Primary Data
The primary focus of the tasks force groups is to pick a company where we would gather information about how they interpret organizational behavior throughout their work force atmosphere and to their employee’s. Many of us are focused with our companies with questions like “when would we be able to reach out to the company” and wondering what type of questions we would ask the employers and managers. What I came to realize is that with all the groups, we have already begun the process of how organization behavior works and what is necessary to obtain a healthy environment within a group of people.
With my group, at the very first class meeting, it seemed to me that most of the members knew each other and with that it created a relaxed atmosphere. With a relaxed …show more content…
atmosphere it was easy for all of us to introduce ourselves to one another and begin the process of choosing a specific company to focus on. During our first meeting we all agreed to assign ourselves with specific tasks that we would focus on for our groups person 1 wanted to be the organizer, person 2 the scheduler, person 3 would cover media, and lastly I choose to be the record keeper for our group. Once we settled with who was going to be in charge of what, we all came up with ideas and suggestions as to which company we could possibly focus on.
We all had great suggestions, but person 2 mention how we should probably focus on a company where someone we may know works at so we could have possibly more access to resources. I felt the same way as person 2 because I believe it would be helpful to have someone from the company helping you gather as much information needed. That’s when person 1 suggested 3 different companies Sodexo, Citizens Bank, and Dynamic Flowform. Person 2 stated “ Citizens bank wouldn’t be able to give us much information because its just one branch” and person 3 agreed with what person 2 had to say and mentioned if Dynamic Flowform wouldn’t allow us to do research on their company Sodexo would be our fallback. With a couple of days to think about these companies we came with an agreement that we wanted to focus more on Dynamic Flowform. This company focuses on manufacturing dimensionally precise, round, seamless, hollow components.
. We chose this because person 2 had an acquaintance with the Vice President of the company. It’s a unique company and we wanted to know how this small business focuses on their employee’s with organizational behavior. Then within the last few class meeting we prepared some possible questions that we would ask employees and managers. With our information all gathered and organized my group and I now have the resources to be able to do research on a “real life scenario” of organizational behavior within a company
Theory The article “Incentives and Motivation” mentions how managers and human resources are big on identifying a way to motivate their employers. It explains how most of the time they use bonuses as an incentive to get their workers motivated for the workday, but what the article explains is that money incentive bonuses don’t usually work. The article states, “ The problem with this is that people then game the system”. This typically means people cheat their way into getting the bonus no matter what is at stake, which could harm the company itself. Lets take for example a factory would award its workers an extra bonus if they produce materials with no defects, but with a bonus in mind workers would not report any defects and therefore harms the company’s reputation to its consumers who buy the products. The article has a small passage from Alfie Kohn, Harvard Business Review, who mentions reward are effective, but over time they don’t produce lasting changes in attitudes or behavior.
While rewards are effective at producing temporary compliance, they are strikingly ineffective at producing lasting changes in attitudes or behavior. The news gets worse. About two dozen studies from the field of social psychology conclusively show that people who expect to receive a reward do not perform as well as those who expect nothing. This result, which holds for all sorts of rewards, people and tasks, is most dramatic when creativity is involved. The article gives other options for improving the work environment so that people could enjoy their work. It states, “why not focus on improving the work environment so that people enjoy their work more”, it explains how with a more enjoyable atmosphere at work people would be more motivated. By making small changes like getting group members more involved and making them feel like a key factor of the group. This would improve one’s attitude towards work and feel as if they are needed. The employees are people who make up a company and therefore should feel as they are contributing in building the company for which they work. It teaches us how money incentive shouldn’t be our drive at the workplace, but something that has to be there to pay our bills and personal items and its not a driving focus that makes us come to work everyday.
So What?
Taking from what I read in the article it has made me realize that incentives are not key factors to improving someone’s work ability. Money and other luxurious gifts are not always the answer to improving a work atmosphere because over time those expensive rewards won’t change your attitude towards your work. It is important for me to keep in consideration that being involved and help change the environment so others could enjoy with what they are doing. With being more proactive in a group it could help other feel more motivated to do work too. If there are people in a group who seem not to do much work or speak it would be a good time to give those individuals certain tasks that would help them get involved. By giving them something to do they would be involved and soon be able to portray a positive attitude towards the group. By learning and understanding how these small changes could help improve a group’s dynamics it would overall help me take these changes to future task force groups.
Incentives and Motivation
Managers and HR type people are big on setting objectives and identifying a key metric to absolutely, without doubt determine whether or not that objective was met – usually tying bonuses to that metric. The problem with this is that people then game the system. If the key metric is lines of code per day, then people write excessively long, complex ways of doing things because that's what will get them rewarded. If the metric is defects per thousand lines of code, people stop reporting bugs. For any given metric, there's a simple way to game it and whether or not people realize they're doing it, they will trend towards gaming the system. Overall, this leads to a net loss for the company because people are concerned about their bonuses, instead of focussing on working well as a team and doing what's best for the company.
I'd always considered that bonuses and other incentive plans were just ineffective for engineers because they tend to have more of a build cool stuff value proposition rather than a make lots of money value proposition. It seems however, that incentive plans just don't work in general – Incentive Pay Considered Harmful is one of the articles that adds to the viewpoint that engineers shouldn't be given incentive plans, but it links off, sadly via a broken link, to the writings of Alfie Kohn for the Harvard Business review. Alfie fortunately, seems to have written a number of articles on the subject, one of which is available freely on his website: For Best Results, Forget the Bonus.
While rewards are effective at producing temporary compliance, they are strikingly ineffective at producing lasting changes in attitudes or behavior. The news gets worse. About two dozen studies from the field of social psychology conclusively show that people who expect to receive a reward do not perform as well as those who expect nothing. This result, which holds for all sorts of rewards, people and tasks, is most dramatic when creativity is involved.
Personally, I view rewards as punishment – when I get them, that's expected, when I don't that's punishment. Worse, when the wrong metrics are selected to judge whether or not to give the reward, or the circumstances change between the setting and receiving of the reward, the reward may be withheld because I focussed on doing what was best for the company instead of what is best for getting the reward. In whatever job I do, I consider it my professional duty to do my best and to achieve the best results I can for the company. I find it insulting that someone would question that level of dedication and professionalism by suggesting that dangling money in front of me would make me work harder.
Instead of using rewards, why not focus on improving the work environment so that people enjoy their work more – enjoyment is one of the strongest motivating factors in people.
Feeling like an important part of a team is another key motivating factor, so focus on building both good team spirit within departments but also a team spirit company wide – we should all feel like we contribute to more than just our little unit in the business, we are building the company each and every day. Ephox pulls off miracles of engineering on a regular basis and we do it by enjoying the work that we do. Every member of the engineering team is dedicated to improving the business and genuinely wants to see the business succeed. That's because we work as a team in a friendly, happy environment with carefully picked professional employees. We don't work for incentives or money, we work because we love what we do and take pride in it. The money has to be there to pay the bills and be able to do what we want to outside of work, so it's important to pay your employees well, but it's not the driving focus that makes us come to work everyday that managers tend to think it
is.
If you think your team isn't working at 100%, then look into how much they are enjoying their work, how well they gel as a team and how much the company is listening to their ideas, comments and feedback to make them feel like part of the company's team, then improve those areas. Dangling a carrot in front of them is more likely to demoralize them and cause them to game the system.
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