ASSESSED COURSEWORK
Module Code
HRM4002-B
Module Name
People Work and Organisations
Title of Coursework (please provide whole question)
To what extent and under what circumstances might a pay increase serve to motivate people at work?
Word count (not including bibliography and appendices)
2084
Date of submission
15/12/16
Statement of Authenticity:
By submitting this assignment through Blackboard, I confirm:
• That this work is my own and that I have not plagiarised the work of others in any form whatsoever.
• That I am aware of the University’s definition of Plagiarism and understand how it can be avoided.
• That this work, or any part of it, has not been previously submitted to the University of Bradford for assessment in any other module.
• That I have read and understood the information provided below.
Signed Date 15/12/16
PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism is the copying or acquiring of the work of others and, directly or indirectly, claiming it to be your own independent and original work. This is what the University of Bradford policy on academic integrity says about plagiarism:
“A dissertation, thesis, essay, project or any other work which is not undertaken in an examination room under supervision but which is submitted by a student for formal assessment must be written by the student and in the student’s own words, except for quotations from published and unpublished source, which shall be clearly indicated and acknowledged as such…”
If you copy work for assessment, it defeats the whole purpose of the exercise. When work that you have copied is marked it is not your progress that is being evaluated but that of somebody else. And if it is someone else’s work, the feedback you receive will not help you improve your own potential.
Plagiarism is an issue that the University of Bradford takes very seriously and is treated as a form of Academic Misconduct (or cheating).
There are four main forms of plagiarism:
1. Copying or using another person’s work, including the work of another student (with or without their consent), and claiming or pretending it to be your own;
2. Presenting arguments that use a blend of your own and the directly copied words of the original author, with or without acknowledging the source;
3. Paraphrasing another person’s work, but not giving due acknowledgement to the original writer or organisation publishing the writing, including work on Internet sites;
4. Colluding with other students and submitting identical or near identical work.
However it is very important that you are aware of Self-Plagiarism. This is described in a document called “What is Academic Misconduct” which is available on the Legal and Governance website.
You must not submit the same assignment, or the any part of that assignment, as the assessment for two modules, nor should you “cut and paste” large sections of work from one submission into another. You can refer to your own work (whether submitted for another module or published elsewhere) but you must acknowledge this by citing the original work, just like any other source that shapes your own work.
How to avoid plagiarism:
Applying, analysing, criticising or quoting other people’s work is expected of you and is perfectly acceptable providing you always:
1. Attempt to summarize or restate in your own words another person’s work, and give acknowledgement to that person. This is usually done by citing your sources in the text of the assignment and presenting a list of references at the back ; or
2. By always using quotation marks (or indenting lengthy quotations in your text) to distinguish between the actual words of the writer and your own words. Once again, you would cite all these sources in the text straight after the quote and present full details of these in your list of references.
Using Turnitin:
You must be very careful to ensure that your submission is free from Plagiarism before you submit it. All submissions are made electronically via Turnitin which is a piece of software that is able to identify “non-original” content within a submission. When you submit your work it is matched to previously submitted work both at the University of Bradford, on the web and work submitted to other Universities across the world. You will be presented with an Originality Report which will highlight any non-original content in your work.
You are permitted to submit a draft version of your work to Turnitin before the final submission deadline. This will allow you to see the Originality Report for the draft and to address any issues that the report identifies. The report can take a few hours to generate, so give yourself sufficient time to receive and examine the report and to be able to work on your submission as necessary before the deadline passes. It is essential that you understand what is expected and how plagiarism can be avoided.
The university provides a great deal of resources to help students understand their responsibilities. Information about these services is available at the LSS workshop site.
If there are any specific issues relating to plagiarism and or Turnitin please contact the relevant Module Leader or your Personal Academic Tutor.
People Work and Organizations
Introduction
An increase of an employee’s salary plays a great role in their motivation. Employees are seen as the most significant assets in a firm and employee’s satisfaction is stressed as one of an essential thing to ensure that a business improves and that customer are satisfied. The amount of salary that an employee is paid is a key factor which contributes to employee satisfaction in a job. The amount of remuneration a worker earns is seen as a scoreboard by which employees gauge the value that a company places on their services. Salary is a great motivator to employees who are focused on meeting basic needs that are necessary for survival. For instance, if a firm promise to increase a worker’s salary if their performance increases, the employee will be motivated by this and try improving their performance. As a result of this, the company’s productivity and satisfaction of customers’ increase. A firm should not consider the time spent on the job, and rather it should consider the quantity of work delivered for increasing the worker’s salary.
