Motivation in the Workplace

Motivation in the Workplace Nawal Ahmed Lizette Ramirez-Miranda Madeline Taylor Aisha Trujillo Nasarin Ahmed Pgs. 498-510 If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm You will be fired with enthusiasm

Overview of Presentation • Motivation at work • Flow • Industrial Organizational Psychology • Organizational Psychology • Personnel Psychology • Effective Management Techniques

Introduction • Objective 17: Discuss the importance of flow, and identify the three subfields of industrial organizational psychology. • Our lives according to Sigmund Freud is characterized by work and love • Several Levels of need is satisfied by work • Attitudes towards work

Flow • A completely involved, focused state of consciousness, with diminished awareness of self and time, resulting from optimal engagement of one’s skill-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi • Quality of life increases when they are purposefully engaged • Middle path between apathy and boredom with ones work and being overwhelmed and stressed • Boosts our Self esteem and sense of accomplishment • Interruption experiment • Evaluation Work in industrialized nations

Videos • Ted Talk • How to balance work and personal life • Considers the factors that keeps us from achieving this balance • Ends with practical advice on how to • Relevant to us • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXM7MpoVAD0 • Will Smith • Motivation on how to reach full potential. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1W71fI1wCM

Industrial Organizational Psychology • The application of psychological concepts and methods to optimizing human behavior in the workplace. • Fast growing profession • Human factors psychology explores how machines and environments can be optimally designed to fit human abilities. • Personnel Psychology • Organizational Psychology

Personnel Psychology • Objective 18: Describe how personnel psychologists help organizations with employee selection, work placement, and performance appraisal. • Personnel Psychology: subfield of I/O psych that focuses on employee recruitment, selection, placement, training, appraisal, and development. • Harnessing Strengths • Psychologists help organizations at various stages of the selecting and assessing employees. • PP’s aim to match people’s strengths with work that enables them and their organizations to flourish. • This is the first step towards workplace effectiveness.

Do Interviews Predict Performance? • Interviewers feel confident in predicting long-term job performance from unstructured, get-acquainted interviews • VERY error-prone • Interviewers’ judgments are weak predicators • Frank Schmidt and John Hunter I/O psychologist : determined that for jobs that require a higher skill level, general mental ability best predicts on-the-job performance • Subject overall evaluations from informal interviews are more useful than handwriting analysis ( which is WORTHLESS) • BUT…

The Interviewer Illusion • Interviewers often overrate their judgment, a phenomenon psychologist Richard Nisbett (1987) has labeled the interviewer illusion. • " I have excellent interviewing skills, and so don't need reference checking as much as someone who doesn't have the ability to read people,"

Structured Interviews • Unstructured interview- someone may ask "How organized are you?" "How well do you get along with people?" or "How do you handle stress?" • Street smart people usually know how to score higher • Structured interviews provide a disciplined method of collecting information • Ask all the people being interviewed the same questions and they are then rated on a established scale • Not like casual conversations aimed at getting a feel for someone • Pinpoint strengths that distinguish high performers in a particular line of work

Appraising Performance • Appraising performance helps decide who to retain, how to a appropriately reward and pay people, and how to better harness employee strengths, sometimes with job shifts or promotions. • Performance appraisal offers individual purposes: feedback affirms workers' strengths and helps motivate needed improvements • Some performance appraisal methods are • Checklist • Supervisors check behaviors that describe the worker • Graphic rating scales • Supervisor checks the extent of dependability, productivity and etc. • Behavior rating scales • Supervisor checks behaviors that best describe a workers performance • Some companies have 360-degree feedback • You rate yourself, your manager, and other colleagues and you will be rated by them • Performance appraisal is not always accurate and sometimes vulnerable to bias such as: • Halo Errors- when ones overall evaluation of an employee, or a trait such as friendliness, biases, ratings of their specific work-related behaviors such as reliability • Leniency and severity errors- reflect evaluators' tendencies to be either too easy or too harsh on everyone, • Recency errors- Occur when raters focus only on easily remembered and recent behavior

Organizational Psychology: Motivating Achievement • Objective 19: Define achievement motivation, and explain why organizations would employ an I/O psychologists to help motivate and foster employee satisfaction • People with high achievement motivation do achieve more • Case Study • ***Self-discipline has been a better predicator of school performance, attendance, and graduation honors, than intelligence scores have been • So what was the difference between the kids in California who all seem to have the same intelligence scores. • Grit- passionate dedication to an ambitious, long-term goal • Achievement involves much more than just raw ability– which is why I/O psychsfind ways to engage/ motivate the “ordinary people” doing the “ordinary jobs”

Satisfaction and Engagement • Employee satisfaction – #1 for I/O psychs • Positive moods = creativity, persistence, and helpfulness…happy workers are less often absent , quit, less prone to theft, more punctual, productive…etc. • Recent analysis of 4500 employees at 42 British manufacturing companies, the most productive workers were those who were in satisfied work environments • 3 types of employees: • Engaged: working with passion and feeling a profound connection to their job • Not-engaged: putting in the time, but investing little passion or energy into their work • Actively Disengaged: unhappy workers undermining what their colleagues accomplish

Managing Well

Harnessing Job-Relevant Strengths • CEOs extend business by using someone’s assets • What do CEOs want • Productivity • More Focus • Accomplish more than the day before • Focus moment • What makes you happy?

Effective Leadership • Adjust work roles to further develop talents • Spend more time • Operant conditioning • To teach a behavior, catch a person doing something right and reinforce it • Put people in appropriate positions • Ex. Joe is good works at Burger King. He is really fast at wrapping burgers but really bad with people. To make business flow which position would you put him in

Setting Specific, Challenging Goals • Set specific goals • Set goals within your goals • Features of the goal: • Specific • Challenging • Measurable • Objectives

Choosing an Appropriate Leadership Style Two Types of Leadership • Task Leadership: goal oriented leadership-setting standards, organizes work, and focuses attention on goals • Social Leadership: group oriented leadership that builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support

Traits of a Leader • Confident charisma • Think not as “I” but as US • What is the difference between confidence and cockiness? How could cockiness cloud your judgment? • Transformation leadership: motivates others to identify with and commit themselves to the groups mission • You can communicate unified a vision • Effective managers care about the quality of work but pay attention to the little things that matter • Ex. Giving employees flexible hours

Traits of a Leader • Voice effect: if given a chance to voice your opinion during decision-making process, people will respond more positivity to the decision • Joint-vision process • Encourages decision making • Planning • Strategizing from the top of management to the bottom of employees

Motivation in the Workplace