Human Resource Management System

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

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DEMOTIVATION

Prepared by: Arij Al_Ahmadieh

Supervised by: Mr. Saleem Haidar

Spring 2012-2013

Chapter I: Introduction

Human resource management (HRM) is the utilization of individuals to achieve organizational objectives.

Human resource management system has five functions: Staffing, Human Resource Developing, Health and Safety environment, and Employee and Labor Relations, Compensation.

The first function is staffing which is the process that the organization always has the proper number of employees with the appropriate skills and ethics, in the right job, at the right time. The second factor is human resource development which is the process of helping employee to develop their personal and organizational skills. Improve their skills, knowledge, and abilities by providing training programs. The third function is health and safety environment which is the process of protecting employees from social, psychological, and physical illness that caused by work related accidents. The fourth function is employee and labor relations which is the relationship between employees and employers. And compensation the last function which is the process of all rewards provided for employees in return for their services. There are three types of compensation: a. direct financial compensation: Is the pay that a person receives in the form of salaries, wages, and bonuses. b. Indirect financial compensation: Are all financial rewards that are not including in the direct financial compensation like sick leave, paid vacation, and medical insurance. c. Nonfinancial compensation:Is the psychological and physical environment in the workplace of the employee. Is the satisfaction that a person receives from the job such as recognition.

Only satisfied and qualified employee can achieve the organizational goal that means only motivated employee with appropriate skills and ethics can achieve the target. The word "motivation" is often used to describe certain sorts of behavior, it can be defined as a concept used to describe the factors within an individual which arouse, maintain, and channel behavior towards a goal.

Employee Motivation is an aspect that extremely determines the final outcome of some activity, in which without good employee motivation all capabilities,experience and skills of an individual are in vain. Motivation is like the fuel in the engine, where you can have a perfect machine, but without the fuel you can go nowhere, therefore Motivation is important aspect of business management. Motivating employees is not just task of Human Resources but it is a responsibility of all managers. There are a certain levers that can maintain employees moral at certain level. The Human Resource Management (HRM) department is "the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment and providing direction for people who work in the organization". The word motivation is the action that changes the company from a workplace to a home for each employee (Sharma, 1995, p. 38).

Many researchers imply that motivation is a desire to do achieve an objective in order to satisfy a specific need or plan. The need can be an achievement (university graduation), a position (job promotion), location (moving to another country), and relationship (marriage). This need varies from person to another since it is the result of a strong feeling. This feeling concentrate the attention of the person to achieve all this need requirement while ignoring a lot of needs (Zemanta, 2008).

"The existence of feeling in wanting or needing something become more strong if motivated". Everyone wants, dreams, and needs to get something however few who have the courage to take action in order to fulfill their needs. Therefore, motivation activates the issue of decision and the act of will in every person breaking down the barriers. Recently, we notice that the majority of companies are motivating their employees by satisfying their needs if the productivity increases (Heathfield, 2011).

Moreover, motivation is a business process that consists of several theories that aims to identify, classify, and explain wants and needs. Motivation is divided into two types: Internal motivation and external motivation; the internal motivation is inside the person. It is the essential need for life like hunger, thirst, learn, and control). On the other hand, external motivation lies outside the person. The want or need that is influenced by the environment or by a specific succeeds or glory (Heir, 2011).

The reinforcement theory of motivation is a process that indicates the importance of the individual's behaviors as a function of the consequences. The individual's behaviors that are successful and have positive consequences tends to be repeated but the wrong ones that has negative consequences don't tend to be repeated, thus the reinforcement theory of motivation is based on law of effect.

Reinforcement theory of motivation ignores internal state of individuals such as his inner feelings and drives. However, it focuses on the attitude of the individual at the time he takes his action. The external environment of the company should be designed effectively in order to motivate the employee and enrich his behavior. The role of this theory is to analyze, and control the mechanism of the individual's behaviors without focusing on the causes of this behavior (Redmond, 2010).

Motivation that which energizes, directs, and sustains human behavior in HRM, a person’s desire to do the best possible job or to exert the maximum effort to perform assigned tasks (Gomez-Mejie, Balkin & Cardy, 2010).

Gaps of research

In spite of the five factors that are determined in companies for the sake of employees, there still exist lacks of motivation in many ways that the leaders or managers do that cause demotivation for them and affect their performance which will affect the productivity that leads to a change in the profitability of a company that prevents her from reaching its goal.

