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HNC Research project

05th

March 2011

Motivational impact

on staff turnover

Michael Alan Smith

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ASSIGNMENT: Research project

Name:

Michael Alan Smith

Address:

Sluzska 780/36 Praha 8 Czech Republic

Post code / Zip:

182 00

Telephone No:

00420 608 52 11 96

Email Address:

michaelalan.smith@yahoo.com

Date:

07-02-2011

Course Name:

HNC

Tutor Name:

Clive Findlay

Assignment Name:

Motivational impact on staff turnover.

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Contents 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 4 2 Theory and methodology .............................................................................................. 7

2.1 Theory ................................................................................................................ 7

2.1.1 Fredrick Winslow Taylor ................................................................................ 7

2.1.2 Elton Mayo.................................................................................................... 8

2.1.3 Maslow ....................................................................................................... 10

2.1.4 Frederick Herzberg ..................................................................................... 12

2.1.5 Victor Vroom .............................................................................................. 13

2.1.6 O.C.E.A.N the 5 factor theory ...................................................................... 15

2.2 Methodology ..................................................................................................... 16

3 Application ............................................................................................................... 17 3.1 Purpose of the research .................................................................................... 17

3.2 Questionnaire ................................................................................................... 17

3.2.1 Description of the questionnaire ................................................................. 18

3.2.2 How the participants were chosen. ............................................................. 18

3.2.3 Coding the answers .................................................................................... 18

3.2.4 Results ....................................................................................................... 19

4 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 23 4.1 Recommendations to HR ................................................................................... 25

5 Literature .................................................................................................................. 27 6 Appendix ................................................................................................................ 28

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Motivational Impact on staff turnover.

1 Introduction

After having spent some time in the aerospace division in the planning department based in the Prague office, I have noticed that there seems to be a problem with the motivation of people in terms of their negative approach towards implementation of changes to processes. In addition the way the company operates the overall results were very low and as per my opinion there is a higher than normal staff turnover. In the 6 months I have been with the department I have seen 5 people either leave the organisation altogether or move to other departments. I have noticed this gap and now as I have got the opportunity to work on the project for my studies as well as help to find the solution for this unpleasant situation I decided that I could look deeper in this topic. I raised this idea with our HR department who welcomed my aim to help to improve the motivation of the employees and hopefully to decrease the turn over. Both have a very negative impact on the knowledge transfer, productivity and in the end the client satisfaction. Initially the research project will cover only the aerospace division of Honeywell, and dependent on the outcomes of the research and the results obtained, it may be expanded to the further 3 divisions on Honeywell. Honeywell as an organisation is one on a global scale with its sites based all over the world from the USA to Europe, Asia and down to Australia and New Zealand. It has a narrow span of control by which it has a large numbers of management levels, in example from my current division of aerospace, in the planning department, there are team leaders, a planning manager, then the planning director and then the supply chain director. It results in opportunities to grow and develop upwards, there are few of them. The most development has been done on a lateral bases where you do not step up the ladder but only sideways on it. And this in itself can have an effect on how your employees are motivated to exceed in their current roles if they do not see the possibility of upward development. Honeywell’s cultural for me has been one that is hard to define, and I think this is due to the fact that the business is spread over such a large area of the world with manufacturing facilities, engine repair shops, offices and distribution centres and warehousing facilities. They all kind of worked separately from each other, and this was partly due to the merger within 1999 with allied signal, the two organisations never really developed an overall corporate culture that flowed down to all areas of the business. On top of this a failed sale of the new company to General Electric shortly after the merger due to European trade commission over anti-trust issues within the avionics business meaning a huge shake up at the top. A new CEO was brought in to try to turn the company around and redefine Honeywell’s culture. But trying to get 114,000 + Staff moving in the same direction, adopting the same values and behaviours and working as a team is not an easy thing to do and takes time. In an attempt to do this as part of the new culture of the company every division has adopted what Honeywell calls its 5 key initiatives: Growth, Productivity, Cash, People and

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the "Enablers". There are 3 enablers: Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing and Digital Works (corporate-wide digital initiatives to increase productivity and information flow). In addition to this, the organisation encourages its employee to focus on a set of 12 behaviours as part of its corporate wide culture.

Growth & Customer Focus

Leadership Impact

Getting Results

Making People Better

Championing Change & Six Sigma

Fostering Teamwork & Diversity

Global Mindset

Intelligent Risk Taking

Self-Awareness/Learning

Effective Communication

Integrative Thinking

Technical or Functional Excellence

By adopting these through the worldwide organisation the culture of the company has started to emerge as one of a single entity, working and moving in the same direction and with the same goals and objectives. But this in turn again can have a negative impact if only in short term of the motivation of the people working for the organisation with all of the changes that are taking place and the fact that for some divisions this may mean a totally new way of working. Management have had to start thinking in a very different way to be able to achieve goals and objectives set by the organisation and in doing so, they may have lost some of the basic skills of motivating their employees. There was a very interesting description of Honeywell culture on one website called glassdoor.com, (http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Honeywell-Aerospace-RVW381958.htm), an article posted on the 29th of January 2010 by an anonymous current employee titled: “Honeywell Corporate Culture”. It seems to sum up some of the feelings about the changes that are taking place. Quote:

