The Pointer Investment (H.K.) Limited which is a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned list company welcomed a new general manager Mr. Chan, a 34 year old Chinese man with accounting background. The employees of Pointer are half local recruited and these years they have been found less motivated. They are all counting Mr. Chan will bring some new changes, or some of them are considering to leave. The main goal for Mr. Chan is to find out the real needs of the employees to increase their motivation and to quickly build his reputation to help his daily management.
The cause of the problem and its importance
Firstly, Mr. Chan wants to find out the reason why his employees are less motivated than years before. Without asking the employees publicly, he personally thinks that there might be several reasons:
Under market average salaries.
The salary level in the Chinese state-owned company is not as competitive as that in the multi-national company. There may be no changes in salary for many years. The Pointer is a Chinese background company. The salaries are determined by the HR department in headquarter in China. They may not fully understand the salary level in Hong Kong. There is just a slightly change in the salary in the past decade.
Job rotation
The managers of Pointer are all decided by headquarter and are rotated every few years. So the previous managers do not have much motivation to improve the situation, as they know that they won’t be in Hong Kong for a long time.
As a new comer, Mr. Chan thinks it is very important to solve the motivation problem for some reasons. Firstly, with establishing his authority, Mr. Chan can maintain a long-term stability and well manage the company. Secondly, Mr. Chan needs the team to work with passion which the performance of the company is related to his own income. Finally, Mr. Chan wants to solve the salary problem within a certain limit, as he has not many resources to use.
Expectancy Theory
To diagnose his