The purpose of the study

This project sheds light on demotivation. The research objectives of this research include how does demotivation affects the performance of employees in an organization?

Chapter II: Literature Review

In the absence of motivators, employees will probably not be satisfied with their work or motivated to perform up to their potential (Gomez-Mejie, Balkin & Cardy, 2010). That means lack of motivation affects the performance of an employee in the company that he is working in.

Demotivation refers to "specific external forces that reduce or diminish the motivational basis of a behavioral intention or an ongoing action" (hassaskhah, 2011). Most companies have it all wrong, companies should stop demotivating employees in order to achieve the target. How employees get demotivated?

Leaders or managers behavior affects the actions of employees and reflects if they are motivated or demotivated. Lack of appreciation is a factor of demotivation is that when the employee feels that his effort is not recognized and feeling under-valued. Too much work reflects a negative performance since he will be unable to perform his duties and can’t achieve his task successfully. Lack of clarity in work leads the task to ambiguity and the employee will misunderstand what he must do, tasks should be clear and well communicated for the employee. Favoritism also leads the employee to get annoyed because of unfair dealing with employees and preferring one worker over another. Another factor for demotivation is Mistrust which is the process of no trusting the abilities and capabilities of employees. The last factor is Miscommunication there is no well communication between the employers and employees they inform them about a specific information not about the whole project which reflects that the organization and the managers don’t trust their employees enough to let them know the whole process.

Also some management unwitting demotivates employees. Many companies deal with employees as they have the right to eliminate them when they want to, means when they see that the old employees who were the most qualified employees become expendable (Spale, 2010).

Demotivation may occur because lack in recognition and reward which leads to a poor performance rather than encourage them for a good work. Also employee frustration occur when there is an endless paperwork, excessive levels of required approvals, lack of training, miscommunication, no delegation or negotiation with authority and lack of a credibility and all of these lead to decrease the performance of the employees and prohibit achieving the goal ( Moti , 2011).

Many reasons let the employee demotivated, lack of career vision is one of these reasons, money is not only the motive for employees, most people want a clear job objective in a place to feel that they are developing within their organization, a career vision is a useful process for long-term goals so that employees can work proactively toward the expected outcomes. Lack in career vision give workers a rise in feeling job insecurity, each employee need a sense of secure and continuity for their role in the organization and the manager should facilitate this issue and provide training to improve their skills and specify the task they need to accomplish. No development opportunities training programs improve the employee’s skills, knowledge and abilities, and they will feel engaged and involved in the company, but if the workplace in a recession state employees become unprogressive and uninspired. Poor leadership is a basic reason for demotivation, weak leader ship affects the whole team and let the employee feel frustrated and unproductive. Conflict means a problem happened between colleagues that may have a negative impact on the team work and some employees may feel worried to come forward about issues relating to fellow colleagues. Unrealistic workload it’s very important to keep into consideration your employees capability and ability while demanding tasks since if you overload them that will lead to a state of stress, disappointment and demotivation in this way your employee will lose interest and become unproductive.

Another way to say this is that motivation is goal-directed behavior.

While it is easy to see the things that a person does, it is much harder to guess at why they are doing it. As an example let us look at our hard-working employee. It may be that that employee is working hard because she wants to get high marks, but it might also be that she really enjoys learning that subject. She may be striving for high marks because she wants to impress her friends or because she wants a good job, so that the marks themselves are really a step toward another goal. It is dangerous to assume that you know what is motivating someone because you really can't "read their mind".

Since it is part of a manager's job to get their work done through others, managers need to understand why people do things (that is, what motivates them?) so that s/he can convince their employees to work towards the goals of the organization.

The mess is presented by the unbalanced motivation which is the motivation without planning that can have negative impact.

There is an article in a newsletter from Harvard School Publishing named "Stop Demotivating Your Employees!" by David Sirota, Louis. A Mischkind and Michael Lrwin Meltzer. The article shows that employees are a rich source of information about how to do job in a better way by motivating employees with a balance plan such as giving employees freedom to operate and make changes with their knowledge and experience. In order to avoid unbalanced motivation, one must know the three key goals of people at work:

1- Equity: to be respected and to be treated fairly in areas such as pay, benefits, and job security.

2- Achievements: to be proud of one’s job, accomplishments, and employer.

