Executive summery
Many organizations strive very hard towards ensuring that their employees are adequately motivated. Humana Insurance is a well performing company that needs to emulate the behaviors of such organizations. Despite its effort in ensuring that its employees’ welfare is well catered for, the company still needs to make some adjustments concerning employees’ motivating factors to emerge the leading organization in addressing the needs of employees.
The company has numerous opportunities at hand that can enable it achieve this fundamental goal. The following brief report examines these available opportunities, the past research that has been carried out concerning employee motivation as well as the strengths and weaknesses of such researches.
In addition, the report provides an analysis of how Humana Insurance Company can adopt more strategies to improve its business performance and incorporate them in its decision making program to achieve more employee satisfaction than before.
Introduction
There are several ways of enhancing service quality in an organization. One such way is through having efficiency in employee performance. The effectiveness of the employees can be facilitated through having skilled, experienced and knowledgeable workforce (Bedeian, 1993).
Employees gain experience through repeated series of works. Employers prefer retaining personnel because of associated costs of recruiting new staff, for instance the cost of training. The existing employees of an organization too possess the prequisite experience that is needed to enhance the organization’s performance. Therefore, employee retention becomes a priority in an organization.
However, employees cannot be retained without first motivating them through meeting their expectations (Lindner, 1998). Subsequently, all organizations are using any method at their disposal to motivate employees and the strategies adopted differ from organization to organization. Humana Insurance needs to initiate such excellent plans that are aimed at motivating its labor force. This can be achieved through provision of several employee benefits, as it will be observed from the following report.
Problem Statement
There has always been a controversy on whether employee retention can be enhanced by high monthly remunerations without any associated benefits or through offering minimum remunerations and additional basic benefits. There have been rising complaints by many employees with regard to their employers not providing them with adequate benefits that can motivate them in their places of work.
The principal cause for many employees to abandon their jobs is due to lack of motivational incentives and other benefits from their employers. That is why poor performing institutions lack adequate measures to motivate their employees and absorb new ones from outside.
The opportunities available for Humana Insurance to motivate the Employees
Humana Insurance is one of the most successful and good performing insurance companies in the United States. There is need to motivate its employees who have contributed largely on this achievement. This will be a move aimed at retaining them to ensure that the status quo of the insurance company remains as well as its competitive position in the insurance industry.
Humana insurance can use several approaches to motivate its employees including but not limited to competitive remunerations, health benefits, appropriate pension schemes, medical covers among others. The company’s performance gives it enough reason to give adequate incentives to its employees in order to continue increasing its productivity and performance. It has the ability to retain all the existing employees due to huge resource and capital base.
Many companies fail to guarantee benefits to their working staff due to poor performance and the extra employee benefits may lead to huge spending on the part of the company (Harpaz, 1990). However, this might be a disadvantage to them since employee motivation leads to improved performance and high profitability for the company. There are mutual benefits between the employer and the employees when the employees are motivated.
Despite the fact that Humana Insurance has been having excellent employee policies and programs, it should take advantage of its massive opportunities that are not available to many companies to satisfy employees more. The company needs to have additional motivational benefits to its labor force.
The worst thing that can happen to a company is when it loses the most important and well performing employees (Maslow, 1943). Humana Insurance has experienced labor force that the organization cannot afford to lose otherwise the company’s delivery of services to customers will be affected to a great extend. This is an excellent opportunity for the insurance company and the organization need to continue with its existing employee motivational programs.
Literature Review
Several studies have been carried out with regard to employee motivation and the possible motivating factors. There has always been desire by human resource experts to determine the structures that should be put in place to ensure there is maximum employee retention on their places of work. Lindner (1998) points out that favorable work environment and attractive pay are principal motivating factors that can keep or retain the employees in their places of work.
However, he holds that these are not enough since employees are interested in well-designed reward systems for instance job enlargement, job satisfaction, promotions as well as non-monetary compensation that too need to be given a priority.
When it comes to implementing appropriate remuneration packages for employees, the prevailing economic circumstances have to be taken into consideration in order to make the necessary adjustments (Vroom, 1964). This is because cost of living may be affected by economic phenomena and therefore the living costs need to be matched with people’s incomes. Working people are concerned about their future after retirement.
Guaranteeing them future income that will be able to sustain them and enable them earn their living during this particular period will serve as big motivation to them and organizations that have succeeded in implementation of such pension programs attract employees more than others.
Employees are not motivated primarily by money. There is a direct link between the behavior and attitudes of employees (Maslow, 1943). This implies that the employee’s perception of the work he is doing will reflect the behavior of that particular employee and thus the dedication and commitment. Non- monetary aspects are equally important in motivating an employee.