“Pros Corporate culture is friendly, depending on who works within your group. Benefits are pretty good, but getting worse rapidly. If you chase new internal certifications and external credentials (degrees from universities) you will be promoted to new work. When the economy is good, extra overtime can sometimes be rewarded. Work obligations seem based on what you get done, so if you work expediently/efficiently, you are making more money for less work. The dress code is relaxed if you work for the right people and aren't afraid to test the waters. Working from home is possible with years of time under the same boss, or with certain jobs. Cons

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Overtime is mandatory for many employees at many locations. If you make X dollars for 40 hours a week and they make you work 60 hours a week, you are really only making x(2/3)+x(14/40) which means you make less than they would lead you to believe. Politics can be brutal in some groups. Some groups are friendly, but the majority of them have a backstabbing factor, where you have to be very careful what you say in front of people. Advice to Senior Management I've seen a bunch of people cease to be employed by Honeywell, under bad circumstances that involved being told they were doing a bad job. I think middle and lower management needs to be more concerned with the personal relationship between a boss and the people they manage. There seems to be an active effort to treat all people as cogs in a corporate machine. The manager shakes your hand and feeds you a few lines, but the days when employees were social with one another and could go out for a drink after work are nearly gone at Honeywell. I've only seen that sort of thing happen extremely rarely. There are even statements in their corporate policy, on paper, that forbid friendships at work. Gladly, the lowest level or two of workers disregard this regularly. People spend half their lives at work... it should be a place with personality.” Unquote

To be able to offer solutions and possible directions I need to first analyse the problem, collect data and interpret the results. This will be the core of my project as well as the offered solution which will be presented to our HR department and possibly modified to be implemented it the specific environment. This research can be repeated in time to see if there is any positive development. Repetitive research is actually recommended to see the development of the situation in future. There is also a big chance that the motivation of people will improve anyway because teams will feel that there is some attention given to them which is already motivating. This should lead into the better productivity, decrease of the turnover and satisfaction with the management and company itself. The project will begin immediately with the development of the questionnaire form and the distribution of it. The forms will need to be returned within 1 week to allow time for the analysis of the data. If the project proves that there is a link between motivation and the high turnover of staff, recommendations will be made to the HR department of Honeywell Aerospace to change or take action to improve the motivation of employees and try to reduce the turnover of staff.

In terms of ethical issues that may arise from this research due to the sensitivity of the topic and the possibility of negativity towards the organisation I will give a full guarantee that all persons taking part in the research and any answers given will be fully anonymous. The results of the research will be made available to anyone that would like to read them.

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2 Theory and methodology

In this section of the project I will be taking an in-depth look into the different motivational theories that have been presented from the turn of the 20th century with people such as Frederick Winslow Taylor, Maslow, Herzberg and I will continue to the more modern theories such as the Ocean theory.

2.1 Theory The word motivation is derived from the Latin word movere, meaning "to move." But in today’s modern working world what does it actual mean to an organisation and how over the years has the theory of motivation changed and adapted to today’s working environment.

2.1.1 Fredrick Winslow Taylor

Taylor was an American mechanical engineer who improved industrial efficiency.

He is wildly regarded to be the father of the scientific management method, and is considered to be one of the first management consultants. Peter Ferdinand Drucker (November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) was a writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.” He described Taylor as: “Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study. On Taylor's 'scientific management' rests, above all, the tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years which has lifted the working masses in the developed countries well above any level recorded before, even for the well-to-do. Taylor, though the Isaac Newton (or perhaps the Archimedes) of the science of work, laid only first foundations, however. Not much has been added to them since - even though he has been dead all of sixty years”.

The basic theory behind Taylor’s scientific management approach was to analyse work and find the “one best way” to do any job, these were basically time and motion studies. He would take any job and break it down to its component tasks. These would then be measured down to a hundredth of a minute and analysed to see where the efficiency could be made. Some famous examples of these were the shovelling of coal in the steel works where he worked. In studying the men that were shovelling coal he realised they were using the same shovel no matter what the type of coal being shovelled was. He determined that the most effective load was 21½ lb, and found or designed shovels that for each material would scoop up that amount. He was able to design shovels that made the

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work more effective and allowed the men to shovel for the whole day. In doing so he was able to reduce the number of men needed to shovel the same amounts of coal. This as you can imagine was not popular where unionised industries were involved. Taylor put forward the theory that all workers were in essence lazy and only motivated by pay. His scientific management approach argued that workers do not naturally enjoy work and need to be closely supervised and controlled; therefore managers should break down production into smaller tasks. Workers should be given training and the tools so they can work efficiently at one set task. Workers are then paid according to the number of items they produce in a set period of time, piece rate pay. As a result workers are encouraged to work to maximise their output. Business started to widely adopt Taylors approach as they saw the benefits of increased production with lower unit cost. The most notable advocate was Henry Ford who used Taylor’s theory to design the first ever production line at the Ford Motor company. However there were problems with Taylor’s method. The main one being that workers became bored with doing single repetitive tasks and they felt it treated them little better than human machines and worker quickly came to dislike Taylors approach. One of the issue was that the theory made the assumption that workers were motivated by money alone.

