Free Custom «Motivation and employee performance within organizations» Essay Paper

1.0 Introduction and context

Founded in the year 1966, the McLaren Group consists of the following seven companies. Among the top shareholders in this group of companies include Daimler who owns 40 per cent, 30 per cent by the Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company, 15 per cent by chairman and chief executive Ron Dennis and 15 per cent by Saudt Mansour Ojeh. Located at the superb state-of the art facilities in Surrey, United Kingdom, the company is based on extraordinary talent and strong values.

The employees of these companies are the key to its success. These seven companies include McLaren Racing Ltd provides direction and professional support and advice to the operating companies,  McLaren Racing is the company behind the Formula One racing team, McLaren Marketing provides specialist advice to all the group companies and serves the marketing and media requirements of McLaren Racing and McLaren Automotive designs, engineers and builds high-performance sports cars.

In addition, McLaren Electronic Systems runs the data and communications systems for a Formula One teams and cars and supplies electronic control systems to other motorsports and McLaren Applied Technologies exploits technologies developed for Formula One in other areas. For example, the data processing and transmission technologies developed for Formula One can also be used in wireless, remote healthcare monitoring. Lastly, catering company Absolute Taste provides McLaren’s corporate hospitality at every Grand Prix, as well as high- end catering and event management for other clients.

The success of any organisation is highly dependent on well established and competent human resources. In today’s competitive business environment it is important for organisations to focus on staff motivation which in turn help them to achieve and realize it overall strategic goals and objectives. A strategic human resource management plan should capture the element of personnel performance by ensuring that it has the right people in place, the right mix of skills, employees display the right mix of behaviors, and making sure that employees are well developed.

The research problem that will be investigated in this paper is motivation and employee performance within organisations. The organisation in this context is McLaren Technology Centre. In McLaren Technology Centre motivation and performance means the employees have the skills and competence required to achive organisational goals and objectives. At McLaren Technology Centre competence is not performance but a state of being and a qualification to perform. This means at McLaren Technology Centre employee motivation always guarantees results in terms of organisations performance.

Motivation and employee performance plays a fundamental role at the McLaren Technology Centre because it broadens our views in as far as the benefits of aligning the organisational goals with performance. McLaren Technology Centre uses various employee motivation strategies that help the management to focus on those practices to raise its output. The objectives of this McLaren Technology Centre research problem will be: to determine the various motivation strategies the company can use, to investigate the theories behind employee motivation in organisations, and to explore the steps that can be used to motivate employees at McLaren Technology Centre.

The success of McLaren Technology Centre is highly dependent on well established and competent human resources. In today’s competitive business environment it is important for organizations to focus on staff motivation which in turn help them to achieve and realize it overall strategic goals and objectives. A strategic human resource management plan should capture the element of personnel performance by ensuring that it has the right people in place, the right mix of skills, employees display the right mix of behaviors, and making sure that employees are well developed.

Motivation and employee performance within organizations is the research problem that will be investigated in this paper. The organization in this context is McLaren Technology Centre. In McLaren Technology Centre motivation and performance means the employees have the skills and competence required to achive organizational goals and objectives. At McLaren Technology Centre competence is not performance but a state of being and a qualification to perform. This means at McLaren Technology Centre employee motivation always guarantees results in terms of organisations performance.

Motivation and employee performance within organizations plays a fundamental role at the McLaren Technology Centre because it broadens our views in as far as the benefits of aligning the organizational goals with performance. McLaren Technology Centre uses various employee motivation strategies that help the management to focus on those practices to raise its output.

1.1 Research objectives

The objectives of this McLaren Technology Centre research problem will be:

• Determine the various motivation strategies the company can use,
• Investigate the theories behind employee motivation in organizations,
• Explore the steps that can be used to motivate employees at McLaren Technology Centre.
• Conduct a detailed data collection and analysis.
• Determine the time plan and resources to be used in this research.

Chapter 2: Literature review

2.0 Literature review

Besides the fact that an individual’s ability plays an important role in determining employee work performance motivation also plays a fundamental role (Lewis, et.al, 2006). Managers in organizations must make sure that employees are motivated to perform their jobs and tasks to the best of their abilities. Lewis, et.al (2006) says that through motivation top management can create a good working environment that will make employees inspired to work and accomplish organizational goals.

Organizations should realize that job content and motivator factors are geared towards ensuring high performance in their operations. Lewis, et.al (2006) says that motivator factors are related to job content or what people actually do in their work. They further indicated that these factors are associated with an individual’s positive feelings about the job. These factors include the job itself, opportunities for achievement and advancement, responsibility and job challenge (Lewis, et.al, 2006).

On the other hand hygiene factors are associated with the job context or the environment in which the job is performed. Lewis, et.al (2006) indicated that company policy, administration, technical supervision, salary, working conditions, and interpersonal relationships are some of the examples of the hygiene factors that contribute towards employee motivation. Lewis, et.al (2006) says that hygiene factors are associated with an individual’s negative feelings about the job and they contribute towards employee motivation.