There are advantages of using the money to motivating employees which include; the higher wages motivate workers to work harder, leads to lower turnover, improves quality and customer service. It reduces absenteeism and disciplinary problems, firms also little user amount of money in monitoring employees among others. Companies should also be wary that the employees may start valuing money more than anything else. However, companies should not be afraid on their creativeness when it comes to using money as a motivator. There are different theories in the PWO MODULE which try to explain the circumstances where pay increase can motivate employees and the extent to which the pay increase can be done. These theories include; Maslow hierarchy of needs theory, expectancy theory, Locke’s goal theory, Herzberg two-factor theory among others.
Maslow hierarchy of needs theory
Maslow hierarchy of needs theory is a theory which states that people have classes of hierarchy needs and some needs must be taken care of before others. The pyramid of requirements is divided into two separate classes; the deficiency needs and the growth needs. The application of this theory in work situations helps employers ensure that the workers can satisfy the deficiency needs. Wages are part of the deficiency needs in that if the wages are low, the workers will not be able to satisfy their wants. Provision of financial bonuses according to this theory, helps to fulfill the need for esteem (Fang, 2012, p.1180). Despite increasing the pay to workers, the firm should also provide an atmosphere of praise. Creation of healthy working environment is necessitated by the fact that by only increasing the wages, it will only serve to satisfy the deficiency needs rather than to improve the performance of the organization and customer’s satisfaction. The agency should provide an increase of salary to workers and also provide bonuses which motivate the employees so that they work to their full potential. (Estes, 2012, p. 6). Failure to increase the pay, the person cannot be able to move to the next level; of needs without satisfying the previous need.
Locke’s Goal Theory
Locke’s goal theory involves setting up specific goals which will bring about higher performance and thus increase the efforts of workers. Locke’s theory pushes for employee’s participation while setting the goals. An increment of salary in this theory is essential so as to ensure that employees attain the set ambitious goals. Provision of incentives like bonuses, awards and wage increase will make sure that the workers achieve the goals which are seen as unattainable. Attainment of the set ambitious targets by the motivation of employees will ensure that the firm gets more profit and that the customers get quality services than when the goals are simple. The company will also move to greater heights and even be able to compete healthily with the already established companies who are producing the same product (Ledford, 2013, p.32). Locke’s theory involves identifying the need for the goal, developing an action plan to meet the aims of the company and meeting with the workers to review the progress of the action plan set. Depending on the results, the company can increase the salary of the employees to motivate them.
Three-Dimensional Theory of Attribution
Three-dimensional theory of attribution is concerned with how the firm gives specific feedback to the employees. For example, an employer may praise an employee for the way he is carrying out his work though the results of that work are not good. As a way of appreciating the efforts of workers, the company may increase their salary to motivate them and show the employees that the methodology that they are using in their work is good despite the outcomes being poor. (Larkin, 2012, p. 1100). The worker will feel very motivated and will always try improving their efforts to the point that their labor will start bearing fruits which are the good performance. For example, in an organization where the workers are selling a certain product, they may try very hard to convince customers buy their products but fail. The employer may see these efforts and increase their salary so that the worker does not give up. Three-dimensional theory basis its grounds on the fact that the workers are giving their best in their department of work before giving them incentives or even increasing their salaries.
Expectancy theory
Expectancy theory is concerned with the fact that improved performance will result from having the necessary support, having the right resources available and having the right skills to do the job (Muogbo, 2013, p.78). The increase of pay to the employees helps improve the motivation variables such as expectancy, instrumentality, and valence. Instrumentality is the belief that if someone does his job very well, there is a particular reward that he will receive. In this theory, the rules of the bonus game are crucial in that one needs to understand the relationship between the performance and the outcome. Trust, and Transparency is important in the process that decides who gets the reward for his good performance (Larkin, 2012, p.1100). Valence is concerned with the importance that an individual place on the expected result. For instance, if the valence is positive the worker considers attaining the good performance rather than not achieving it. For example, if an employee is motivated by the money rather than improved performance the valence is negative. An employer should not think that increment of salary works with all people in an organization, but some individual employees do not perceive that.
