Human resources are an important part of any company, and the implementation of the most relevant and appropriate practices is fundamental in any organization’s ability to hire, motivate and retain the highly-skilled staff. It is mostly the people who make the company what it is, and it is the employee’s abilities and performance that allow the company to tackle increased market competition and be successful.
Having worked in the company for six months, I have identified that some of the HR areas need to be reviewed with a view of enhancing performance and eliminating non-efficient practices. Firstly, the company has been focused on retaining the employees by luring them with financial bonuses and incentives for the projects completed ahead of time. This resulted in many of the employees rushing the assignments so that they could get the desired bonus. According to Terry Corbell (n.d.), a business consultant with extensive experience in guiding an array of companies regarding enhancing their HR practices, “Higher pay and benefits are important to workers. But they’re not the greatest motivators, and employees often have more salient non-financial concerns” (para. 5).
Admittedly, financial incentives are instrumental in motivating the employees to work better, although the system in which they are presented needs to be reconsidered. The major flaw is that the bonuses are offered to employees on an individual, and not on a team basis. This results in unnecessary competition between the employees of the company, and more worryingly, the competition is not based on the employee’s wish to come up with an inventive idea for a project, the competition boils down to who will complete the job first in order to be eligible for a financial reward. Based on the above, it may be assumed that the individual incentive practice has a negative impact on the overall team performance by limiting communication and teamwork. Rather than share their ideas with other team members, employees choose to isolate themselves from others and keep their ideas to themselves.
Bearing the above shortcomings in mind, the current incentive system needs to be shifted from the individual to a team-based appraisal. When an employee comes up with an idea and shares it with others, the team may, based on their experience, enhance and add to this idea, turning it into a fully-fledged business breakthrough. On that note, it is important to provide the team not only with financial incentives but also with recognition and moral rewards when they achieve something. Recognition is fundamental in HR, and workers are like children, they are better motivated when their efforts are recognized (Silberman, 2013).
Recognition of the employees’ efforts and making them feel they are making a valuable contribution to the project may result in a continued performance improvement and better motivation. Shifting incentive focus towards the team will also encourage better interaction among the employees, and good communication between the workers is always instrumental in achieving better results. To better enhance the teamwork, financial rewards may be substituted by gift certificates to a game or a restaurant where the entire project team may interact better outside of work. Competition that exists now between the employees is not healthy and often leads to conflicts or arguments resulting in employees becoming more reserved and isolated. The friction between the team members, conflicts and arguments may be resolved by making them feel as part of one team working towards one goal.
Another negative factor that adds to workers’ stress is the performance review that is conducted annually within the company. Workers often feel stressed fearing that a negative review will result in an overall negative assessment and even dismissal. According to a study conducted in 2013 and later published in the Journal of Personnel Psychology, most of the employees tend to have a negative reaction to the critical feedback from their performance review (Culbertson, Henning, & Payne, 2013). Currently, only half of HR professionals believe in the efficiency of annual performance reviews based on a recently conducted survey (Huhman, 2014). To add to that, 49 percent of HR specialists maintain that the entire process of performance reviews, as it is conducted nowadays, calls for re-evaluation (Huhman, 2014).
According to leading HR practices, employees are motivated to perform better not when they are faced with a negative performance review but when they are genuinely incentivized to do so. Sending employees together to conferences, seminars or workshops where they may interact with other professionals in their area provides the background for a healthy competition model and motivates them to enhance their performance on the own initiative.
Based on the above evaluation, it is expected that the above suggestions will positively influence and enhance the work environment within the company. Introducing team incentives, instead of individual bonuses, will foster the teamwork and encourage the employees to share their ideas and work together towards the same goal. Introducing the practice of sending employees to conferences and seminars will keep their skills up to date, allow them to interact with other experts in their fields and encourage team building. The practice of performance reviews also needs to be re-evaluated and adjusted to encourage employees’ genuine motivation.
Undoubtedly, the problems described in this report may be typical of other companies. If the proposed solutions prove workable and lead to better performance and team-building, they may be safely employed in other companies with similar problems.
Reference List
Corbell, T. (n.d.). 15 HR Strategies to Improve Your Business Performance. Web.
Culbertson, S. S., Henning, J. B., & Payne, S. C. (2013). Performance appraisal satisfaction: The role of feedback and goal orientation. Journal of Personnel Psychology, 12(4), 189-195.
Huhman, H. R. (2014). 5 Ways HR Technology Can Improve Performance Reviews. Web.
Silberman, J. (2013). Three ways HR managers can improve employee engagement. Web.