Introduction
The key goal of any business organization is to make profits in all its sectors of operation. Every business organization strives to make profits out of its operations through applying various strategies which best fits its environment and workforce. With the high competition that is being realized in the market of late, each business organization needs to devise more competitive strategies in order to maintain its productivity. The determining factor of any organization’s success largely lies with its workforce. If the right workforce is employed; then results are realized and if the organization brings in inexperienced workforce, then its productivity is negatively affected.
Although there are many internal factors to consider for an organization to realize profits in its operations, the first one should always be getting the qualified workforce. Organizations with the right workforce stand a better chance of performing better than those who do not have the right workforce. In its real internal operations, each organization must ensure that the working morale of its employees is kept high at all times. There are several ways in which organizations can employ to ensure that they boost the morale of their employees so that good returns can be realized. This paper is a research study of a company trying to improve on its employees’ morale and also maintaining it.
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How to Increase and Maintain Workers’ Morale in Pure Raw Juice Company
During the annual evaluation by Pure Raw Juice Company in the year 2010, the management of the fruit processing company realized that there was a decline in its both production and sales sectors. This decline which was the company’s first ever loss since it was started, led the top management to collect data from the employees in an attempt to establish the possible cause of the sales and production decline. Most of the responses they got from the company’s employees revealed that the employees’ morale had been neglected for long; which led to the sales and production decline. The top management of Pure Raw Juice Company reorganized their workforce and devised strategies that would best work to improve the employees’ morale. The strategies that the company would adopt to increase their workers’ morale had to be in line with their needs and interests during and after working hours. The factors that can motivate workers’ morale that the company decided to adopt include, recognition of workers ability, issuing promotion through merit, ensuring responsibility and workers empowerment, adopting ‘Feeling of being a part of something’ and stimulating work. Therefore, the company decided to put these factors into test and see whether there will be an improvement on the workers’ morale.
Responsibility and Empowerment
The first strategy that Pure Raw Juice Company decided to adopt was ensuring that each and every employee was issued with new protective gears like safety boots, gloves, face masks, overalls and ear masks. In the previous years, it was the role of each and every employee to acquire the necessary protective gear using their money. Through this, the company was trying to employ the responsibility and empowerment strategy which is derived from Herzberg’s Motivational Theory which mainly discusses on what actually motivate workers and what de-motivates them (Kanifer, 1990). Taking responsibility on the workers safety and continually empowering them to perform is among the factors that Herzberg’s Motivational Theory discusses. The Pure Raw Juice Company’s operational sectors concerns on the unavailability of personal safety equipment in the company. This unavailability of protective gears was slowly killing working morale for the workers which later led to the decline in the company’s overall production and sales. The operations’ department recommended that the company claims full responsibility of its workers’ safety and purchase new protective gears for each and every worker in the company. This was the first move that the company took in trying to restore the working morale of its workers. Two weeks after this recommendation, every employee in Pure Raw Juice Company was issued with brand new protective gears.
The issuing of new protective gears to the employees worked positively towards the company’s operations. During its quarterly year report that year, there was an increase in goods production as well as an increase in its sales. This trend kept on improving all through the year and in the company’s annual report that year, normalcy in its production and sales had returned. The whole process of applying this motivational theory was successful. This was because the Pure Raw Juice Company was able to achieve its goals and targets; which was the main purpose of adopting responsibility and empowerment strategy. Given an opportunity to devise and apply this strategy of responsibility and empowerment in the company, I would recommend that the company sets aside some amount of money which would act as compensation for any purchases that the employees had done before using their own money. This would have a higher impact on the workers’ morale than simply deciding to claim responsibility of their safety. The attitude of the workers towards Pure Raw Juice Company would be more positively changed because it would be a way of showing remorse by the company to its workers.
Promotion
Pure Raw Juice Company next step was to issue promotion letters to all its employees who had ten years of service and above. There was a wave of promotion across every sector of operation in the company. These promotions came along with increments in their salaries and other allowances as stated by the company’s constitution. Pure Raw Juice Company decided to adopt this strategy which is stated in the Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory because it had realized that some of its workers had worked in the company for many years but their salaries and office ranks had not changed (Leonard, 2019). This theory mainly touches on motivation and hygiene where motivation is all about recognizing and rewarding workers’ good efforts while hygiene is more to do with salaries. This issue was raising many concerns from the workers with some even threatening to resign from work. Generally, the employees were dissatisfied with this trend and in an attempt to pass a dissatisfaction message to the company; they decided to lower their work output. In reciprocation, the Pure Raw Juice Company decided to take this matter of promotion into consideration.
