When interviewing Nate Hanson, a former employee of the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire’s Maintenance Staff, I asked him if they had any incentives to work harder. This was his response. “Yea, we had a monthly contest for employee of the month. No one tried especially hard for it but it did make the job a little more competitive and fun.” By adding a little friendly competition to a job can make the work seem more like play.
Wages
“I don’t get paid enough to do some of this stuff.” (Andrew Kilness). Working on Maintenance Staff has its benefits, such as learning valuable skills that you will use the rest of your life such as unclogging a sink or patching a hole in the drywall. While these benefits are valuable there is still the undeniable fact that we all receive minimum wage and are not allowed to work any overtime. In four separate interviews with both employees and supervisors, I had asked the question “Do you feel that employees here are being fairly compensated for the work they are doing?” This was one question that I saw several different types of responses to. The general attitude I received from the two employees that I interview was that they both thought they deserved some type of raise after the amount of time they had been working for Maintenance Staff. “When you are getting paid minimum wage it makes it easier to justify working slower.” (Nate Hanson). In response to hearing this during an interview from Nate, I then asked him what did he think was a fair amount of pay for the job. “I don’t know, anything besides minimum wage. It kind of sucks to know that they are paying you the absolute least amount of money they have to.” (Nate Hanson). I handed out a simple survey to 11 people who work in the maintenance office. (Refer to figure 1) I received all 11 surveys back and to no surprise most people believed that they would work harder with more pay. The general tone I heard from both students I interviewed was that they felt that they deserved somewhere between 9 and 10 dollars per hour. The last interview I conducted in my research was with Student Supervisor Ben Thompson. I saved this interview for last so I could take all the input from the interviews with the employees and use that to ask Ben about specific problems and concerns the staff had. I used this time to ask Ben the same question I had asked the employees, “Do you feel that employees here are being fairly compensated for the work they are doing?” His response was “When employees first start on staff, they all start at the minimum wage. Then for every semester they work for Maintenance Staff they will receive a 50 cent raise. It is just in the past year or two that the university has been on a pay freeze. So because of that no one has received any raises in the past two years.” (Ben Thompson). In a journal I was reading in my research process one expert suggested that overtime pay is the easiest and fastest way to boost worker morale and satisfaction. (Snow).
Analysis: Disciplinary Action
Supervision on Maintenance Staff has always been low, with the intent that everyone is honest and is telling the truth. There are several times when the Student Supervisor cannot be around to make sure that everyone is working at their full potential. With this time is when employees abuse the privilege and tend to let their work habits slide. In the 18 months I have worked for Maintenance Staff I have yet to see a single employee receive any severe disciplinary action. Discipline is a way to motivate employees even when the boss is not present. While discipline can be a useful tool to help boost employee performance it can also crush employee morale. At Maintenance Staff discipline has been almost not existent, and it shows in employee’s performance. I asked Andrew Kilness what kind of discipline is enforced at work. “I don’t really know of anything that would piss off Thompson. I guess he has threatened to send us home without pay for the day.” (Andrew Kilness). With no disciple in the work employees have no reason to work harder than they feel is necessary.
Conclusion
While researching worker morale in a low supervised setting I was able to conclude that there were three major components missing from the work place. The first component missing was accountability. Employees are able to work at any speed without any superior knowledge. The second component is that employees are lacking an incentive to work harder than they believe is necessary. Due to low wages and no overtime pay employee’s morale and work ethic tend to slide. Without any acknowledgement from supervisors, employees tend to feel as if their work is going unnoticed. The last component missing from Maintenance Staff is discipline. With limited disciplinary action employees will continue to push the boundaries of what is acceptable or not. From these examples we must use what we know to formulate a plan to address the problem of low work morale.
Recommendations
With months of research behind me I have prepared two recommendations that I believe are crucial to improving employee morale at Maintenance Staff. To hold employees accountable for their actions a more serious disciplinary plan of action must be instilled. I suggest implementing a three strike policy that allows employees to learn from their mistakes twice before being severely punished at the discretion of the supervisor. With employees being held accountable for their mistakes, time and resources wasted on a project will be reduced. A lack of incentives for Maintenance Staff is a common theme among employees that I have interviewed. I suggest that several steps be taken to instill incentives in Maintenance Staff. First installing an employee of the month program creates healthy competition among employees for a title that may come with a money incentive or even a food incentive. Since the university is on a pay freeze at the moment and employees wages cannot be raised this can be a way to boost overall morale. Secondly by adding a paid lunch when the employee’s performance calls for it is a cheap and easy way to give employees an incentive to reach for. If Maintenance Staff adopts these ideas, employee moral will rise and then result in a rise in production in a low supervised setting.
Works Cited
Balasubramanian, Sridhar, Aleda V. Roth, and Enno Siemsen. "Incentives that induce task-related effort, helping, and knowledge sharing in workgroups." Management Science 53.10 (2007): 1533+. Academic OneFile. Web. 4 Dec. 2012.
Egrot, Margaret. “How to Tackle Poor Performance.” Community Care 8 April. 2010. Academic OneFile. Web. 27 Sep. 2012.
“Get Everyone To Pull Their Weight.” Financial Advisor 2 Aug. 2012. Academic OneFile. Web. 27. Sept. 2012
Hanson, Nate. Personal Interview. 3 Oct. 2012
Kilness, Andrew. Personal Interview. 16 Oct. 2012
Lipka, Sara. "Want Data? Ask Students. Again and Again." The Chronicle of Higher Education 57.43 (2011). Academic OneFile. Web. 4 Dec. 2012.
Moyer, Don. Harvard Business Review 83.2 Feb. 2005. Academic OneFile. Web 4 Dec. 2012
Ranallo, Vincent. Personal Interview. 25 Oct. 2012
Snow, Tamsin. “Little Things are Vitally Important to Staff Wellbeing, Says DH Report.” Nursing Standard 22.42 (2008): 5. Academic OneFile. Web. 27. Sep. 2012.
Thompson, Ben. Personal Interview. 7 Nov. 2012