3- Camaraderie: to have good, productive relationships, with employees.

The aim of this project is to highlight on the impact of motivation on the company performance since the unbalanced motivation can demotivate employees and decrease their production. Motivation is enhanced when employees see that rewards are allocated on performance criteria, in order to achieve this result the manager must use different programs and plan. However, if the manager uses unbalanced motivation, the performance will be negative.

Unbalanced motivation is a problem situation which is unstructured; it’s affecting the employees and their behavior in the company that in return they play a role in the country (Heathfield, 2011). Many companies face a trouble in dealing with motivation and how they should work to affect employees in a positive way, so we must look at the situation in open way as possible and deal with it in a systemic technique in order to have a solution.

Insufficient compensation that leads to demotivation is one of the top causes of turnover in a company. Turnover rate "the rate of employees separations in an organization" (Gomez-Mejie, Balkin & Cardy, 2010). That means that demotivation such as lack in compensation leads not only to decrease productivity which leads to decrease the profit which reflects a negative result on the company and hinder the goal achievement but also lead to a voluntary separation "a separation that occurs when an employee decides, for personal or professional reasons, to end the relationship with the employer" (Gomez-Mejie, Balkin & Cardy, 2010) means the employee will leave the work which also has a negative impact on the company so that it will lose a qualified and well-experienced employees. In this way the company will cost much more than compensating her current employees since it will hire a new employees without experience and also will bear the burden of training program and will face less productivity after training because the left employee has more experience than the new one.

"Workers on civil engineering projects are frequently confronted with problems that could lead to demotivation. Demotivation is caused not simply by a lack of motivators but the existence of certain situations that cause dissatisfaction and discourage individuals from pursuing desired goals. Workers who are inadequately motivated tend to make only a minimal effort, therefore reducing overall productivity potential. It is believed that removing certain demotivators will increase motivation without necessitating the addition of motivators. This paper aims to improve worker productivity by identifying factors that are likely to induce the demotivation of workers. Predominant demotivators and their effects on the productivity of workers in civil engineering projects are identified through an empirical survey in Hong Kong. Time losses due to demotivation were found to be as much as 13.6 man hours/week, with material availability, overcrowded work areas and rework being the most significant demotivators involved" (Thomas, 2004). Means not only lack of motivation leads to demotivation but also there are many external factors that may lead to this result and according to Thomas overload in work and time is a demotivator for employees in workplace. Moreover, he believed that over-crowded work area may also affect demotivation positively.

"The overall aim of this study is to identify factors that influence architects'' demotivation in design firms. After a review of extant literatures in design management, project management, and organizational behavior, a list of 43 demotivating criteria was produced and used in a questionnaire survey. Analyses included reliability analysis, Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis tests, demotivation severity index (DSI) computation and exploratory factor analysis. Results show an underlying factor structure of seven demotivating factors that include ‘organizational injustice’, ‘project induced stress’, ‘dysfunctional design team’, ‘poor interpersonal relationships’, ‘perceived career decline’, ‘negative leadership behavior’s and ‘poor organizational culture’. Comparing these demotivational factors with motivational factors identified from previous related research, this study confirms that demotivation and motivation are on the same pole. In addition, what causes motivation or demotivation is a function of individual frame of reference. This implies that the presence or absence of a factor might cause motivation or demotivation depending on an individual frame of reference. Positive attention to the identified factors in relation to individual personality differences therefore helps to remove impediments that could affect employees'' well-being such as being downcast, dispirited, depressed and despondent. The study would help directors and managers of design firms to develop a healthy workforce through recognition and eradication of the identified demotivating factors using some of the suggested solutions" (Oyedele & Lukumon, 2013). These two researchers made a survey to discuss the factors that influence demotivation. For Oyedele and Lukumon demotivation and motivation stands in the same position which implies the demotivation and motivation are affected most in a personal reference that means if there is a positive influence between the personal references and these factors it will help the managers to remove the obstacles between employees and reduces the frustration and stress to maintain a safety environment in a workplace.