All the employees who had worked for the company for ten years and above were promoted to the next immediate ranks. The motive behind these promotions and increment in salaries and allowances by Pure Raw Juice Company was to try and revive the already fallen morale of its employees (Leonard, 2019). The company was sure that its workers would be positively impacted by this move and that their working mood would be improved. This way, the company would be in a better position to reclaim its lost glory with regard to its production and sales departments. The motivational strategy of promotion really worked well for the Pure Raw Juice Company. First, the employees showed contentment through their improved working rates. They no longer needed to be monitored on their reporting to work time. The workers also improved on the way they used to work before and applied more enthusiasm in all their duties. Generally, the working environment reverted to its lively nature. Secondly, the management team had less work to do because the employees were able to accomplish their duties in time and in perfect manner. The time that was previously used to supervise the employees was used in meeting other commitments within the company hence improving the company’s overall performance.
The Pure Raw Company was able to record a remarkable improvement in its returns during the following yearly reports. It was able to even beat its former records by far and this placed it at a better position to compete well in the market. This improvement in the company’s annual returns was completely articulated to its move to adopt promotion method as a way of increasing its workers’ morale. The company’s efficiency in executing its operations recorded a great improvement across all its sectors. Nevertheless, the promotion method as a tool of improving workers’ morale can still be enacted in a better way. Given a chance to improve on the motivational strategy of promotion, I would ensure that all the promoted employees also get free housing within the company’s premises. This improvement would ensure that the workers do not incur transport and house rent costs. This would further motivate the workers to even perform better than before. The company’s returns would also record an increment compared to when the employees were awarded promotions alone. This would be a sure way of increasing employees’ morale and maintaining it high throughout the year so as to boost the company’s move in striving to achieve its set goals and standards.
Ability Recognition
The next strategy that Pure Raw Juice Company applied was the strategy of ability recognition which is found in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Hopper, 2019). This theory recognizes the importance of helping workers to improve on their ability and also being appreciative; as a company, of the general workers’ abilities. Pure Raw Juice Company has four operational sectors which operate dependently to produce juice. The first sector deals with collecting fruits from its customers; then sampling the fruits and finally grading them. The second sector usually deals with the real fruit processing. This is where all processing machinery is found and the real juice is processed by this sector. Then the third sector is the packaging sector. At this sector, juice is packed in bottles and cans, it’s labeled then packaged for sale. The last sector deals with doing the actual selling of the products. They are the ones who take the finished products to the market. In the previous years, these four sectors would just pick their workers randomly every morning. In a week, an employee would work in more than one sector. With time, an employee would have developed more skills in some sectors than others. Therefore, if an employee who is more skilled in a certain sector is picked to work in a different sector, then his or her output will not be as it should be.
The Pure Raw Juice Company had not contemplated on this until the company’s performance began deteriorating. In an attempt to counter this, the company diverted its focus on the different employees’ abilities (Hopper, 2019). The Pure Raw Juice Company adapted to this motivational strategy in order to ensure that duties are given according to each worker’s ability. Each employee was given the privilege to choose the sector which best suits his or her abilities. This move saw all the employees comfortably placing themselves in their favorable sectors and this returned normalcy in the company’s operations. There was overall improvement in performance by the company when this strategy was enacted. Work output as well as sales increased over time. That year’s annual report recorded positive changes in all the companies operations. The annual returns of Pure Raw Juice Company also increased and continued to record good performance over the next operational years.
The strategy of abilities recognition can also be executed in a different way. If I was to enact this theory in Pure Raw Juice Company, I would first establish the sectors which need more workers and experience. After identifying this, I would then recommend that all the employees who qualify to work in those sectors be taken for specialized training. This would equip them with more advanced operational techniques thus improving the company’s overall performance. This move of grouping the Pure Raw Juice Company’s workers into groups according to their skills has worked in favor of the company. Working morale of the employees has really been boosted by this move. Generally, the company has been able to regain its usual performance standards which have kept it in the market for all those years.
Feeling of Being a Part of Something
Pure Raw Juice Company also decided to adopt the system of involving the company’s employees in making vital leadership decisions. It was discovered that most employees were dissatisfied with the way the company was being run. Data collected from the employees revealed that most employees were demoralized by the lack of inclusivity in formulating policies to gear the company ahead. They termed this system as being dictatorial because of the way top management was arriving at decisions and only issuing commands for the decisions to be executed by the workers. The motivational theory that applies to this action taken by Pure Raw Juice Company is the McGregor’s Theories X and Y (Davis, Prottas, & Kopelman, 2008). This theory focuses on how a company’s expectations are determined by the motivation of the workers. Companies that do not involve its workforce in setting the company’s goals and targets often fail to perform well in the market.
