Good leadership in business is the best way to achieve business success. Good leaders require skill and knowledge of how to handle the firm’s resources, which are scarce, and produce the highest possible outputs from the resources available. Employees are the most vital part of any company. Thus, employee motivation is necessary in order to improve their quality of work.
The thesis of my essay is to analyze the best leadership practices for WooWoo Company. The company requires a strong organization motivation plan to enhance their level of service delivery. My arguments are based on existing theories, which are debatable.
Design an organization motivation plan for WooWoo Company
There are many theories explaining how to achieve positive employee motivation. The most effective theory is the incentive theory. According to Kruse (2012), the incentive theory calls for both individual performance and teamwork performance for the company. The firm leader can incorporate the various aspects of the incentive theory plan to achieve the right employee motivation for his company (Kruse, 2012).
The incentive theory categorizes three levels of incentive plans; group, company and individual. The individual incentive plan entails offering rewards or incentives to good workers based on individual merit. Thus, every worker strives at attaining good merit in order to gain the reward. In most cases, individual incentives involve promotion of work for the good performing employees. On the other hand, group incentives engage employees in groups where they work as teams to achieve certain merit. This can occur in firms where there are departments or work division. The group incentives encourage teamwork, high quality of work and sharing of ideas among workers. Consequently, company merit engages the whole company in performance appraisal especially for small companies with few employees. Company incentives are offered when the company attains higher sales than the targeted sales. The firm increases employee motivation by equitably sharing the profits to all their employees as incentives. This enables the leader encourage high productivity (Kruse, 2012).
The WooWoo Company is a small Company that aims at attaining high sales and high productivity. The main problems affecting the firm are overhead costs and delay in delivery. The incentive plan would play a vital role in improving the situation at WooWoo Company. The leader at the firm should incorporate the various categories of the incentive motivation plan in order to improve the level of employee motivation at the firm. First, the company has few employees, thus, individual performance can be assessed. Employees who stand out in good performance should be appreciated. This creates employee motivation on the grounds that each employee would want to get the rewards offered for the best performance. Thus, I implemented the “best employee of the month” scheme for the WooWoo Company.
Consequently, individual performance is not sufficient for creating an effective employee motivation plan. Therefore, group motivation is also fundamental in establishing a concrete motivation plan. Since the firm is divided into departments, then each department can be viewed as a group. If all departments are in a competitive nature, the level of service delivery will improve substantially. Furthermore, this creates teamwork and sharing of ideas among employees. If employees work together in groups, then the quality of work increases and it saves time. Lastly, company incentives are the last level of employee motivation strategy. If all the departments are functioning well and the service delivery is perfect, then the leader should move to the final step of making the firm united. Every company sets its goals and annual targets. When the departments are functioning well, it is easy to fulfill the firm’s goals and targets. Company incentives will encourage the employees in all levels of the company to work harder and their level of motivation towards work will increase.
The WooWoo Company would consider applying the three types of incentives in the following order. First, group incentives should be the initial stage of employee motivation. Group incentives will create the right organization culture. Second, while grouping individuals according to departments, delegation of work increases. Thus, there has to be a leader for every group. The best performing groups are supposed to be awarded and the leader should also be awarded as well. This is a form of individual incentive. Finally, company incentives should be the final part of the motivation plan, since it brings the whole company together.
There are numerous ways of motivating a minimum wage service worker. Although they may have a lower rank in the company, they play a vital role in the company. One good way of motivating a minimum wage service worker is through career growth, development and learning. Minimum wage service workers who perform their duties exceptionally can be granted career growth and development through employee training. Further, minimum wage service employees can be motivated through work appraisal. If the firm considers its entire employees equal, then it creates teamwork. For a minimum wage service worker in the WooWoo firm, appreciating their work and considering them as a vital part of the company would improve their work motivation. Moreover, autonomy can improve the level of employee motivation for subordinate workers. Engaging subordinate workers in making some of the firms’ decision, at the subordinate level, will increase their dedication towards work. Theory Y of employee motivation calls for the above strategies while improving the level of employee motivation in an organization (Hernandez & O'Connor, 2010).
Theory y argues that if the firm delegates some the decision making powers to its subordinate employees, at the subordinate level of decision-making, then the employees will be more motivated towards their work. Moreover, employee training is another positive strategy tailored to achieve good employee dedication towards their work (Hernandez & O'Connor, 2010).
The relevance of the individual worker in today’s organizational context has increased significantly. Most employees now focus on career development through improving their study levels or their competency levels. The current organizational scenario simulates a mutual benefit situation for both employees and the firm. Most companies now aim at matching the individual and organizational needs of employees and the company collaboratively. This is because the importance of individual employee performance in some organizational stages. There are employees who show outstanding levels of performance and skill to a firm. These employees deserve promotions or salary increase (Fargus, 2010).
Some organizations invest in professional workers to attain the right customer satisfaction. For instance, since the WooWoo Company invests a lot in applications, there is need for software managers. It may be expensive to accommodate many software managers depending on the size of the company, but the firm hugely depends on their professionalism. Thus, the firm may categorize these software managers as firm assets. This is an example of how the role of the individual worker has increased its significance especially in high tech firms.
Increase in the complexity of work, competency development and difference in ways of thinking among employees has made the individual worker special to any organization. Increase in complexity of work calls for skill, talent or innovation. The difference in the ways of thinking brings out the brilliance of some employees. In the current organizational context, employees of high skill and talent are given special employee training and mentorship in order to suit various organizational roles. For example, some companies mentor and train certain employees, who show good leadership skills, to assume the leadership position of the organization in the future (Fargus, 2010).
References
Kruse, K. (2012). Employee engagement 2.0: How to motivate your team for high performance: a "real-world" guide for busy managers. S.I.: Kevin Kruse.
Hernandez, S. R., & O'Connor, S. J. (2010). Strategic human resources management in health services organizations. Clifton Park, NY: Delmar Cengage Learning.
Fargus, P. (2010). Measuring and improving employee motivation. London: Financial Times Prentice Hall.