"Investigations have been carried out which suggest that motivation of employees in all industries is affected by the environment or culture in which they work. Research undertaken in Melbourne, Australia investigated the effect of the workplace environment encountered on a construction site on motivation and demotivation of construction professionals. The data collected supported the hypothesis that the environment of a construction site does affect demotivation levels of site personnel. Specifically, several variables were significantly linked to this result, including long hours, chaos, non-recognition for work done and colleagues' aggressive management style. The results provide a valuable basis for indicating how the construction industry can create a more attractive workplace environment for professional site staff" (Smithers, Guinevere, Walker & Derek, 2000). That means that environmental frame work the employees work in affects the motivation or the demotivation of the employee, and they stated that not the construction area is the thing that demotivate employees but the things that lead to this demotivation is working for a long time because of the overloaded work and the mess happening also because of not appreciating and valuing the effort of employee from the employers and not providing a nonfinancial compensation which is the psychological and physical environment in the workplace of the employee. Is the satisfaction that a person receives from the job such as recognition. Since they are using a directive management style that focuses on directions and tasks and ignoring the need of support and compensation.

"Demotivation is rife in the workplace and some managers must change their working practices. Research by Marketing Professionals UK reveals that too many employers misunderstand the needs of their employees and wrongly believe that financial rewards are enough to fulfill everyone. Companies spend vast amounts of money on motivation courses for their staff but have little understanding of what motivation actually is and how it affects workers. Most bosses fail to realize that people are driven by very different things" ("Why change can," 2004/2005). When demotivation occurs it spreads in all the organization in this case managers should change the way they are dealing with their employees since a wide number of managers don’t realize the workers wants and think that monetary compensation will lead to all employees satisfaction. Organizations outlay much on training programs to improve their employees skills, knowledge and abilities but they miss the step of compensation and employees can be compensated in many ways such as if they do an extra effort and they do achieve the goal they should earn salary plus bonus and recognition to stay moving forward to always make an extra effort and let the goal get accomplished.

In addition to the factors that mentioned above that causes demotivation, an important factor that have a high effect on the employee performance are the restrictions, regulations and policies the company oblige the employee to apply, "these rules moves in an opposite direction with performance so that as the rules and regulations increased in an organization as the employee performance decreased because they don’t feel free to be creative and work in a flexible area which leads to demotivation and dissatisfaction" ( Valencia, 2010).

Dulewicz (1989), "... a basic human tendency to make judgments about those one is working with, as well as about oneself." Managers should put themselves in the employee’s position. In workplace nothing is for free so in order to get your wants which is as a manager is to achieve the target of the company with a high quality of products and low cost in order to gain more profit and to achieve this target we need an extra effort from our qualified employees with appropriate skills and ethics. But only satisfied and qualified employee can make an extra effort and achieve the target. Satisfied employees means motivated and compensated employees are those who face recognition and appreciation for their efforts and who earn salary plus bonus for their extra effort. And employees who are in the sales department for example to gain salary plus commission based on their serious and productive work. Moreover, the employee’s needs are also to feel that the company cares for their illnesses and sickness by providing a sick leave, and they need a vacation which is a paid vacation so that they can relax during it from the work load and pressure and from stress, frustration and responsibilities. All these and many others are considered as a need for the employee to stay motivated and work for the sake of company development.

Demotivation is a barrier that blocks the progress and improvement of the organization (Dulewicz, 1989). As shown above in order to headway a company we need to motivate and care for needs of the most important assets in the company those who are the employees who work hard to produce a product or provide a service with high quality to rise the company and try to let it become a global organization with a good reputation and achieving excellence.

Recent research (Bannister & Balkin, 1990) has reported that "the appraised seem to have greater acceptance of the appraisal process, and feel more satisfied with it, when the process is directly linked to rewards". Then managers to avoid demotivation they should be away from actions without why’s since employees in order to work seriously they need a purpose or a target to work hard to achieve. So working without a target demotivates employees. Add more, people with lack of opportunity will face disturbance. Lack of opportunity may occur in different ways it may occur if there is no more higher posts in the organization to work in. also it may occurs if there is a lack in training programs so that they can’t improve their knowledge and skills to have the ability to promote for a higher position in this organization. Moreover, diversity environment may play a negative role in an organization so that only a specific group of people who are related to a certain religion or political category can be hired in higher positions in a company. Employers should avert moving targets since employee work in order to achieve a particular goal so if managers shift target this may annoyed employees and demotivate them. Clarity is a need for employees since if vague dominates the task that the employee should attain this may lead to failure in fulfilling the target and surrender from doing mission which results employee demotivation. One way communication is the way that let the employee a passive worker just implements directions issued from the high positions in the company without any interference in decision making and with no communication between employers and his employees. Non-recognition which is the process of not appreciating the workers effort and work also leads to demotivation.

