The question facing business in the future is determining what that age and experience are worth in terms of monetary compensation and benefits. This is a dilemma currently being faced by the Armed Forces, with many branches finding themselves to be top heavy with senior officers. The funding resources dedicated to personnel are not distributed in a fashion that attracts and retains military members, seriously jeopardizing the productivity of military organizations. (12) This is relevant in that many private organizations as well as public and government agencies are finding themselves in the same position. Retirement Incentive bonuses have become common place and are a primary tool used by organizations to cull the workforce. Will this remain a viable means of thinning an aging workforce?
In addition to family pressures, and salary and benefits needs, there is a growing concern throughout the nation?s work force concerning quality of life. While benefits and compensation are key to employee satisfaction, and therefore productivity, a strong value is placed on the emotional satisfaction one finds professionally. These emotional perks come out of all areas, and are as solid as additional training and added responsibility or as intangible as recognition, appreciation, and creativity. (13) Business must take into account the social implications of such information, as it becomes essential to address staff needs and to determine successful strategies that should surround any HRM policy.
New HRM Models
The management of human resources centers on a single basic function of the management process: staffing. The HRM professional is charged with matching the right person to the job. While recruitment is an exacting area of HRM, a more significant piece of employee productivity lies in motivation. Motivation methods are key to fashoning successful HRM models. Motivation is a deceptively simple concept but probably one of the most complex components of human resource management.
Motivation is simple in terms of human behavior. People are basically motivated or driven to behave in ways that they find rewarding. So the task seems easy; just find out what they want and hold it out as a possible reward or incentive. It becomes complex when trying to find a universal incentive in a very diverse workforce. What has value to worker A may be meaningless to worker B. And what has value at one point in time may become insignificant at another. For example, everyone has a need to eat. A big steak dinner, as an incentive to succesful completion of a task, is motivation – as long as your hungry! Had you just eaten, a steak dinner would hold no interest .
An additional factor in the motivation equation has to do with the reality of obtaining the reward. Telling a person that they will be promoted to sales manager if sales in that jurisdiction increase is empty if that task is percevied as virtually inpossible. Two conditions must be met for motivation to occur, according to Vroom’s expectancy theory of motivation. First the value of the particular outcome (such as recieving a promotion) is very high for the person and, secondly, the person feels that there is a reasonably good chance of accomplishing the task at hand and obtaining the outcome. This is the process of motivation. (14)
Theories of motivation center on a a single basic question: what do people want? Abraham Maslow states that humans have five basic categories of need; physiological, safety, social, ego, and self-actualization. These needs have been arranged in order of there importance to humans. When the basic physiological needs, food, drink, etc., are met, they no longer serve as motivation. Instead, those urges toward safety, i.e., protection and security, become the driving force. Human beings move up this needs ladder as basic needs are met.
Frederick Herzberg has divided Maslow’s hierarchy into two planes, the lower meeting physiological, safety and social needs, and the higher meeting those needs surrounding ego and self actualization. Herzberg believes that the best motivation lies in satisfying those higher level needs. Based on his studies, Herzberg believes that factors that satisfy lower level needs, which he identifies as hygiene factors, are markedly different from those, reffered to as motivators, that satisfy higher level needs. Herzberg states that if hygeine factors are inadequate workers will become disgruntled, but once satisfied there is no incentive to perform. Therefore, hygiene factors are necesary for preventing dissatisfaction, but very inefficient in encouraging motivation.
Job content, however is the source of motivating factors. Opportunities for achievement, recognition, responsibility, and more challenging jobs motivate employees. Motivating factors work because they appeal to higher level needs that are never completly satisfied. According to Herzberg, the best way to motivate employees is to build challenge and opportunities for achievement into their jobs. Herzberg reffers to this method of applying his theory as job enrichment. Basically, job enrichment consists of building motivators like opportunity for achievment into the job by making it more interesting and challenging.
This theory restructures more traditional HMR models since job enrichment is often accomplished by giving workers more autonomyand allowing them to do more of the planning and inspection normally done by
a supervisor. This is diametricaly opposed to strict hierarchal models.