Employees feel honored when their work is being appreciated even with absence of rewards. They can also be rewarded through promotions whenever hard work and their contribution towards the organization’s success have been recognized (Bedeian, 1993). The other fundamental motivating factors to employees are employment compensation that includes provision of medical cover and insurance schemes for the employees.
These assist employees and their family members or relatives in times of emergencies though covering the financial costs incurred. Job satisfactions that are linked to the circumstances under which the employees are doing their work have an influence on motivation of employees (Lindner, 1998). Therefore, personnel management of an organization must put structures in place that will ensure that employees derive maximum satisfaction from their work environments.
Strengths and limitations of the past research
The literature review discussed above relate to past researches that have been carried out about employee motivation. The strengths of the research can be viewed from beneficial perspective of the organizations.
Better understanding of what motivates employees and incorporating the knowledge in the reward system can really help an organization in achieving its goals through hiring, training and retention of productive workforce (Lindner, 1998). It is quite evident that having strong and excellent motivating factors in an organization has helped several organizations in maintaining consistent and effective labor force.
The weakness of the past research is that not all the organizations have the resources to enhance the employee motivation. An organization may not be financially strong enough to implement various employment benefits for example medical cover and insurance schemes to motivate the employees (Vroom, 1964). The research failed to provide solutions to such organizations to increase the employee retention and motivation like other huge organizations.
Appropriate strategies to guarantee Humana’s business success and employee motivation
Humana Insurance Company is in a position to implement strategies that can increase the employee motivation levels. To improve the business success, the company will need to be dedicated to ensure that every business decision it makes is a true reflection of the company’s commitment towards the welfare of the employees.
People and especially workers have desire to learn new things and improve their work performance. Every employee feels happy whenever he/she attains some tangible achievements. Humana Insurance can introduce intensive training and development programs in its company to increase the effectiveness of the employees. This will save employees from incurring extra costs while undergoing training to improve their skills.
Humana’s management should create a good working environment that is free from discrimination, injustices, harassment or any other form of abuse. No organization can satisfy its employees when there are malpractices in its management like corruption scandals or unfair judgment on the part of employees (Harpaz, 1990). Fair treatment will ensure that the employees work hard because they are very sure they will get what they deserve out of their hard work.
The work force needs to receive fair and equal treatment with regard to salaries, compensation benefits and working hours. This strategy can work well in motivating the employees since they are guaranteed of getting precise reward for their hard work. Humana Insurance can also allow the employees form a trade union that will fight for their rights and provide a channel through which they can communicate their grieverances.
It is like guaranteeing the employees some form of freedom since they can express their opinions and views without any fear (Lindner, 1998). This motivating factor can have an impact on the employees since it provides them with comfort and hence the better performance in their duties.
Humana ought to provide the employees with humane working environment by instilling the appropriate safety measures in all the company’s places of work. No employee can be willing to stay in a work environment that is too risky or hazardous and the Humane has to put this into consideration. Finally, Humana should consider reviewing the compensation packages for its employees and other benefits to make them a little bit competitive to increase the employees’ motivation.
Possible solution to instances of employee dissatisfaction
All organizations need to come with appropriate policies to address the employee motivation issues. In every country, there are laws governing the relationship between the employers and their employees. These laws stipulate the rights and freedoms of the employees with regard to their work environments and once strictly followed can improve the employee motivation.
In addition the organizations need to have in place policies that will have comprehensive coverage of all the benefits that employees deserve that will adequately address all the motivational factors as well as full implementation of the same (Harpaz, 1990).
Conclusion
Employee motivation is an important ingredient that needs to be given a priority to prevent the employees from shifting from one job place to the other. The productivity of an organization is determined by how motivated employees are. This is because as it has been observed in several cases, motivated employees tend to work hard and more effectively.
The employees are not only motivated by monetary rewarding or wages but also through other employment benefits in addition to basic wages and non-monetary factors like showing appreciation for work done through rewards and promotions. Managers should give employee motivation a priority and realize that there is direct relationship between the employee motivation and the organization’s performance (Maslow, 1943).
References
Bedeian, A.G. (1993). Management. 3 Ed. New York: Dryden Press.
Harpaz, I. (1990). The importance of work goals: An international perspective. Journal of International Business Studies, 21, 75-93.
Lindner, J.R. (1998). Understanding employee motivation. A Journal of Extension, 36(3), 1-16.
Maslow, A.H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 2(7), 370-396.
Vroom, V.H. (1964). Work and motivation. New York: Wiley.