Motivation Through the Design of Work, Case Study Example

How should Andrea approach the morning briefing? Should she be honest and informative in explaining corporate actions in the downsizing, or should she be more guarded?

While it is important for Andrea to be honest to her employees, she should explain the downsizing in a manner that appears to be beneficial to the remaining employees. If Andrea avoids explaining the downsizing in detail, she runs a risk that the employees will eventually find out anyway, which will damage her reputation. This should be avoided at all costs because workers are more likely to perform at high levels if they are working directly under someone they believe they can trust.

In order to ensure that the employees feel that the downsizing is a good decision for the company and that it will protect their interests, Andrea will have to be creative in explaining and allocating the “compensation-related expenditures”. In reality, the employees will be required to do more work, but if they are promised more money for their time, they are less likely to be annoyed by this change. The best way that Andrea could get employees excited for the changes and to agree with them is to emphasize organizational commitment in the morning briefing. Studies have shown that there is a relationship between employee attitudes and work outcomes (Shore et al., 1989). As a consequence, it would be useful to inform the employees of the workers who were let go, but in a manner that seems independent of their salaries. It is important to make the remaining employees feel that they were selected by the corporation to stay on board because of their excellent work performance and skills that contribute to the success of the team.

If Andrea is able to promote organization commitment in her speech, she will ensure that the turnover of the remaining employees will not be a concern due to psychological empowerment. Making the employees feel that their job appreciates them will in turn increase their levels of job satisfaction. This will persuade them to perform their job roles more effectively despite the fact that they are being given more work. Andrea should treat the other aspects of the corporate downsizing in a similar manner. Telling the employees undetailed explanations of the changes and turning them into a good thing will keep the employees encouraged and happy.

How could job characteristics theory guide Andrea as she considers ways of combining areas for the staffers? Is there a way to give the new versions of their jobs a higher satisfaction potential than the pre-downsizing versions?

The job characteristics theory can guide Andrea as she considers ways of combining areas for the staffers because it will allow her to assess the skills that her workers have in addition to the types of work that  they enjoy. This can ultimately contribute to a higher satisfaction potential than the pre-downsizing versions because Andrea can present the newspapers new needs in a manner that will excite and inspire the remaining employees.

The need to combine the state, city, sports, lifestyle, and business sections into three parts will contribute to broader categories. If done well, this allows the remaining reporters, photographers, artists, and editors to have a greater artistic license while creating their stories. According to the job characteristics theory, there are five core job characteristics including skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback, that could contribute to three critical psychological states. The goal is to ensure that after performing a job, the employees have experienced meaningfulness of the work, experienced responsibility for the outcome of the work, knowledge of results of the work activities (Hackman, 1971).

Studies have shown that when employees are given more freedom over their job characteristics, they exhibit increased internal work motivation, job satisfaction, and performance quality, and less absenteeism and turnover (Blauner, 1964). Therefore, it would be more beneficial for Andrea to put her employees in a position where they are able to restructure the sections of the newspaper on their own. Although disagreements between the remaining employees could be a concern, this could be avoided if Andrea sets guidelines for the decisions, such as majority rule with the need to obtain final approval from her.

What advice would you give to Andrea in terms of her use of the bigger compensation budget? Would you give everyone a short-term “retention bonus” or a more permanent raise? Or would you leverage those funds to support the changes in the work structure, especially for those staffers with an especially expanded workload? What would be the difficulties associated with those two options?

It would be more beneficial for Andrea to give everyone a more permanent raise. A retention bonus would make the employees feel rewarded and more likely to stay onboard immediately after the downsizing, but this may discourage them to remain with the company on a long-term basis. This will be seen by the employees as compensation for the increased workload and a long-term pay raise shows the employees that the company values their work. Herzberg’s two-factor theory offers justification for this rationale.

Herzberg’s two-factor theory weighs the benefits of a place of work (the motivators) against the factors that do not give positive employee satisfaction (the hygiene factors). It is Andrea’s job as editor-in-chief to ensure that the employees that remained after the downsizing are provided with maximal motivators. Ultimately, a long-term pay raise for these individuals demonstrates a feeling that the company has given them increased status and they will have a sense of job security because it is unlikely that a pay raise would be accompanied by a layoff. Furthermore, they will have a sense that their job conditions have improved because they will be happier about their situation. Giving the employees the money as a retention bonus will make them happy, but this will not help counteract any negative hygiene factors (Hackman, 1976).

As you consider the broader challenges faced by the newspaper industry, what could Andrea do to maintain or restore the sense of meaning and significance that the Blaze staffers connect to their work?

Andrea could maintain or restore the sense of meaning and significance that the Blaze staffers connect to their work by emphasizing the impact they have in the local community. Although a majority of the stories published in the Blaze are produced by corporate and cover stories that have relevance all over the state and the country, the Blaze employees are in a unique position to cover important local events and tie together its readership as a community. Since these stories are generally seen as unimportant to corporate Blaze writers but essential to local readers, these Blaze employees will have the opportunity to cover this portion of the market.

To do so, it is important for Andrea to take advantage of psychological empowerment. It is believed that psychological empowerment is comprised of four factors, including meaning, competence, choice, and impact (Potterfield, 1999). Andrea’s speech has the opportunity to address all of these factors in order to encourage her employee’s to meet this challenge. Firstly, Andrea should ask the employees why they were passionate about working for the newspaper in the first place. She should bring up the issue of the fact that it is a dying form of media, but also discuss all of its advantages. This will likely allow the employees to give meaning to their job and inspire them to keep the newspaper alive. This is tied into impact and choice as well – by reporting local news in their own way, they will be able to tie their community together. Lastly, she should inform them of their unique competence for this job, which will inspire them to want to go forward with this project.

References

Blauner, R. (1964). Alienation and freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hackman JR, Lawler EE. (1971). Employee reactions to job characteristics. Journal of applied psychology, 55(3), 259.

Hackman JR, Oldham GR. (1976). Motivation Through the Design of Work: Test of a Theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16 (2): pp. 250–279

Potterfield, Thomas. (1999). The Business of Employee Empowerment: Democracy and Ideaology in the Workplace. Quorum Books.

Shore LM, Martin HJ. (1989). Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment in Relation to Work Performance and Turnover Intentions. Human Relations, 42(7): 625-638.