Organisational Behaviour #5 - Applied Performance Practices

[samvara]

Yeah that struck me as pretty wordy too, it was dead interesting though. I went from sleep deprived to wide awake and stayed there for the next three hours.

We had our second test, individual score was 85% and group score was 95%. Feel my smug :). It was actually slightly lower then that but an argument was put forward for one question having two possible answers (A & D) and we negotiated for partial credit. *g* Also interesting, while *my* class got its scores re-assessed, the previous class didn't challenge and wasn't eligible - way to encourage the behaviour :p

Most of the session was spent running a debate, the topic being 'Money is a prime motivator in the workplace' although some confusion arose as to whether is was 'a' or 'the' and that affected the debate. We split into six teams and alternated presentations 'for' and 'against'. My team unanimously elected me speaker, the swines, and rejected my proposal that we play 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' as our closing argument. I was speaking last so had to tailor our content on the fly to avoid duplicating other presentations and there was some hushed keywording going on while the other teams were presenting. Rebuttal time was 1 min and I made N tell a joke about a guy on a beach *grins* then we handed over to the judges who were fellow classmates.

My scrubby notes say I covered economic needs (MBA students, reasonably wealthy, educated, potential for self-actualisation), values (work-life balance, relationships, personal/professional development, loyalty), demographics (cultural, gender, age) and concluded by talking about how you can make someone leave a well paying job by putting them in a room and not giving them any work to do; then by holding an impromptu survey on who has ever passed up a job because $ was not a prime motivator.

I won a stress ball for being the 'most passionate' speaker (came second for 'most eloquent') and got told I might need to tone it down a bit. *sigh* On the one hand, I want people to hear me and if that means radiating a different vibe to what I naturally assume then, yeah, I want to do that. On the other hand, being part of a culture where it's tres uncool to be passionate is getting me down. I am oppressed!

We then talked about the meaning of money, how money affects several needs, not just existence. How money is not 'evil' but is a marker of success and how men identify more with money than women. We held a poll:

Poll #1371

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

View Respondents

Money: would you prefer to:

View Answers

earn twice as much money as you do now (if that means you were the lowest paid worker in your workplace)
9 (100.0%)

earn only $10 more if that mean your pay was higher than everyone else's
0 (0.0%)

We talked about types of workplace rewards, Membership and seniority (fixed wages that increase with age, attractive to some applicants, decreases staff turnover, may discourage job performance, discourage poor performers from leaving (golden handcuffs)), Job Status (job evaluation and status perks, maintains pay equity, motivates competition for promotions, may cause exaggerating duties and resource hoarding, increases psychological distance, inconsistent pay scales), Competencies (pay increases with skills, flexible workforce, better quality, subjective, incurs high training costs) and Performance (which is obvious and a topic all of its own).

Performance-based rewards may be delivered at the individual level (piece rate, commission, royalties, merit pay), at the team level (gainsharing, bonuses) and at the organisational level (share options, profit sharing).

We wound up by talking about how to make rewards effective:

• Link rewards to performance (do well, get more)
• Ensure rewards are relevant (do A, get rewarded for B = oops)
• Use team rewards for interdependent jobs (encourage teamwork)
• Ensure rewards are valued (offer a choice of rewards)
• Beware of unintended consequences (higher performance = higher accident rate = oops)

Next week - Stress!

Comments

[zebra363.livejournal.com]

I value recognition more than money as a motivator, but money means a lot to me in a comparative sense — I am very unhappy if someone I perceive as doing less work or less difficult work is being paid more than I am.

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

I get that! You'd probably like equity theory, it's all about comparing inputs (mine) to outputs (mine) and then comparing that to other people's ratios.