It is important to note that the first step in motivation is to closely look at issues that revolve around pay, working conditions and company policies. Pride, Hughes & Kapoor (2009) indicated that today it takes more than a generous salary to motivate employees. This implies that nowadays organizations are trying to provide motivation by satisfying employees less tangible needs. One of the motivation techniques which is very significant is management by objectives in which managers and employees collaborate in setting goals. Pride, Hughes & Kapoor (2009) indicated that “by allowing individuals to participate in goal setting and performance evaluation increases their motivation” (p. 290).

Job enrichment is also a method of motivating employees by providing them with variety in their daily tasks while at the same time giving them some responsibility for and control over their jobs (Pride, Hughes & Kapoor, 2009). According to Pride, Hughes & Kapoor (2009) the essence of this is that it provides workers with both more tasks to do and more control over how they perform them. Pride, Hughes & Kapoor (2009) established that job redesign is a type of job enrichment in which work is restructured to cultivate the worker job match. In this context motivation emerges from the fact that job redesign reduces employees stress at work.

According to Baron & Shane (2007) motivation is a key ingredient in the performance of many tasks but by itself, it is not a guarantee of improved performance. Studies indicate that even highly motivated employees may not be able to do a good job with faulty equipment. Baron & Shane (2007) established that the basic principles that generate high levels of motivation among employees are not complex in that managers have to set specific challenging goals, make sure that good performance is recognized and rewarded and treat employees fairly.

Flextime is another method of employee motivation. Pride, Hughes & Kapoor (2009) says that flextime is a system in which employees set their own work hours within certain limits determined by employees. They continue to say that the sense of independence and autonomy employees gain from having a say in what hours they work is a motivating factor. On top of that Pride, Hughes & Kapoor (2009) says that employees who have enough time to deal with non-work issues often work more productively and with greater satisfaction when they are on the job.

Employee empowerment is another fundamental method of employee motivation. Pride, Hughes & Kapoor (2009) established that “many companies are increasing employee motivation and satisfaction through the use of empowerment” (p. 296). By utilizing empowerment this implies that control no longer flows exclusively from the top levels of the organization downward. Pride, Hughes & Kapoor (2009) further says that empowered employees have voice in what they do and how and when they do it. This is therefore a motivating factor since managers set expectations, communicate standards, and institute periodic evaluations.

Bohlander & Snell (2009) noted that merit pay and bonuses can serve to motivate if employees perceive the raise to be related to the performance required to earn it. They however continue to say that theories of motivation in addition to behavioral science research provide justification for merit pay plans as well as pay for performance programs. Lewis, et.al (2006) commented that needs based approaches to motivation provide managers with an understanding of the underlying needs that motivate people to behave in certain ways.

Managers must have more complete perspectives on the complexities of employee motivation. Lewis, et.al (2006) says that it is important to understand why different people have different needs and goals, why individuals needs change and how employees change to try to satisfy needs in different ways. Managers should therefore understand these aspects of motivation have become relevant in the recent past in many organizations. Lewis, et.al (2006) also established that people often respond differently to the same situations and therefore their reactions to inequity will vary. The implication is that if the perceived inequity results in a change in motivation, it may therefore alter effort and performance of employees in an organization (Lewis, et.al, 2006).

Chapter 3: Methodology

3.0 Research plan and methods

3.1 Research approach: Qualitative or Quantitative

Quantitative approach will include the use of the organization’s numerical data. This research approach will facilitate the identification of numerical differences between groups of employees within the company. Another importance of this research approach for the organisation is that it will be used for predication in areas where there is a need to predict and give general account of a certain group of employees.

The use of qualitative approach will provide complex rich data while deriving meaning especially in the theoretical part of the research. The use of this research method will enable the researcher to have a deeper understanding and interpretation of motivational theories. Through this approach it is possible to explore various parts of the research. The implication is that the relationship of researcher and what is being researched is impossible to separate.

3.2 Relevant ethical issues

This research will be conducted in line with consideration of various ethical principles so as to present the truth and avoid errors. The use of ethical principles will prevent falsifying or misrepresentation of data and at the same time increase accountability and fairness during the research process. Some of the ethical principles to be observes in this research include honesty, information integrity, carefulness, confidentiality, responsible publication and mentoring, non-discrimination and social responsibility Resnik (n.d.). All this ethical issues will be observed during the research process to avoid inefficient and incomplete research materials. Greater specificity is needed.

3.2.0 Consent Letter from McLaren Technology Centre

McLaren Technology Centre.

Chertsey Rd, Woking,

Surrey GU21 4YH,

United Kingdom

Date:

Dear (participant’s name):

This letter is an invitation to McLaren Technology Centre to consider participating in questionnaire being administered by the above named student as part of his undergraduate degree in the Department of (dept name) at the University (University name) under the supervision of Professor (professor’s name). Provide the student with more information about this research area. Your cooperation will give detailed information about employee motivation in the company.