2.1.2 Elton Mayo

Mayo was an Australian psychologist, sociologist and organisational theorist.

Mayo is known as the founder of the human relations movement. Mayo took what he thought to be the misgivings of Taylors theory in the fact that worker were not just concerned with money and could be better motivated if they had their social needs met whilst at work. This was something that Taylor had really ignored. From his studies Mayo introduced the human relations school of thought, this focused on the principle that managers should take more of an interest in the workers rather than just the output, and they should treat them as people and not just machines, people who have worthwhile opinions and that workers enjoy interacting with each other. In an attempt to prove his theory correct Mayo began conducting experiments from 1927 to 1932 at the Western electric Hawthorne works in Chicago. We go back a few years before that time to 1924 were until 1927 Mayo run preliminary experiments to test the effects of light on productivity. The experiments showed no clear connections with

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productivity and amount of illumination, but Mayo began to wonder what kinds of changes would have an effect on outputs. In 1927 he began a new series of experiments and the company, this involved taking a group of 6 female workers and separating them from the rest of the work shop. The ides would be to make changes to their working conditions to see what had an effect on outputs if any. The changes would include the working hours in a week, the hours in the working day, the number of rest break the girls had, the time of their lunch break and occasionally he would send the girls back to their original hard working conditions. The experiments were conducted with girls from the relay assembly line. This was a group of employees assembling telephone relays, one relay consisting of about 40 parts assembled by a girl sitting alone at a single work bench with no interaction with other workers. The investigators took 2 girls and asked them to choose another 4 girls from the assembly floor, the group was given their own work shop to assemble the relays, throughout the experiment an observer was present in the work shop with the girls making notes about everything that happened. The observer kept the girls informed about everything that was happening and fully informed about the experiment, asking for advice and information and listening to their complaints. During the experiment various changes would be introduced for period of four to twelve weeks. The results of the changes are as follows. Under normal conditions with a 48 hour working week including Saturdays and no rest pauses, the girls would produce 2.400 relays a week each. They were put on piece work for 8 weeks: Output went up. Two five minuet rest breaks were introduced morning and afternoon for a period of 5 weeks: Output went up once more. The rest pauses were lengthened to ten minutes each: Output went up sharply. Six five minutes rest pauses were introduced and the girls complained that their work rhythm was broken: Output went down slightly. Return to the two rest period, the first with a hot meal supplied by the company free of charge: Output went up. The girls were dismissed at 4.30pm instead of 5.00pm: Output went up. They were dismissed at 4.00pm: Output remained the same. Finally all of the improvements were taken away and the girls still in their own work shop went back to their physical conditions of the beginning of the experiment,

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work on Saturday, 48 hour week, no rest pauses, no piece work, and no free meals, this lasted for a period of 12 weeks: Output was the highest ever recorded averaging 3000 relays per week. Some of the conclusions of the experiment was that the six individual girls became a team, and they gave themselves wholeheartedly and spontaneously to cooperate in the experiment. They felt themselves to be participating freely and without afterthought. They felt they were working under less pressure than ever before, absence from work declined by 80%. The experimentally group had considerable freedom and were no longer pushed around or bossed by anyone. Under these conditions they developed an increased sense of responsibly, they took ownership for their own actions and instead of discipline from a higher authority being imposed and it came from within the group. The group had become self motivating. Mayo’s theory had been proven that by treating the group as intelligent individuals and giving more attention to them as people and not just machines the individuals became more motivated and output increased.

2.1.3 Maslow

Abraham Maslow was a professor of psychology at Brandeis University. In the 1950’s he introduced the neo-human relations school which focused on the psychological needs of employees.

Maslow developed what he called the Hierarchy of Needs motivational model. Maslow’s theory is based on the assumption that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs and that certain lower needs must be fulfilled before higher needs can be satisfied. According to Maslow there are general types of needs (physiological, survival, safety, love and esteem) that must be satisfied before a person can act unselfishly, he called these needs “deficiency needs” and he claims as long as we are motivated to satisfying these cravings we are moving towards growth. Maslow pyramid of needs looks this way:

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He goes on to claim that for active work place motivation, leadership must understand the active needs for individual employee motivation. If we follow Maslow’s theory everyone must satisfy the first of the needs that being the physiological needs air, water, food and sleep. Once these have been achieved they are no longer motivating factors, and the next level of need become the motivating factors, these are the safety needs, living in a safe area, medical insurance, job security financial reserves. Next are the social needs of friendship, belonging to a group, giving and receiving love, and only once these are achieved, there is the final level of the pyramid, the motivating factor the esteem needs: recognition, attention, social status and self respect. But does this theory really work in terms of work place? There are motivational opportunities by motivating each employee through their style of management, compensation plans and company activities. Physiological motivation: provide breaks for lunch, pay, salaries that allow employees to buy life’s essentials. Safety needs: provide a safe clean working environment and freedom from threats. Social needs: generate a feeling of acceptance and belonging, reinforce team dynamics. Esteem motivators: recognise achievement, assign important projects. Self-Actualization: offer challenging and meaningful work assignments which enable innovation and creativity. But the problem we have is that not everyone in the work environment is motivated by the same thing, and one of the biggest limitations to Maslow’s theory is that it makes that assumption. There are other limitations to Maslow’s theory, one of them is as stated, it can be to general for a work place environment, and even in some cultures the needs may take a different order of importance. In some cultures social needs rank higher than anything else. Maslow theory also fails to explain the “starving artist” scenario in which the artist ignores their physical needs to pursue artistic or spiritual gaols.

