Name

: Lidya Velesia

Student ID

: 1566049

Class

: PRA-MBA B

Subject

: Introduction to Business

MOTIVATING THE WORKFORCE AND MANAGING HUMAN RESOURCES

Employees are the most valuable resources for the company because employees works the actual
tasks to achieve companys objectives (O.C. Ferrel, et.al. 2014). Human relations is one of the way
to motivate employees to perform the job, focus on improving work morale, increase and
maximising employees productivity and creativity. Motivation is an inner drive that directs a
persons behaviour toward goals (O.C. Ferrel, et.al. 2014). Motivating employees to stay focus on
work is a key responsibility of management, because this focus commitment involving many
emotions which resulting in carry out expectation and obligation of employment. Employees who
recognise a need is motivated to taking action or actions to achieve the satisfaction of need or goals,
this influenced by their perception of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards; extrinsic rewards is
recognition and benefit that received from someone else, while intrinsic reward is personal
satisfaction and enjoyment of achieving the goals. Both reward are giving contributions to grow
motivation by stimulating employees to do their best to contribute in business goals. Researchers
have conducted several perspectives of motivation and productivity and have been applied to
workers:
Perspectives of Employee
Motivation
The Classical Theory of Motivation
The Hawthorne Studies

Assumption
conducted by Frederick W. Taylor and Frank and Lilian
Gilbreth: money is the sole motivation for workers.
Measurement of productivity of employees under certain
physical conditions

After both perspectives, many researchers developed some important theories of employees
motivation (O.C. Ferrel, et.al. 2014) such as:
Theory of Employee Motivation

Theory Assumption

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

People have five basic needs; physiological, security, social,

esteem, and self actualisation.!
Arranged these needs into the order in which people strive
to satisfy them.

Theory of Employee Motivation

Theory Assumption

Herzbergs Two Factor Theory

Focus on various factor relating to the job and on the

environment where work is done.!
Concluded theory: employee motivations are hygiene factors
and motivational factors.

McGregors Theory X and Y

Theory X: traditional view which assumed that workers are

generally dislike work and must be forced to do their jobs!
Theory Y: humanistic view which assumed that workers like
to work and under proper conditions, employees will find out
responsibility in an attempt to satisfy their needs.

Theory Z by William Ouchi

Elements associated with Japanese approach; trust and

intimacy.!
Managers and employees share responsibilities, participate
in all aspects of company decision making,through
participative management programs and self directed work
teams.

Equity Theory

How much people are willing to contribute to an organisation

depends on their assessment of the fairness of the rewards
they will receive to exchange.

Expectancy Theory by Victor

Vrooom

Motivation depends not only on how much a person want

something but also on how likely he or she is to get it

Strategies for motivating employees include behaviour modification and job design (O.C. Ferrel,
et.al. 2014). Behaviour modification involves change of behaviour and encourage employees to
conduct appropriate actions by relating the consequences of behaviour itself (punishment and
reward), meanwhile job design is the movement of employees by identifying the job itself as a
motivational factor, the strategies include job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment, and flexible
scheduling strategies. Managing quantity and quality of employees through human resources
management inside company is important, so that the company can compete in global marketplace.
Human resources management is all the activities involved in determining an organisations human
resources needs (acquiring, training, compensating) (O.C. Ferrel, et.al. 2014). Companys future
human resources needs and develop a strategy are fundamental to satisfy all aspects inside the
company, then compare them with existing human resources. Human resources manager should
have general idea of how many employees the firm needs to hire by recruiting and selecting;
recruiting is forming a pool of qualified applicants from which management can select employees,
selecting is process of collecting information (application, interview, testing, reference checking)
about the applicants and using it to make hiring decisions.
When the most qualified applicant have been selected, they introduced to the company and trained
so they can be productive by orientation; familiarising the new employees with other employees,
companys procedure, and the physical properties of the company (O.C. Ferrel, et.al. 2014). Then

the employees should follow training and development that focused on teaching new employees to
do specific job tasks and improving the skills and knowledge in the current position and prepare
them for future probabilities. To assess this performance may be objective or subjective by
identifying employees strength and weakness. Performance assessment is very vital because it may
give information to the employees how well they are doing in the job, the results of it is very useful
to allow employee to grow and improve the position someday. Turnover occurs when employees are
fired, resign, then they must be replaced by new employees which can affected the productivity;
time, money, and effort required to select, train, and manage new employees requires expensive
treatment. Turnover may occurred because overworked employees as a results of downsizing and
lack of training and advancement opportunities, but there are always turnover in form of a
promotion or transfer.
There are specific way to compensating employees because the nature of people they generally will
not work for free (O.C. Ferrel, et.al. 2014). This design of compensation is important because of
payment and benefits are represent the substantial portion to organisations expenses and this is
difficult; involves evaluations that worth to be paid inside the company while allows employees to
give individual efforts. Compensating employees can be conducted through financial compensation
such as wages which can be given compensation based on number of time wages or piece wages,
or based on commissions which compensate based on fixed amount of a sale paid, salary;
compensation based on calculation based on the proper basis. Another way to compensating
employees can be conducted though bonus and profit sharing as a financial incentives and benefits
in form of non-financial compensation such as vacation, insurance and sick leave.

!
Reference:
Ferrel, O.C. Hirt, G.A. Ferrel, L. 2014. Business: A Changing World 9th Edition. McGraw-Hill
Education Publ. USA.