Motivating Part Time Employees

“Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life”(Levitt and Dubner 12). Levitt and Dubner once mentioned in their book “Freakonomics”. According to Oxford dictionary, incentives are something tends to incite to action or greater effort, as a reward offered for increased productivity (“incentives”). In business field, incentives are something given by bosses to encourage their employees to endeavour in bringing benefits to their business. For a simple example, the employee who hits the monthly or year sales target will get cash or prizes as incentives. Apparently, these incentives are something that motivates employees maintains their great performance and also to motivate other employee, whoever wants to get the incentives, work harder.

This tactic helps those parents whose children that may not enjoy their weekly trips to the grocery store. The children now have a fun experience to associate with mommy or daddy grocery store trip. Mini shopping carts are also available for the children to get them involved in the shopping process (Bond, 2012). Another way Trader Joe’s motivates its employees is by providing higher pay and excellent benefits. Their employees make more than the average cashier or manager of any of its competitors (Speizer, 2004). Generous compensation and benefits can help boost employee morale. When employees feel like they are valued and compensated for the work they do they tend to be more loyal. This is better known as an extrinsic reward. These types of rewards lead to employees feeling positively valued (Schermerhorn et al., 2012). Lastly, Trader Joe’s motivates its employees by promoting from within. All managers at some point have been cashiers or floor salespersons. Therefore, Trader Joe’s has created the Trader Joe’s University so employees are able to receive the proper training so they are able to efficiently operate a store one day (Schermerhorn et al., 2012). By promoting from within, employees have advancement opportunities to look forward to.

Rachel, you also make a great point regarding the lack of long-term results from extrinsic motivators such as gift cards and bonuses. While these can be useful tools for improving or maintain performance, intrinsic motivation may be more helpful for long-term performance

Margaret Heffernan once said, “For good ideas and true innovation, you need a mix of human interaction, conflict, argument, and debate.” In the article it is debated if there is any benefit in monetary rewards for students. Teachers, and parents alike are always trying to find the best way to reward and inspire there students to do well in school. Matthew G Springer is a professor of Public Policy and Education at Vanderbilt University. He is also the director of the National Center on Performance Incentives. He wrote this article to display his research and studies.

Employers who were required to offer health insurance to part time workers may no longer be required to do so. Because it is expensive for companies to offer health insurance, they may choose to no longer provide this service to their part time employees. Additionally, coverage for full time employees may be reduced to become more expensive due to these changes. This may make it difficult for people who have health insurance through their current employer to find new work, as health insurance may be difficult to find.

Lastly, they explain the fundamental ideas of the book. Incentives are “means of urging people to do more of a good thing and less of a bad thing.”; according to the authors, they “are the cornerstone of modern life”. Levitt and Dubner also focus the book on the following concepts:

At this young age, it is recommended that criterion specific rewards be used to motivate Doug and increase the frequency of positive behaviors in the classroom (Curran & the IRIS Center, 2003). Criterion specific rewards are incentives that are customized to individual students and based on what motivates them (Curran & the IRIS Center, 2003). Initially, it is necessary to identify what motivates the student and proceed to utilize that information to create

The general argument made by Arianna Prothero in her work, “Does Paying Kids to Do Well Actually Work,” is that incentives may help boost students to come to school and learn so they may earn a further education. More specifically, Arianna believes that financial incentives have a huge impact on students rather than little rewards. She writes “Incentives are also more likely to work for students who need a little improvement to earn a passing grade.” Schools that use incentives have a better chance of teaching more kids as well as more of them learning what they really need to at school; new material.

Pink provides a well laid out case highlighting the gap between what science knows and what organizations do. Showcasing the mid-century work of Harry Harlow and Edward Deci , Pink explains how human motivation seems to run counter to what most scientists and citizens believe. For decades, we have believed that we know what motivates people: rewards. Rewards are supposed to intensify interest and enhance performance. But Harlow and Deci found different results. Deci wrote, “When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity.” Like a shot of espresso, rewards can give you a jolt of energy, but the boost wears out, moreover, it can erode a person’s longer-term motivation to engage in the task. As we continue to incentivize our staff and students,

Part-time workers are the backbone of some businesses, adding the additional costs of insurance would be crippling; impairing the profits of the company and their stockholders. “Some employers could go out of business, or never start their businesses, all due to the extra cost of the tax or additional costs, for example, higher wages, needed to attract workers to positions that are not eligible for exchange subsidies through the PPACA (Mulligan, 2014).” The advantages

Researchers in the past have made valuable discovery about employee relations what is the cause of dissatisfaction and satisfaction at work. Companies that want to

“While Mangers complain about lack of motivation in their workers, they might as well consider the possibility that the reward systems they’ve installed are paying off for the opposite”.

To motivate employees to work towards reaching organizational goals, managers frequently depend on some form of enticement. Beyond monetary compensation, awards and additional types of acknowledgment can be given, and the ability to choose a work schedule is a possibility. A reasonable pay system, which would be an incentive for individuals and groups to achieve organizational goals, is a hardship manager’s face (Jones & George, 2011). Within the company that I work for, every quarter awards are presented to Customer Service Agents who have maintained a 95 percent or above quality score. Monetary awards are given out as well as time off coupons.

Keeping employees motivated in addition to creating incentives and/or additional ways for employees to receive more compensation will create better performance overall within an organization. Contrary if company B gives their employees incentives to perform, without any motivational tactics they probably will not have as many top performances as company A, in addition the company may only seek short term rewards verses have long term success. Lack of motivation for employees within an organization, can cause long term damage for the company’s success. Different things motivate everyone; therefore there should be a system in place to keep employees motivated for the long term success of the company. In the MBM textbook under the concept of incentives, compensation, and motivation, there are a couple of different views of how it should be applied within an organization. We will discuss The Social Role of Profit, Personal Profit and Losses, and the way Market-Based Management view how incentives, compensation, and motivation should be applied and the things that effectively drive employees’ actions while at work.

Motivating individuals and groups at work often times can be a challenging task. Individuals must have the desire to want to be motivated. This challenge is difficult as individuals have different types of goals that motivate them. Motivation is typically driven by some sort of recognition. In today’s economic hardship businesses are having to do more with less. Businesses are downsizing, which causes them not to re-hire for open positions or eliminate unnecessary positions completely.