Expectancy theory is mostly a traditional attitude work situation. How an employee is motivated depends on whether they will accept the reward on offer for good performance and whether they believe more effort will lead to that reward (EK, 2013, p.79). Vroom’s theory is based on the efforts people make towards expected outcome and the contribution they feel they can make towards those issues. The pay increase is thus necessary for expectancy theory because a worker will evaluate the amount of the salary increase before deciding whether to improve her performances in the job and accepting the reward. Employees also consider the environmental conditions of the workplace, the way they are handled in the organization, the management of the firm before either declining or accepting the reward given.
Equity theory
Equity theory is concerned with ensuring equality in the amount that different employees earn. Employees believe that fair treatment which makes them motivated should be maintained among the co-workers and the organization. Workers believe that parity between the inputs that they bring to the team should be balanced with the salary or outcome that they receive (Gerhart, 2014, p.43). Belief in equity ensures that only those who deserve pay increase gets it. A wage increase is only implemented for employees who have made a significant improvement in their performance, rather than those who have done nothing to improve. Every worker will work hard to ensure that they get are rewarded since if they do not they will not be rewarded. There is a belief in this theory that, if a worker feels that they are underpaid then the member of staff will develop a negative towards the organization and the employee may stop performing well (Presslee, 2013, p.1807). For instance, if a full-time employee probably earns less than a part time worker, an adverse effect may arise in the full timer’s sense of equity and their personal motivation. The firm may increase the salary of the part-time employee so as to motivate them.
Equity theory helps the managers appreciate the efforts made by the workers, by improving their personal terms and conditions (Sirota, 2013, p.1017). An employee who is over-compensated may increase his energy. Sometimes some employees may feel that they are undervalued because someone else gets an increase in salary and they think that their input is more superior to theirs. Provision of incentives can be implemented by paying workers simply by piecework rather than hourly wages (Michalos, 2014, p. 6890). Piecework payment can be applied when the talents of employees in your firm are different. Workers who work very fast are rewarded well while the new staff without experience can also be motivated to work faster to ensure salary increment. For example, this strategy is applied to freelance writers and dress makers where one is paid for the number of pieces that they turn in. In this, every worker has the option to earn more by submitting more pieces. Salary increase fairness and equity are portrayed, by the fact that every person is rewarded depending on their efforts.
Herzberg’s Two- Factor Theory
Herzberg, a two-factor theory is based on satisfiers and dissatisfies Satisfiers are those that motivates an employee such as salary increase for the well-done job while dissatisfies include maintenance (Cho, 2012, p.382). Satisfiers are essential motivators when rewarding workers because of the excellent work performance and the nature of the work itself. Herzberg believed that the satisfiers like increasing salary of employees hold the greatest potential for the real performance of workers. Factors like, the increase of pay to motivate the employees to ensure employee’s life outside work runs smoothly (Michalos, 2014, p. 6890). Other satisfiers like the achievement, recognition, advancement go hand in hand with the salary increase to enhance motivation to workers thus high work performance. The dissatisfiers correlate with the satisfiers, though the dissatisfiers are extrinsic motivators while satisfiers are intrinsic. Extrinsic motivators are concerned with administration, work environment and company policies working conditions among others. These factors assist a worker despite his salary being increased to improve his performances and also increases more of his motivation in his duties.
Conclusion
It’s evident that pay increase plays a great role in the motivation of people at work. To effectively motivate employees to improve their job performance, the employer needs to employ a set of tools that includes salary increase while still putting emphasis on non-monetary rewards. Money does inspire at a particular stage of life, however, other factors like team engagement, respect, dignity, recognition and rewards also help. The increment of salary shows that a firm appreciates the services rendered by the workers. Pay increase makes the employees provide quality services since they feel that they are part and parcel of the organization. As a result, the customers enjoy good service delivery and satisfaction. For instance, a firm which is in its initial stages of starting up, in a region where other established companies are producing the same product, the company may promise increment in the pay of workers if their performance is good. An increase of salary will ensure that the firm jump starts fast and can compete favorably with other established organizations. Different theories in the PWO module have explained the extent and circumstances under which salary increase motivates the workers. The equity theory helps stimulate only the employers who deserve, by raising their wages. Equity ensures that those who do not give good performance and do not attract more customers do not get salary rise. Expectancy theory helps set ambitious goals to the employees. Employee’s salary is raised to ensure that the workers try their best to achieve these high goals. Maslow hierarchy of needs helps ensure that the employees are motivated by increasing their pay to make sure they can solve their deficiency and growth needs. The needs are handled in stages and at different times depending on the level of income.
References
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