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2.1.4 Frederick Herzberg

Frederick Herzberg was an American psychologist who became one of the influential names in business management. He is most famous for introducing job enrichment and in 1959 his two factor theory or motivation-hygiene theory.

Herzberg had close links with Maslow and took his theory and developed it further. Herzberg came up with the two factor theory of motivation. Herzberg argued that an organisation could introduce certain factors that would directly motivate its employees to work harder and better, he called these motivators. However he also claimed that there were factors that would de-motivate an employee if not present but would not directly motivate them to work hard when present, he called these Hygiene factors.

Motivators are more concerned with job itself, such as how interesting the work, how rewarding it is, how much opportunity does it give for extra responsibility, recognition or promotion. The interesting part to the theory is that of the hygiene factors, these are the factors that surround the job rather than the job itself. For instance an employee will only turn up for work if his or her employer has provided a satisfactory level of pay for the job or

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they provide a clean and safe working environment, these factors in themselves will not make the person work harder at his or her job once they are in work. Interestingly Herzberg viewed pay as a hygiene factor, in direct contrast to Taylor or viewed it and in particle piece rate as a motivator. Herzberg believed that there were certain methods organisation could use to help motivate employees into working harder. Some of them stated below: Job enlargement, where employees are given a greater variety of task to perform which, could make the work more interesting to do. Job enrichment would involve employees being given a wider range of more complex and interesting tasks to perform surrounding the whole unit of work and not just the single task. This can be seen in companies such as Aston Martin where the whole car is built almost entail by one person, one model used to even had the engine block signed by the person that made it. Empowerment would delegate more power to employees to allow them to take own decisions over areas of their working life, and also to take the responsibility that goes with it.

2.1.5 Victor Vroom

Victor Vroom is a business school professor at the Yale school of Management. In 1964 Vroom developed his expectancy theory of motivation or VIE model.

The bases of Vroom expectance or VIE theory is that an employee is motivated to complete a task based on 2 things: A: the probability of completing the task B: the possible outcome or consequence of completing the task Vroom’s theory says that individuals make decisions, which they believe will lead to reward or reduce the likely hood of pain, the ultimate goal does not matter, the important factor is the impact that achieving the goal will have on the individual. It goes on to say that an individual opinion is formed by a combination of three factors which Vroom categorised as follows: 1. Expectancy – Does the individual believe that they can achieve the task? 2. Valence – Does the individual believe that completing the task will benefit them or cause detriment?

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3. Instrumentality – What is the probability of completing the task leading to an outcome desired by the individual?

The Expectancy part of the theory is the individuals belief that he or she can achieve the task, this decision will be influenced by things such as what are the skills needed for the task, do I have support from co-workers or my line manager, availability of information. All of these can have an influence on whether an individual will be motivated to take on and achieve the task. Another influencing factor that individual will take into account is if the task has been achieved in the past or if it has failed, or even if it has been attempted. Vroom’s theory works on a mathematical bases and he even has a formula to help calculate the motivation level of the individual: Force (Motivation) = Valence x Expectancy So if the task had been achieved in the past the individual will have a higher expectation of being able to complete the task this time round so they would score it as 1. If the task has failed in the past the individual would have a lower expectation of success and would score the task a 0. If the task has never been taken on before but the individual believes it may be achieved they may score it between 0 and 1 e.g. 0.75. The V in VIE measures what Vroom called “Valence” and this basically how much the individual wants the consequences of competing the task. If the outcomes are desired by the individual then the Valence is positive, and if they are not, the Valence is negative. Some examples of positive valence might be: praise, promotion or more recognition. And examples of negative valence may be more work, redundancies, boredom. The “I” in VIE is for instrumentality, this focuses on securing the desired outcome from completing the task. Will the individual get what they wanted out of it if they complete the task? A probability of 1 means they will secure the desired outcome A probability of 0 means they will not secure the desired outcome. A probability of 0 to 1 means they may secure the desired outcome. What this is saying is that an employee will put in more effort and do a better job if they believe that by completing the task they will be rewarded with what they want out of it. An example of Vroom’s VIE is below:

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Valence (V)

i.e. Desired outcome

Expectancy (E)

i.e. employee’s assessment how likely it is that the task will be achieved

V X E = F

the valence multiplied by expectancy

F

i.e. Force which is the employee’s motivation

Employee A The employee believes that the outcome is very attractive.

= 0.8

As past performance is poor, employee assessed the task as difficult to achieve

= 0.2

0.8 x 0.2 = F

F = 0.16

Employee B The employee believes that the outcome is relatively attractive.

=0.6

As past performance is reasonable, employee assessed the task as reasonably achievable = 0.6

0.6 X 0.6 = F F = 0.36

To be able to use this in an everyday working environment the manager must firstly understand what rewards the employee wants (V), secondly managers have to convince employees that if the tasks are completed successfully they will receive the rewards (I) and thirdly manager must ensure that employees have the necessary capabilities to be able to complete the task. Whilst this was a very important piece of work and formed the bases for many later theory’s, Vroom’s theory was at its height 25 years ago and management thinking has changed a lot since then. There is now more enforces’ on delegation and empowerment. Flatter management structures and leaner thinking within organization mean in today’s business world this theory may not be as relevant as it once was.

