Week 3 - Motivation

Week 3 – Motivation

Improving Staff Performance

There are two different types of motivational theory, content theories and process theories. Content theories assume people have a set of needs which they pursue and process theories assume individuals set their goals and calculate how to achieve them. I will now explain one of the process theories, the goal setting theory. This theory states that employee performance is directly linked to task performance. Goals give direction to employees about what needs to be done and how much effort is required to complete the task. The main source of motivation is the willingness to work towards the attainment of the goal. The goals set to employees must be well thought out, achievable but at the same time not too easy. Feedback also needs to coincide with the goals, feedback can help regulate the goals difficulties and aids the employees to get more involved and thus leads to greater job satisfaction. As well as the advantages of this theory, there are also some limitations, these are -

·         At times, the organizational goals are in conflict with the managerial goals. Goal conflict has a detrimental effect on the performance if it motivates incompatible action drift.

·         Very difficult and complex goals stimulate riskier behaviour.

·         If the employee lacks skills and competencies to perform actions essential for goal, then the goal-setting can fail and lead to undermining of performance.

·         There is no evidence to prove that goal-setting improves job satisfaction.

McDonalds has based its success on the motivation theories having altered only some aspects of them. 'McDonalds' adheres to four simple principles, which give the possibility to increase the performance of its employees:

1. The company must elaborate different systems of motivation for every department.

2. The personnel must have clear and attainable aims. It is better to have one aim per a person.

3. The aims must change: managers should have one aim for half of a year. For example, at first a manager examines the number of clients, then he/she examines the number of returning clients; and then he/she should analyse the increase in business sales. This method gives the possibility to find new abilities of employees and to check new methods of work.

4. The rise of salary amount must be sensible for an employee.
The 'McDonalds' company applies three components of the motivation system: financial encouragement, non-financial encouragement, and social.

There is an extremely obvious link between McDonalds’ motivation theory and the goal setting theory discussed in this blog. McDonalds have looked at various motivational theories, both content theories and process theories and then applied and updated them to suit their organisation. They have clearly integrated the goal setting theory into their own motivational system, along with updating and adding in some more factors that the company felt was appropriate.

Conclusion – An effective business needs to maximise employee performance, and the best way to do that is with a well-motivated work force, so the way in which McDonalds motivates its employees is crucial. After studying a range of varying motivation theories I think McDonalds have done extremely well to integrate different theories into one system that has been proven to work through McDonalds’ standard quality of the production and all round high performance levels. This blog has also shown how important it is for a company to understand motivational theories and apply to them their specific business.