The Pure Raw Juice Company adopted this theory in order to involve its employees in the actual running of the company (Davis, Prottas, & Kopelman, 2008). In the previous years, the company’s top management would just give orders to the employees on what was supposed to be achieved without necessarily giving the motives behind those intended achievements. Unknown to the company, this strategy was slowly affecting the employees’ morale negatively. Finally, this led to the company recording losses in its annual sales. Therefore, Pure Raw Juice Company decided to increase their employees’ morale by involving them in setting up the company’s goals. This involvement made it possible for the employees to table their needs and priorities before the management for consideration while setting the company’s goals and annual targets.
This move of involving the employees in setting Pure Raw Juice Company’s goals brought a positive change in the overall performance of the company. The company’s annual report the following year showed that its production and sales had gone higher. The annual report also showed an improved working mood among the workers in the company unlike in the previous years when they used to work under pressure. From the annual report that was released by the company that year, it is clear that their desire was met. The move to involve employees in devising and settings company’s goals and targets was simply aimed at improving the company’s production and sales. Thus, the move was successful because the following annual year’s report showed an improvement.
Given a chance to by Pure Raw Juice Company to improve temporal theory, I would come up with a committee from the employees’ side. This committee would involve participants from the four operational sectors of the company. Instead of in-cooperating all the employees in setting the company’s goals and targets, which in my opinion is tedious, this committee would collect the employees’ views and what they would wish to be prioritized while setting the company’s goals and targets. This method would be more efficient because it will save on time and resources.
Stimulating Work
The Pure Raw Juice Company introduced the system of offering both breakfast and lunch meals to its employees. The employees would no longer have to rely on their pockets to have these two meals. The Pure Raw Juice Company set aside one of its building to act as a kitchen and hired qualified chefs to run it. The kitchen department would ensure that breakfast is served before seven o’clock every morning while lunch was served at half past noon. The motivational theory that the Pure Raw Juice Company applied is The Arousal Theory of Motivation (Reisenzein, 1994). This theory is found on the basis of the actions that a company can take or apply in it operations to motivate its workers.
Considering that these two meals were to be offered for free, the ties between the company and the employees improved. This automatically increased the morale of the workers. The feeling of being valued was instilled to the workers by the company through this move. The main aim of this move of offering free meals to the employees was to stimulate their morale in order to improve on their work output. This was just among the strategies that the company was applying on its workforce to restore their good working morale. Through this initiative of offering free meals, the company would be able to save on the time that the employees wasted while accessing these meals from outside. Through offering meals to its employees, the Pure Raw Juice Company was able to recover thirty minutes daily of the time that would otherwise be wasted by the employees while feeding from outside. Thus, the company was able to extend its working hours by thirty minutes daily.
This action of work stimulation through offering free meals to the workers made the work output to increase because the employees’ morale had been positively triggered (Reisenzen, 1994). The extra thirty minutes working time also added value to the company’s returns. Each operational sector in the company recorded a positive change that following year. This led to an overall improvement of the company’s returns. The relationship between the employees and the company’s top management also improved because the free meals created more time for interaction. This is because all the employees and top management had their meals from the same dining room. This whole process of offering free meals worked well in restoring and increasing the employees’ morale.
If I was given a chance to improve on this system of offering free meals by Pure Raw Juice Company to its employees, I would ensure that the employees have an afternoon tea break before checking out. This would act as a way of complimenting their day’s work and showing appreciation for dedicating their time to work for Pure Raw Juice Company and not other companies. In my own opinion, this would go further in ensuring that the employees’ morale is increased and maintained for better working. The employees would also feel proud of their company; hence they will fully dedicate their time and effort to work for it. The overall effects of all these strategies are that; the Pure Raw Juice Company will be able to feature well in the market and its employees’ morale will be increased for a better performance in their duties.
Conclusion
Success of any business organization is determined by many factors. Many business organizations believe that employees’ main purpose of working is to get money. This believe is wrong and that’s why many business organizations are making losses instead of profits. From this paper, morale of the employees has been cited as the key determining factor of whether a company will achieve its goals or not. There are many theories that have talked on workers’ motivation with regard to organizations’ leadership. Therefore, for any business organization to perform well in the market, it must ensure that its workers’ working morale is uplifted and maintained.
References
Davis, A., Prottas, D., & Kopelman, R. (2008). Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Y: Toward a Construct-valid Measure. 20(2): 255-271.
Hopper, E. (2019). Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Explained. (Online). Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-4582571
Kanfer, R. (1990). Motivation Theory and Industrial and Organizational Psychology. (Online). Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1993-97198-003
Leonard, K. (2019). How to Apply Motivational Theories in the Workplace. (Online). Retrieved from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/apply-motivational-theories-workplace-10962.html
Reisenzein, R. (1994). Pleasure-Arousal Theory and the Intensity of Emotions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 67(3): 525-539 .
