Managing Motivation at Technocraft

I. Introduction :

This report talks about the working motivational problem shown by the workers in a small factory named Technocraft, located in the South East of England. It had slowed down the company's function in producing high-quality sound recording equipment. The problem has risen to high labor turnover and difficulties in recruiting new employees. It led George Orwell Newell, the company chairman, to hire a consultant named Helen McKiernan to figure out the sources of the problems.

In order to help figuring out the problem, George Orwell told Helen about his hypothesis of the lack of motivation in workers is because company's location which is in the below-average national unemployment are, therefore most of the women workers, who work on the wiring, had no real reason to work since they already have husbands who can earn adequate wages to fulfill living necessities. However, Helen did not want to conclude the problem there. When Helen had done her research, she found out that the workers actually enjoyed their work, but hate to work for the company. In other words, the problem that halted the working motivation in workers is the management itself.

II. Forms of inefficient management that leads to the lack of working motivation.

a) Uncomforting regulation on working performance

In a company, it is important to keep the relationship among the workers, including the manager and chairman, to be good so that they can have comfort in doing their jobs. However this failed to happen in Technocraft. This problem occurred since George elected Robert as the wiring Department supervisor. In order to boost the company's production, Robert ended all informal working practices and excessive talking among the women workers on the shopfloor. Since then, all the wiring workers have resented his presence. This made the workers to be depressed working for the company. Moreover there was lack of honesty in Robert, when he did mistake in recognizing two women workers, who were late to work, with Elena and Veronica, who were hardworking workers in the company. Even though, he knew his mistake afterwards, his ego was too high to accept his mistake and apologize to Elena and Veronica. This caused the intense relation between workers and their advisors, which then lead to the slow growth of working production in the company.

b) Productivity rise vs. Worker's rewards

From this report, we can see how productivity and motivation show their positive relation. Therefore company would do anything to increase the worker's motivation. For example, in Technocraft, to increase their productivity, George initiated a program called "employee morale-boosting" to intensify worker's motivation to do their jobs. To achieve a long-term progress in their work, there should be fairness and sincerity in all the effort that the manager do to boost the motivation in workers. For example, when George told the workers that they would obtain rewards if they work hard until they can achieve the production target of the year, however when the target was achieved, all the worker got was just tee-shirt. This shows no fairness to the workers. It showed no equality between the reward and the hard works that had been done. George doesn't want to increase the production cost by giving them more bonus or other reward that are more equal to the workers' hard works.

III. What Helen & George should do

a) Build good relationship among the low-skilled workers, their advisors and chairman

In order to start a better future working expectation, George should apologize for the