HR Performance Issues and Motivation

HR Performance Issues and Motivation
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HR Performance Issues and Motivation
To a large extent, the overall performance of organizations is predicated on employees' motivation and job satisfaction. Motivation, which is employees' attitude toward their jobs, is essential for several reasons. Motivated employees work with enhanced commitment and dedication, which considerably enhances the competence and profitability of an organization. In addition, motivation enables an organization to realize its objectives. Motivation can either be internal or external (Baack, Chapter 2: Culture and Diversity Organizational, 2017). On the other hand, job satisfaction means the contentment employees get while working. An organization that strives to make its employees contented benefits in several ways. For instance, employees work with more energy and commitment, which increases productivity. That said, organizations should prioritize making their employees motivated and satisfied.
Describing a Performance Issue
In 2014, the world's largest software company, Microsoft, appointed Satya Nadella as its new CEO. His first task was to ask all top executives to read a book about how to communicate and collaborate effectively by embracing compassion. Evidently, the new CEO discovered a problem in the company that revolved around employees' motivation. This is because the company faced high turnover rates, which resulted from a management system known as "stack ranking" (Hu, 2013). The system constrained employees to conform to office politics at the expense of focusing on substantive work and innovation. This created a conflict between the management and the employees. Many employees left the company, while those who remained were less motivated; as such, the company could not match the performance of its competitors, such as Apple and Google (The Economist, 2020). He acknowledged that the best strategy to resolve the issue was through compassion instead of competition and judgment (Wadhwa et al., 2021). Apparently, the company's owner, Bill Gates, had earned the dubious distinction of berating his employees. This must have weighed heavily on them because the company was performing dismally at the time. As such, from the first day, the new CEO embarked on turning things around because the company was fading away at an incredible pace.
Nadella also undertook to change the company's culture, which was preventing employees from performing optimally. The work environment was toxic because instead of the management hearing them out, it subjected them to unbecoming treatment. Undoubtedly, their motivation had reached its nadir, as did their trust in the then-CEO, Steve Ballmer (Zolman, 2012). His ratings among employees had hit rock bottom due to his poor leadership style. The employees, for instance, felt that the CEO was jeopardizing their development by suppressing innovation. Nadella understood the importance of employees to an organization's performance. Given his religious affiliations, he focused on positive feedback to reinforce good habits (Wadhwa et al., 2021). He also embarked on creating a friendly work environment that would scale up innovati...