The shifts made in HRM practices can be most easily observed in the accompanying table comparing traditional and innovative HRM models.
Alternate Work Systems Table
___________________________________________________
Traditional Model High-Committement Model
___________________________________________________
Narrowly defined jobsBroadly defined jobs
Specialization of workersRotation through jobs
and crosstraining
Pay by specific job contentPay by skills mastered
Closely supervised workSelf or peer supervision
Assignment or transfers byTeam assigns members to
the rule bookcover demands in flexible fashion
No career developmentPromotion of learning and growth
Employees as individual partsEmployees in a team
Employee kept ignorant aboutTeam runs as a business:
businessdata is widely shared
Status symbols used to Status differences
reinforce hierarchyminimizied
No employee feedbackBroad employee participation
_______________________________________________________________
In Conclusion
It seems apparent that HMR practices have evolved to more worker friendly models out of necessity. Studies have found that use of specific practices, or what are more commonly reffered to as "high performance work practices" enhances overall organizational practices. It was determined in a 1995 study that extensive recruitment and training procedures, incentive compensation and increased employe involvment are assosciated with lower levels of turnover, higher productivity, and better financial performance.
With regard to identifying the ideal HR systemfor innovation, it may be that such a definitive HR model would be to rigid for the innovative organization and it’s constantly changing needs. A flexible combination of traditional and high-commitment practices, and others found to be contingent on a strategy of innovation, may be what organizations need to remain successfully competative.
Notes
1.H. Stephen Glenn, Developing Capable People
(Rockland CA: Prima Press 1989) 14-21
2.Martin Isenberg, "A Short History of Human Resource Management," Strategic Human Resource Management Readings, (January 1994) University of Massachusetts Press, 97
3.Peter F. Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, (New York: Harper-Collins, 1999) 17
4.Drucker, 112
5.Beer, Spector, Lawrence,Mills,Walton, Managing Human Assets ( London: Collier Macmillan, 1984) 49-55
6.Gary Dessler, Personnel Management, 4th Edition, (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1988) 706
7. Dessler, 323
8.Drucker, 154
9.R.P. Kalleberg, Social Perspectives on Labor Markets, (New York: Academic Press, 1991) 119-149
10.US Bureau of Statistics Data Base, http://www.stats.gov.public
11.Drucker, 189
12.Jan Nybor, "More Than a Few Good Men" Navy Times, 14 Sept. 1994, 16
13.Dessler, 388
14.Victor H. Vroom, Work and Motivation, (New York: Wiley, 1964) 350-367
15.Fredrick Herzberg, "One More Time: How Do You Motivate Your Employees?" Harvard Business Review, vol. 47 Jan-Feb. 1968
16.Pritchard, DeLao, Von Bergen, "A field Test of Expectancy – Valence Incentive Motivation Techniques," Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, vol. 15 no.2 April 1976 111
17.Dessler, 323-338
18.Beer, et al, 165-167
19.Tushman and O’Reilly, Winning Through Innovation, (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997) 299
Biblography
Primary Sources
Collected Documents
Nybor, Jan.Navy Times, 14 Sept. 1994
Pritchard, DeLao, Von Bergen, "A Feild Test of Expectancy – Valence Incentive Motivation Techniques," Organizational Behavior and Human Performance vol.15
Herzberg, Fredrick, "One More Time: How Do You Motivate Your Employees?" Harvard Business Review vol. 47
Electronic References
US Bureau of Statistics Data Base
Books
Glenn, H. Stephen, Developing Capable People, Rockland CA: Prima Press 1989
Isenberg, Martin "A Short History of Human Resource Management," Strategic Human Resource Management Readings, (January 1994) University of Massachusetts Press
Drucker, Peter F., Management Challenges for the 21st Century, New York: Harper-Collins, 1999
Dessler, Gary, Personnel Management, 4th Edition, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1988
Kalleberg, R.P. Social Perspectives on Labor Markets, New York: Academic Press, 1991
Vroom, Victor H. Work and Motivation, New York: Wiley, 1964
Tushman & O’Rielly, Winning Through Innovation, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997