2.1.6 O.C.E.A.N the 5 factor theory

Psychologists Robert McCrae and Paul Costa came up with the 5 factor theory of personality.

A personality trait is a disposition to behave in a certain way, IE to be honest or open, to be friendly or moody. Costa and MacCrea argued that a person’s personality is a combination of the following 5 traits in veering degrees ( these where abbreviated to the word OCEAN). Openness to experience, where people exhibit imaginative, curious willingness to broaden the mind and intelligent behaviours.

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Conscientiousness – where people exhibit dependable or responsible and hardworking behaviours and can be achievement orientated. Extraversion - where people exhibit sociable and gregarious behaviours they can be assertive and often talkative (what may be commonly known as outgoing). Agreeableness – where people exhibit courteous, flexible, good natured and co-operative behaviours. Neuroticism or emotional stability – where people exhibit anxious or depressed, angry and worried behaviours; they may have insecure actions. By analysing an individual’s standing on each of the 5 factors you can provide a comprehensive summery of the persons emotional, interpersonal, and experiential, attitude and motivational style. By understanding how a person thinks and feels, by what makes them “tick” you can then start to understand what motivates them. And in a working environment this is very impotent to understand. Motivation is all about getting the next level out of someone; it’s about going the extra mile, increasing the performance and commitment from employees. And sure a manager can make you do something, and you do it because they are the manager. But from a manager’s point of view working with a highly motivated team makes achieving the results easier faster and better. Having a motivated team can allow the manager to start to give more responsibility to employees and this can lead to job enrichment for them by removing controls giving more accountability, it can also lead to job enlargement by allowing the manager to hand over some of the “Heavier” tasks they would normally do, in turn giving them the chance to prove there ability’s.

2.2 Methodology The methodology used in completing this project is as follows: The first steps were to run some in depth investigation in to the many different motivational theories that have been argued over the years. These included Taylor who concluded that all workers were motivated only by money, from him came Mayo with his Western Electric Hawthorne works. There was an introduction of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory and leading onto Hertzberg’s 2 factor theory. And going through to Vroom’s VIE and finally on to O.C.E.A.N and the 5 factor theory. The analysis of these different theories will be the bases of the development of the questionnaire to gather the required data to try to make a conclusion as to the level of motivational impact on staff turnover. The next step will be to create the questionnaire that will be used for the primary research on the project. The questionnaire will consist of 10 questions aimed at trying to understand employee’s current motivational levels. The questionnaire will be based on the “likert scale” format.

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To assign the scale to the answers will help significantly to quantify the results relatively quickly and a comparison can then be done to check the development of the situation in a longer period. Data will be collected, analysed and interpreted trying to follow the motivation theories. I can then use different tools to analyse if the factors are influencing each other or are related. Once I have analysed all of the data I hope to be able to conclude if there is firstly a lack of motivation within the aerospace division as a whole. I will also try to understand if there are any specific areas that may be influencing any lack of motivation, this may be a lack of benefits or trainings, or it could be that management do not have enough understanding of what individuals need in terms of motivation within the work place. Finally if at the conclusion of this project it is determined that there is an issue with the general levels motivation or on an individual level that may be having an impact on staff turnover, recommendations for improvements will be given to the HR department and the management team for further review.

3 Application

3.1 Purpose of the research The purposes of the research project was to try to determine if motivational factors were playing any kind of role or having any kind of impact of the number of people leaving the aero division of Honeywell’s Prague service centre. Currently Honeywell do not run exit interviews with employees that are leaving the company so we have no real way of knowing why people are leaving. If it can be determined from the analysis of the data that there is either a general lack of motivation or if motivation is lacking in specific areas of the employees work, necessary recommendation will be made to the HR department and to higher management to implement changes to try to improve the general level of motivation or in those specific areas.

3.2 Questionnaire The questionnaire was created by trying to develop questions that came from the different types of motivational theories I have been researching for this project. I wanted to try to understand not only if motivation or the lack of it had an impact on what I believed to a high staff turnover with in Aerospace division, but also to try to understand if there were specific areas were improvements might be made. For example if we were to take Taylors theory that money was the main motivator, I wanted to understand if employees felt they were not receiving a high enough salary for the work they did, this also goes in to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory where by employees were not able to provide themselves with the first level of basic needs.

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I wanted also to try to determine if Herzberg hygiene facts played any role in terms of the number of staff leaving the organisation, as we know these are not direct motivational factors but they do play a part in staff motivation. I have also added question based around Mayo’s theory developed from his Western electric Hawthorne works experiments that showed employee outputs went up simply by the fact that management showed a greater interest in what they were doing. An example of the questionnaire can be seen in appendix 1. This is the full questionnaire that has been handed out to the target number of employees within the Aero division.