During this study, you will be asked to respond to some questions as to issues concerning employee motivation within the organization.  This questionnaire was made to be approximately a 25 minutes in length. However, kindly be feel free to expand on the answers you provide.  Besides that, in case there questions you feel not to answer or not contented answering, please indicate and go ahead to provide answers to questions you are comfortable with giving the response.

All the information will not to be disclosed.  The student will keep the data in a secure place.  Only the student and the faculty supervisor will have access to this information. After completion of this research, all data will be annihilated or put in a secure location. 

The results of my study will be of benefit to McLaren Technology Centre as well as other stakeholder at McLaren Technology Centre.

Yours Sincerely,

McLaren Technology Centre.

3.3 Information requirements in relation to the SROs

The specific research objectives will require that information about the available motivation approaches used by McLaren Technology Centre. The research will investigate if the company uses appraisals, flexible work plans and the presence of reward systems. Good enumeration is also entails the information requirements that will be used in this research. It will enable us to determine staff compensation levels and how their work plans are aligned with the company’s strategic goals.

3.4 Research design

The most appropriate research design for this dissertation is explanatory research. The use of this research design will describe the methods of employee motivation and ways of increasing their performance. The appropriateness of this research design is that it will help us to examine employee motivation over a long period of time and compare it with the other years or other organisations. According to the paper what is research design (n.d.) this type of research design will help the organisation to come up with casual explanations of for example the direct effect of increasing salary to the organisation’s overall performance (what is research design, n.d.).

3.5 Sampling

Sampling will be used in selecting individuals for the study (Gravetter & Forzano, 2008). Random sampling will be used so as to produce one outcome from a set of the possible outcomes of the research. The outcomes will be predictable each time and the process will guarantee that each of the possible outcomes is equally likely to occur (Gravetter & Forzano, 2008).  Gravetter & Forzano (2008) also says that in simple random sampling each and every individual in the company will have an equal chance and independent chance of being selected. The process will entail clearly defining the population from which the sample will be selected, listing all the members of the population and finally use a random process to select individual from the list (Gravetter & Forzano, 2008).

The properties of simple random sampling are that the population consists of N objects, sample consists of n objects, and all possible samples of n objects are equally likely to occur. The main advantage of simple random sampling is that it warranties that the sample chosen is representative of the population. As a result it ensures that the statistical conclusions will be valid.

Another advantage of using simple random sampling is because it enables the researcher to choose a sampling frame in which he or she will assign a single number to each element in the list not skipping any number in the process. A sample size of 100 individuals will be chosen which will be numbered from 1 to 100. The researcher may use the last two digits of the first column and then after that begin with the third number from the top. This will yield that person 30 to 40 may be selected into the sample.

3.6 Data collection techniques and procedures. Research instruments

The collection ofdata will be classified into two major types, quantitative or qualitative. Morse (2000) says that quantitative data are numerical and lend themselves to statistical analysis or simple arithmetic.  On the other hand, Morse (2000) says that qualitative data are often in narrative form and are useful in understanding why a program is not performing as expected or collecting the opinions of stakeholders within McLaren Technology Centre.

Quantitative methods entails that the team will come up with a questionnaire that will be self-administered by beneficiaries can provide information on their satisfaction and also use a formal survey of the beneficiaries (Morse, 2000). On the other hand, qualitative methods will be used. This will involve the use of focus groups that include the company’s staff and other stakeholders within the company. Morse (2000) says that interviews with staff members will be conducted but more so the questionnaires will play a critical role in this research.

The purpose of this questionnaire will be to investigate and describe the perceptions of employee motivation in regard with working environment. Some of the questions the research will seek to answer include: Behavior changes on employee motivation, the most affected age group in employee motivation.

The questionnaires will be both open ended and closed questions. Open ended questions will give the people a chance give more details that is a short expression of the questions that they will be answering. Closed ended questions will enable the people choose options either yes or no in the questionnaire giving them an easy time in answering it. There will be a total number of nine questions in the questionnaire. It is estimated that the majority of the people will complete at least five questions in each questionnaire.   

3.7 Methods of data analysis to be used.

The methods of data analysis for this research paper will include the use of charts and graphs in MS Excel. The use of charts and graphs will help us to refine and distill the data so that person who reads can obtain the required information without sorting through all of the data on their own. These two methods of analyzing data is often significant for supporting cases made with that data, because it presents the data in a clear and understandable way.

After data collection obtained data will be analyzed using analyzes tools such as MS Excel, and SPSS. According to Flake et.al (2009) categorical variables will be analyzed using X2 testing while continuous variables will be tested using unpaired t-test. Flake et.al (2009) also said that it will be important to conduct linear and logistic regressions to help in determining the specific factors predictive of employee motivation in the organization.

4.0 Resources and Time plan

The financial resources required to carry out this research is insignificance. The research will span for a period of three months from the February to April.