Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
List Maslow's 5 human needs.
Physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs, esteem needs, self-actualisation.
List the 5 fundamental principles that lie behind effective goal setting.
Clarity, Challenge, Complexity, Commitment, Feedback.
List Lawrence and Nohria's 4 drives.
Acquire, Bond, Learn, Defend.
List 4 motivation strategies.
Performance-Related-Pay, Career advancement, Investment in training, Support and Sanction.
List 4 types of termination.
Dismissal, Retirement, Redundancy and Resignation.
Outline 2 key principles of the Hierarchy of Needs motivation theory.
Hierarchy of 5 needs all humans have. This has been adapted to the workplace in order to motivate staff. An employee's basic needs must be met before they can progress through the hierarchy. Once they have moved up to the next level, the previous level no longer acts as a motivator.
Describe the impact on goals of 1 of the principles of goal setting.
Example: Clarity - goals should be specific and easy to measure. Employees should be able to clearly understand what is expected of them.
EXAMPLE:
Commitment: employees should be involved in setting their goals. Goals should incorporate the personal interests of employees.
Challenge: goals should be difficult enough to encourage employees to improve in order to achieve it.
Briefly describe the drive to acquire and the drive to bond.
Acquire - the desire to achieve rewards and high status.
Bond - the desire to participate in social interactions and feel a sense of belonging.
Briefly describe support and sanction.
Support strategies involve providing employees with any assistance that improves their satisfaction at work. Support strategies motivate employees as it allows them to feel valued, understood and considered by managers. An example is regularly checking in on their mental health and wellbeing.
Sanction strategies involve penalising employees for poor performance or breaching business policies.
Employees are motivated by sanctions as they fear punishment for failing to fulfil a business’s expectations.
When sanction strategies are utilised, employees are more likely to abide by the business’s policies, minimise errors, and put effort into their work. An example is providing written warnings.
Distinguish between voluntary termination types and involuntary termination types.
Voluntary - resignation and retirement.
Involuntary - redundancy and dismissal.
Outline how 1 of the needs from the hierarchy might be met in the workplace.
EXAMPLE:
Social needs (love and belonging) - friendly work associates, organised employee activities (birthdays, meals, parties, sporting activities.
Briefly describe the 5 stages of goal-setting.
Employee discusses their personal goals with manager.
Manager aligns employee goals with business objectives.
Manager and employees set a clear, achievable goal together.
The goals should be challenging and complex.
Manager regularly checks employee progress and provides support.
Manager celebrates and rewards the employee for reaching a goal.
Manager and employee set a new, more difficult goal together.
Outline how a business/manager might act to fulfill 1 of the 4 employee drives.
EXAMPLE: Bond
Activities that help to develop an inclusive workplace environment may include:
•Introducing recreational team bonding activities, such as sports days.
•Encouraging group work instead of tasks to be done by a single person.
•Celebrating employee milestones and birthdays.
•Holding social events that employees can regularly attend and participate in.
Distinguish between on-the-job and off-the-job training.
On-the-job training is providing employees with mentoring and training programs within business. Whereas, Off-the-job training is paying for employees to be trained by other professionals outside of the business.
Describe redundancy and one reason why it might occur.
Redundancy is an employee no longer working for a business because there is insufficient work, or their job no longer exists. •Redundancy can occur for two reasons: +There is no longer enough work for an employee or a group of employees (thanks to technology). +The business cannot afford to pay the current level of employees that they have (merge or remove roles to reduce expenses).
Describe how 'safety' needs might be met in the workplace.
Long-term job contracts, safe and healthy work conditions (OH and S), anti-discrimination policies, provide training and PPE, superannuation and insurance, competent, consistent and fair management.
List 5 characteristics of effective feedback.
Specific, relevant, timely, sufficiently frequent, credible.
Describe how a business/manager might act to fulfill an employee's desire to learn.
Managers may create continuous learning environments, such as:
•Facilitating internal and external work-related training courses.
•Adopting a mentoring system between junior and senior employees.
•Regularly rotating the types of tasks assigned to employees.
•Sponsoring employees to pursue further education and qualifications.
•Assigning challenging work tasks to employees to broaden their range of skills.
Distinguish between job enlargement and job enrichment.
Job enlargement involves combining various duties within an existing role. Whereas, Job enrichment involves an increase in the level of responsibility and complexity in an existing role.
Provide 3 examples of entitlement considerations and 3 examples of transition considerations.
Entitlement - Annual or long service leave, redundancy pay, notice of termination, and justifiable reasons for employment termination.
Transition - resume writing assistance, networking support, counselling and financial services, acknowledging and celebrating leaving employees, slowly reducing working hours of retirees.
Provide one strength and one weakness of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs motivation theory.
EXAMPLE:
Strength: can help managers determine which level of the hierarchy is motivating an employee, therefore allowing a manger to introduce targeted strategies that directly address specific employee needs.
Weakness: difficult to measure success because the levels of satisfaction gained at each stage can vary among people. And it assumes all employees are motivated in the same order.
Provide one strength and one weakness of the Goal-Setting motivation theory.
EXAMPLE:
Strength: Setting goals which are clear and specific, and challenging will motivate employees to improve their performance thus achieving objectives.
Weakness: Vague goals can lead to lack of performance. Individual goals may clash with organisational goals.
Provide one strength and one weakness of the Four Drive motivation theory.
Strength: The drives work independently allowing management and employees to be flexible in the behaviours or strategies implemented.
Weakness: There may be other drives other than the ones presented by Lawrence and Nohria. Some workplace environments require competition which will impact on cooperation and teamwork.
EXAMPLE:
Strengths:
•Employee goals can be directly and indirectly aligned with business objectives through remuneration. •Can be used to motivate many employees at once, which can improve overall business performance.
Weaknesses:
•Employees may take harmful shortcuts to reach their set objectives, potentially compromising quality. •May have a negative impact on the business’s corporate culture if there are unhealthy levels of competition between employees.