3.2.1 Description of the questionnaire

The type of questionnaire that has been used is a scale questionnaire, in the form of the “likert scale”. The reason I have chosen this type of questionnaire is that is a good way to gauge the attitudes and beliefs of the participants, in terms of motivational attitudes. I felt this would be the best way of gauging this. By using the likert format this forces the participants to give an answer to each question asked, they must make a clear diction in terms of agreement or disagreement. For this questionnaire I have used the alternative 5 point response by adding the mid range response of neither agrees nor disagrees.

3.2.2 How the participants were chosen.

Within aerospace in the service centre, the division is made up of the following departments. Integrated supply chain: Planning, Material administrators, Buyers, there are the material masters, customer services, order management and export control team. In total the department is made up of around 100 staff. The selection of the participants’ was done at random within each of the separate departments. I was looking for an overall margin of error of 5% with a total number of 100. This meant that I needed to have back 79 completed forms. The selected number of individuals from each department was approached in person by me and it was explained to them in detail that they had been selected at random to assist in a research project that was being conducted. On agreement to take part in the research each participant was given a copy of the questionnaire and it was explained what they need to do and requested they return the completed questionnaire to me no later than 1 week after they had received it in order to allow time to have the data analysed. It was made it clear to each of them that they would not be identified anywhere within the research project either by name or even by the number of individuals that would be taking part from each of the departments. I gave them guarantees that under no circumstances would their details be passed to HR or to any member of the management team.

3.2.3 Coding the answers

The questionnaire in the format of the likert scale was coded using a simple method of an absolute number. The number of people answered one question by the corresponding

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number of the answer on the range of 1 to 5, 1 being strongly disagreeing and 5 being strongly agreeing. Firstly all of the answers were entered in to table showing the total number of people that answered any question. As in the example below we can see that this shows the number of males that answered question one in the range of 1 to 5, there were 20 male participates taking the questionnaire.

Male Total

Strongly disagree

(1) Disagree

(2) neither

(3) Agree (4) Strongly agree (5)

Q1 1 7 9 3 0

1 person answered that they strongly disagreed with the statement. 9 people answered that they neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement. For the type of results that I want to measure this would be the simplest way to compare the data that has been gathered and to show the difference in the way the participants have chosen to answer each of the questions.

3.2.4 Results

The results section will show several graphs indicating the responses from the total number of answers, then breaking this down to show separately the male and female answers to determine if there are any differences in the way the different genders felt about each question. Following this will be shown the results in terms of the number of years spent in the role, this will I hope show if the time spent within the role and the organisation has an effect on how people feel in terms of their motivation or if there is any trend that can be seen to be

developing over time.

The first set of results in table 3.1 below is showing the answers given for the overall number of participants in the survey.

Table 3.1

As we can see from these results for all questions there was a large number of people neither agreeing nor disagreeing, however we can also see a large number of people disagreeing with all of the statements with the exception of question 8. Question 8 asks: Does your organisation provide a clean safe work environment?

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This question is linked to Hertzberg’s hygiene factors, where by it is not a direct motivator but can be de-motivating if not there. As we can see from the results only 2 participants disagreed with this statement, giving a strong indication that the working conditions are not having a negative effect on the overall motivation. The next step was to break this data down in to the genders, for the male and female participants. The idea behind this was to see if there were any clear dividing lines between the ways each gender groups answered each of the question Firstly in table 3.2 below, we can see the results for the male participants.

Table 3.2

In this group we had a total of 20 participants, and again here we can see a strong number of them choosing to sit on the fence with their answers. And again question 8 has a strong number of people agreeing. Interestingly with the exception of question 5 all of the questions have a larger number of negative answers. Only question 5: “Does the work you do have real impact on the business?” is showing a higher positive result with 5 of the 20 participants agreeing with the question.

Table 3.3 below shows the results for the female participants on the survey.

Table 3.3

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For the female participants there were 59 taking part and again here we can see that a large number of them have again answered negatively to almost all of the questions. For the female participants we see the question 6: Do you receive regular feedback from your team leader/ manager?

There are a higher number of positive answers with a total of 17 people agreeing with the question. This seems to indicate that there is better communication flow with the female members of staff, despite this question 7: Do you feel your manager is approachable? It has a

large number of participants; 20 answering negatively to this, this may indicate that communication is one way. The next group of results are showing the total number of both female and male participants but separated in to the number of years they have been in their current roles. The split has been done as follows: Less than one year 1 to 2 years 2 to 3 years 3 to 5 years

Table 3.4 below is showing the participants that have been with the company for less than 1 year there are 13 in total.

Table 3.4

In these results we can see that in almost all cases the newcomers to the company show high level of overall satifation in terms of agreement with the questions. Again question 5 is the only question that has 2 people answering that they disagree with this question, this may be that as newcomers they do not yet fully understand the business and in turn do not know what impact they may be having. Being related to how approchable their manager is. For a newcomer to the organisation to feel that their manager was not approchable may be an indicator of a lack of involment from the manager.

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Table 3.5 shows the participants that have been with the company 1 to 2 years (19)

Table 3.5

In this table we can clearly begin to see a change in the attitudes of the employees with many more of them now showing a distinct disagreement with the entire questionnaire. In this range we have a total of 19 people that have been with the company 1 to 2 years and we can see that almost all of the questions, with the exception of question 8, now show an fairly even number of people either not wanting to answer or disagreeing with the question. Question 4: Does your daily work give you a sense of satisfaction?

