Motivating and Rewarding Employees
CHAPTER 10 - MOTIVATING AND REWARDING EMPLOYEES
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
1. Define and explain motivation.
2. Compare and contrast early theories of motivation.
3. Compare and contrast contemporary theories of motivation.
4. Discuss current issues in motivating employees.
5.
Opening Vignette – Best Practices at Best Buy
SUMMARY
Do traditional workplaces reward long hours instead of efficient hours? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a workplace in which “people can do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done?” Well, that’s the approach that Best Buy is taking.1 And this radical workplace experiment, which obviously has many implications for employee motivation, has been an interesting and enlightening journey for the company.
In 2002, then-CEO Brad Anderson (now the company’s vice chairman) introduced a carefully crafted program called ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment). ROWE was the inspiration of two HRM managers at Best Buy, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, who had been given the task of taking a flexible work program that was in effect at corporate headquarters in Minnesota and developing it for everyone in the company. Ressler and Thompson said, “We realized that the flexible work program was successful as employee engagement was up, productivity was higher, but the problem was the participants were being viewed as ‘not working.’ ” And that’s a common reaction from managers who don’t really view flexible work employees as “really working because they aren’t in the office working traditional hours.” The two women set about to change that by creating a program in which “everyone would be evaluated solely on their results, not on how long they worked.”
The first thing to understand about ROWE The first step in implementing ROWE was a culture audit at company headquarters, which helped them establish a baseline for how employees perceived their work environment. After
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
1. Define and explain motivation.
2. Compare and contrast early theories of motivation.
3. Compare and contrast contemporary theories of motivation.
4. Discuss current issues in motivating employees.
5.
Opening Vignette – Best Practices at Best Buy
SUMMARY
Do traditional workplaces reward long hours instead of efficient hours? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a workplace in which “people can do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done?” Well, that’s the approach that Best Buy is taking.1 And this radical workplace experiment, which obviously has many implications for employee motivation, has been an interesting and enlightening journey for the company.
In 2002, then-CEO Brad Anderson (now the company’s vice chairman) introduced a carefully crafted program called ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment). ROWE was the inspiration of two HRM managers at Best Buy, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, who had been given the task of taking a flexible work program that was in effect at corporate headquarters in Minnesota and developing it for everyone in the company. Ressler and Thompson said, “We realized that the flexible work program was successful as employee engagement was up, productivity was higher, but the problem was the participants were being viewed as ‘not working.’ ” And that’s a common reaction from managers who don’t really view flexible work employees as “really working because they aren’t in the office working traditional hours.” The two women set about to change that by creating a program in which “everyone would be evaluated solely on their results, not on how long they worked.”
The first thing to understand about ROWE The first step in implementing ROWE was a culture audit at company headquarters, which helped them establish a baseline for how employees perceived their work environment. After