Managers should listen, listen for the voice of employees rights and need, he/she must listen for words, claims, for each movement of his employees means for his body language also in order fix problems by providing corrective and preventive actions to provide a health and safety environment for the employees, he /she must be an employee centric leader since satisfied and only satisfied and qualified employees achieves success and attain goals. Also he/she must strengthen the teamwork, an effective teamwork in this way enhance the connection between employees so that they can distribute the tasks in order to achieve one task and they all collaborate for fulfilling the target with less weary and more prosperity. An important task that a manager should do to obviate demotivation is to support and commend the employee. Each company should have a performance appraisal which is "Formal system of review and evaluation of individual or team task performance." (Wayne Mondy, 2007) which focuses on employees also focus on the strategic plan of the company and an effective performance appraisal (PA) leads to achieve goals and objectives, performance appraisal consists of two major systems: 1) Evaluating system which assess the employees performance and try to find a corrective action for the gaps appeared. 2) Feedback system which conducted in two ways, the first is from the organization to the employees informing them about the feedback from customers about the quality of the product or service provided by them, and the second is from the employees to the organization or manager to inform them about the workplace and the problems that occurred during the job framework and about barriers that hinder achieving the task if its available.

"When leaders decide to address demotivation, they quickly see that, unlike with motivation, it's essentially the same for every employee. You can be certain, for example, that everyone on your staff wants the following from you and always will: (1) clear direction, (2) the resources to perform as required and (3) never to be treated disrespectfully. A work environment structured to provide those three things is also exactly what shareholders want and expect. Deliver them, and you will be on your way to leadership greatness. Fail to do so, and you may be an adequate leader but you'll never be a great one." (Roulet, 2009) here we can see that demotivation is the opposite of motivation. And that the employees needs in order to achieve the goal is an obvious trend and available resources to execute and to deal with them in an ethical and respectful way if the leader couldn’t apply them then he/she will fail for being a good and effective leader and the employee will be dissatisfied and the organizational objective will be unaccomplished.

"Employees’ demotivation is a continuous challenge to managers and supervisors. Avoid doing and saying things that can make bad situation worse, increasing demotivation of employees. This undermines motivation of your people." (Moti, 2011). Employees demotivation is a continual confront for manager and supervisors. Demotivation of employees will be raised if workers treated in a disrespectful way.

‘When you are motivated you have a clear sense of purpose, energy, perseverance and resilience,’ says David Langdon, director of business psychology company Xancam. ‘Demotivation is less defined and is often not something we are conscious of; it creeps up on us.’ ("Motivation and demotivation," 2009), When the employee be motivated means the goal is clearly mentioned and he/she will be an active employee full of power and excited for working and ready to make an extra effort in order achieve the target while demotivated employees are completely different since demotivated employee will face stress and frustration and dissatisfaction, they have no incentives to complete the task.

Demotivation is a passive factor that attacks the organization to defeat it and prevent it from achieving its objective to block her development and success. But demotivation occurs because of a gap from the organization itself, in other words, people who are managing and leading this organization are the reason of this result. The effective leader is the leader who uses a coaching style as a management style not a directing style means to provide support for employees and care for their needs and to make corrective and preventive actions in order to correct problems that face them in the workplace. Demotivation is a disadvantage itself, since it may cause a loss for the company. If an employee is demotivated he/she will even leave the work means the company turnover rate will increase, and the turnover rate moves in an opposite direction with profit, the company will be losing a qualified and well-experienced employee, moreover, the cost will increase because when an employee left a job then there will be a job vacancy, this means recruiting a new employee, and in order to work in a productive way the company should provide him a training program which costs much and also after training the company will earn less productivity because the left employee has a good experience unlike the new employee. Or the employee will stay in the company because of no better career opportunity and he/she has many responsibilities so they can’t leave the work. But they will work .in an unproductive way since they have no motives and they are facing psychological problems resulted from the lack of compensation and disrespectfulness and the non-recognition and appreciation for employees work. All negative outcomes from demotivation lead to decrease productivity which leads to decrease profit that result not achieving the company objective.

Business world don’t know the term of free, everything you expected from it a great job you have to appreciate that in a great way. So for that employee who work hard to provide more profit for you, he/she needs from you appreciation, encourage, compensation and honor.