This question is now showing a distinct rise in the number of participants disagreeing with it. There is an indication that more of the employees that have been with the organisation are showing less interest in the role they are in. Again question 5 has a larger number of employees indicating that how they feel their work has less impact on the business. Questions 6, 9 and 10 are now even showing some participants indicating that they strongly disagree with these questions. Table 3.6 shows the participants that have been with the company 2 to 3 years (30)

Table 3.6

The number of participants that have been with the company between 2 and 3 years was 30, and in this table we can see again a large number neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

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But an even larger number disagreeing or strongly disagreeing, and again question 9 has the largest number of participants, 16 in total answering in this way. This points to the fact that all trainings seem to be happening within the first year of employment, and then less and less training seems to be offered. Questions 7 and 10 both being related to management are again showing a high number of negative responses. For question 10 this is around 43% indicating that their managers do not listen to them. And almost the same that their managers are not approachable. Table 3.7 shows the participants that have been with the company 3 to 5 years (17)

Table 3.7

In this group we have a total of 17 participants that have been with the company for 3 to 5 years, and we can really begin to see the number of positive responses to all questions have reduced sharply, with the exception of question 8. Question 4 is showing the highest number of negative responses with a total of 11 participants responding negatively to his question indicating that their daily work really does not carry any satisfaction for them anymore. Question number 1 has the second highest number of negative responses with a total of 9 saying they are no longer satisfied with the salary and benefits they get for the work they do.

4 Conclusion

We can see from the above tables that in terms of gender there does not seem to be any

real split between in the way the two genders have responded to each of the questions.

However when looking at the length of service this is where we can start to see some real

difference in the responses.

The table 3.8 below is showing the total number of participants that have responded to each question with a negative answer and how long they have been in the role.

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Table 3.8

From this we can clearly see the trends from the new comers to the organisation to those that have been there for several years. Some of the important questions in terms of motivation would be. Questions: 2 At work do your opinions counts?

Here we can see that in the first year there seems to be a very low level of negative responses, for the newcomers this would indicate that they believe their opinions do count. However as we stay within the role for longer the responses would indicate the employees believe their options count less and less. 4 Does your daily work give you a sense of satisfaction?

And the same seems to be the pattern here; the longer people are in the role the less satisfied they seem to be with the work they are doing. 6 Do you receive regular feedback from your team leader/ manager?

This is the first of the questions that are directly related to how the participants perceive the relationship they have with their managers, interestingly here we can see that there are no negative answers for participants that have been in their role for less than 1 year. But again the longer they are in role the more negative responses can be seen. This could indicate that the managers are directing their efforts in to newcomers to ensure they stay within the departments. 7 Do you feel your manager is approachable?

And the same seems to apply for this question, only one participant that has been in role for less than one year has indicated that they disagree with question, with the exception of this the trend is the same. 9 Does your organisation provide regular training for you to develop new skills?

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In analysing the responses with this question, they would indicate that all of the efforts in training the employees are put in to the first year, after this there again is a very negative trend to the responses. 10 Does your manager listen to you?

In this the second question related to management only one participant with less than one year in role responded negatively, matching the responses to the question 7. In all categories at least one person has responded to strongly disagreeing with the question and a high number of participants disagreeing, again indicating that the management have a better relationship with the new employees than those that have been in the role for longer periods. For all of the questions we can see a strong trend leaning towards the negative responses the longer the participants have been with the organisation in the same role. We see the longer the participants have been in the organisation the more they feel that their managers are no longer listening to them nor do they feel they are approachable. This can be very damaging in terms of motivation, if the employees do not have a good working relationship with his or her manager they are less likely to want to stay with the organisation particularly when we look at this in terms of Hertzberg’s hygiene factors. For these as we know Herzberg does not relate them directly to motivation but can be a de-motivator without them in place.

Concluding this project I would have to say that there is a strong indication that there may be a lack of motivation in those employees that have been with the company for a longer period of time, however for this to be fully proven there are additional conditions that really need to be taken into account. One may be the department the participants are working, in the survey we have not asked them to indicate this so we cannot determine if there is a specific department would be having more issues than others. Also we have not asked them if they have worked for the same manager for the whole period of time they have been in their role. There may be changes in management that is having a negative effect on the motivation of the individuals, if we change the manager, we may see that the motivation improves. For this to be more effective, these factors may have to be added to the overall survey if it was to run again.

4.1 Recommendations to HR Having completed the research project, there are some recommendations that will be put to the HR department and to the management team, these will be as follows. Run exit interviews; with these being in place it would help to identify the areas that are affecting the employees. It would not stop the employee from leaving but it may help in the future to make to by gathering information and making corrective changes to try to reduce the number of leavers. Additional training programmes for long term staff, in analysing the data from the questionnaire the longer term staff are indicating that they do not receive any or little training. For those that do receive training this may only be if changes to process are introduced to their role. The organisation may benefit from introducing training for all

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employees related to different areas of the business, in doing this it would allow employees to get a greater understanding of the organisation as a hole. In regard to the negative responses in relation to the questions connected to management, there seems to be area here where the management team could benefit from additional training to help in the area of communication. However before this training would be implemented I would suggest that some additional surveys are conducted to gather more information in terms of: are the negative responses all coming from the same departments or related to the same managers, and also at what level of management. As a final recommendation I would suggest that if these or other changes are implemented that these types of survey been conducted at regular intervals to determine if any of the changes are having any impact of the motivation of the employees and also to determine if their negative responses move to different areas of the business.

