Week 3 DQ1 Motivational Techniques Given today s economic environment some companies are secretly freezing pay raises or even cutting pay for some employees so they can offer substantial raises to people considered star performers As a motivational technique does this practice seem like a good one to you Discuss pros cons of this practice from various stakeholder perspectives e g employees co workers management tenure vs non tenure employees etc Your initial post must contain a minimum of 250 300 words Respond to two of your classmates postings This is known as a controversy known as The Carrot and Stick Controversy It is estimated by the Society for Human Resource management that 84 percent of companies that are located in the United States has a monetary or nonmonetary reward system Another sixty nine percent of companies in the United States offer incentive pay in forms of bonuses as a result of performances by employees Other similar studies have been performed to find out if these incentive programs actually work and the studies found that eighty percent of companies that have incentive programs stated that the programs work very little or not at all Although if incentive programs are used correctly they can be extremely successful This is because it has been found that if employers give their employees pay raises for hard work it shows that the employers are considering the hard work that they put into the company Many people that are against these incentive programs states that the programs are not productive motivators and can work against best interests of companies Some of the reasons behind their thinking is extrinsic rewards diminish intrinsic rewards extrinsic rewards are temporary extrinsic rewards assume people are driven by lower needs organizations are too complex for carrot and stick approaches and carrot and stick approaches destroy people s motivation to work as a group It is believed that empowerment is a strong motivator because it works on the higher needs of employees It is believed that there are five elements that must be in place for employees to be empowered and motivated to complete their jobs correctly and they are information knowledge discretion meaning and rewards The pay for performance is where a portion of employees monetary rewards is due to accomplishments seems to be occurring more often Pay for performance programs include gain sharing profit sharing bonuses and merit pay This program allows employees to control the outcome by how much effort they put into their job Like the carrot and stick approach the pay for performance is criticized as well The pay for performance is criticized because critics feels as though it focuses on short term achievements rather then long term heath of the organization An example of what the critics say about the pay for performance occurred in my last job It was an addiction treatment recovery center The company would openly promote people to leadership positions based on their past lifestyle experiences Since it was an addiction treatment center they would promote others that had been addicted to drugs or alcohol because they felt as though the clients could relate better to them I am not a recovering addict so I completely disagreed with this I saw many times where people would attempt to get a leadership position based on job experience and education and they would be turned down for the job opportunity and people with no education would get the position This aggravated me and I felt as though I as well as other employees that were educated was being discriminated against because we were never addicted to drugs or alcohol I eventually quit References Daft R 2008 The Leadership Experience South Western Cengage learning Mason OH