How can a manager motivate a workforce and what are the major benefits Essay - 4

How can a manager motivate a workforce and what are the major benefits of this to a company Support your answer with examples - Essay Example This model states that there are five different main elements of a job that can result in motivating employees, these five main elements include, skill variety, task identity, task significance along with independence and reaction being the two most important elements of a job (DAFT, 2011, p.421). Body The model of job characteristics states that employees are motivated to perform those jobs where they can use different sets of skills and the skills that are required for such a job must require an employee to use that are of higher level. For example: managers can motivate an entry level employee in Human Resource Department if the employee is allowed to work on tasks that require higher level skills such as screening of resumes, creating training and interviewing schedules and other skills. According to Bremner and fellow researchers, skill variety is one of the main job characteristics that led to making employees feel that their work was meaningful and this feeling employees are m otivated as they feel that their skills are being used to perform are important for the job (Bremner, 2011, p.15). The job characteristic model asserts that employees are motivated to work on those tasks in which they feel that they are in control and due to their contribution a particular task was completed from the moment it started to the moment it ended. For example: a recruitment specialist will be motivated from hiring an employee in which he performed the duties of conducting job analysis and ended the task by hiring a suitable employee for a particular position. The employee would end up being de-motivated if he was only allowed to conduct job analysis and screen employees and selection of the employee was done by another employee. According to a literature search conducted by Rizwan and other researchers, there is a positive relationship between employee performance and job involvement (Rizwan, 2011, p.81). They state that the higher the level of an employee in a job, the h igher is the performance level of the employee. A third element of a job emphasized upon by the model is the element of task significance and the model states that employees are motivated to work on those assignments that are significant for others who are within the organization as well as outside the organization. For example: managers can motivate employees by assigning them tasks that are of significant importance to the top level of the management as this will make employees feel that they are needed by the organization. According to Grant, employee performance as well as dedication of lifeguards was positively impacted due to the significance of their task for others (Grant, 2008, p.120). A fourth important component of a job that leads to employee motivation is the amount of freedom to make decisions regarding how a particular job should be performed. For example: a teacher who is handed over a curriculum and course outline to follow by the supervisor will be less motivated t o perform his/her job as compared to a teacher who is allowed to design the curriculum as well as the outline to teach the students. According to Cordery and fellow researchers, employee team performance was degraded when they were faced with uncertain situations, but employee team performance became better due to higher level of autonomy even when they faced uncertain situati