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5 Literature

General

http://tutor2u.net/business/gcse/people_motivation_theories.htm http://www.laynetworks.com/Theories-of-Motivation.html http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Mar-No/Motivation-and-Motivation-Theory.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Other_theories

http://www.jimpinto.com/commentary/honeywellculture.html http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Honeywell-Aerospace-RVW381958.htm

Taylor

http://www.accel-team.com/scientific/scientific_02.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/fwt/taylor.html

Elton Mayo

http://www.envisionsoftware.com/articles/Hawthorne_Effect.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton_Mayo http://tutor2u.net/business/gcse/people_motivation_theories.htm http://www.work.com/management-theory-of-elton-mayo-9444/ http://www.accel-team.com/motivation/hawthorne_02.html Maslow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs http://www.businessballs.com/maslow.htm http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/maslow.html http://www.abraham-maslow.com/m_motivation/Hierarchy_of_Needs.asp

Herzberg

http://www.businessballs.com/herzberg.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Herzberg http://www.trainanddevelop.co.uk/view_article.php?ArticleID=78 http://www.accel-team.com/human_relations/hrels_05_herzberg.html Vroom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Vroom http://www.learnmanagement2.com/vroom.htm http://www.sayeconomy.com/expectancy-theory-by-victor-vroom/ http://www.businessmate.org/Article.php?ArtikelId=42

O.C.E.A.N

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_NEO_Personality_Inventory http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y3xJuUzNLg8C&pg=PA261&lpg=PA261&dq=Robert+McCrae+and+Paul+Costa%E2%80%99s&source=bl&ots=5vSp-hUE4L&sig=gjK15JQpGADFLA9677stAkd0V3k&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits http://www.personality-and-aptitude-career-tests.com/five-factor-model.html

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6 Appendix Example of questionnaire

This is an example of the questionnaire that was handed out to all of the employees that took part in the survey.

Employee motivational questionnaire

This small questionnaire has been designed to attempt to gauge the level of motivation within the Honeywell aerospace division based in the service centre in Prague. Due to the sensitive nature of the questionnaire all answers given will be done so in the strictest of confidents and participants can be assured that no details of who has taken part will be made available to any members of the management team. I would like to thank you in advance for you help in this study and for taking the time to answer the 10 questions set out below.

The first sets of questions are to ascertain your age, gender and time within your current role. In the second section of the questionnaire you will see 10 main questions, please indicate your response to each question by placing an “X” next to one of the 5 options as to what level you agree or disagree with each one of the 10 question. 1. Strongly disagree 2. Disagree 3. Neither agrees nor disagrees 4. Agree 5. Strongly agree Please remember you can only indicate one of the five options for each question. Example

1 . Are you

satisfied with

the

salary/benefits

for the work

you do

Strongly

disagree

disagree X Neither

agrees

nor

disagrees

agrees Strongly

agree

Please note this is only an example of how to answer the following questions and this should not influence your answers in anyway.

Please indicate the answer that best describes you.

Gender Male Female

AGE 18-25 25-30 30-35 35-40 40 +

Time in current role < 1 year 1 to 2 years 2 to 3 years 3 to 5 years > 5 years

Please take your time to read and understand each of the 10 questions before you answer them.

Questionnaire

1 . Are you satisfied

with the

salary/benefits

for the work you

do

Strongly

disagree

disagree Neither

agrees

nor

disagrees

Agree Strongly

agree

29

2 . At work do your

opinions counts?

Strongly

disagree

disagree Neither

agrees

nor

disagrees

Agree Strongly

agree

3 . Does your team

leader or

someone else at

work care about

you as a person?

Strongly

disagree

disagree Neither

agrees

nor

disagrees

Agree Strongly

agree

4 . Does your daily

work give you a

sense of

satisfaction?

Strongly

disagree

disagree Neither

agrees

nor

disagrees

Agree Strongly

agree

5 . Does the work

you do have real

impact on the

business?

Strongly

disagree

disagree Neither

agrees

nor

disagrees

Agree Strongly

agree

6 . Do you receive

regular feedback

from your team

leader/ manager?

Strongly

disagree

disagree Neither

agrees

nor

disagrees

Agree Strongly

agree

7 . Do you feel your

manager is

approachable?

Strongly

disagree

disagree Neither

agrees

nor

disagrees

Agree Strongly

agree

8 . Does your

organisation

provide a clean

safe work

environment?

Strongly

disagree

disagree Neither

agrees

nor

disagrees

Agree Strongly

agree

9 . Does your

organisation

provide regular

training for you

to develop new

skills?

Strongly

disagree

disagree Neither

agrees

nor

disagrees

Agree Strongly

agree

10 . Does your

manager listen

to you?

Strongly

disagree

disagree Neither

agrees

nor

disagrees

Agree Strongly

agree