Motivating Employees Under Adverse Conditions Reading Answers: IELTS Reading Practice Test

Motivating Employees Under Adverse Conditions Reading Passage

THE CHALLENGE

Paragraph A: In a growing organisation as opposed to one that is losing ground, it is much simpler to inspire employees. Promotional opportunities, pay increases, and the excitement of being a part of a dynamic organisation all contribute to feelings of optimism when businesses grow and hire new employees. The expansion can be used by management to motivate and entice staff members. The best and most adaptable employees are more likely to leave on their own accord when a company is contracting. Unfortunately, they are the people with the highest levels of experience and skill that the company cannot afford to lose. The minor employees continue working because they have few other options.

Paragraph B: Morale deteriorates as a result of decline. People worry that they will be the next to be laid off. Employee morale and gossip-sharing take a toll on productivity because they aren't putting their full attention into their work. Pay raises are rarely possible for people whose jobs are secure. Pay cuts, unheard of in periods of expansion, might even be implemented. Management must figure out how to inspire workers in the face of such layoffs. The six Key Points that are listed below can be used to broadly classify the approaches to overcoming this challenge.

KEY POINT ONE

Paragraph C: There is a ton of proof to back up the motivational advantages that come from carefully matching workers with jobs. For instance, high achievers should be sought out if the position involves managing a small business or an independent division within a larger company. A candidate with a high need for power and a low need for affiliation should be chosen if the position is a managerial one in a sizable bureaucratic organisation. High achievers shouldn't be assigned to jobs that don't suit their needs, so. High achievers will perform best in jobs that offer moderately difficult goals, independence, and feedback. It's important to keep in mind though that not everyone is motivated by jobs with lots of autonomy, variety, and responsibility.

KEY POINT TWO

Paragraph D: According to research on goal-setting theory, managers should make sure that every employee has clear objectives and gets feedback on how well they are doing toward those objectives. Because high achievers are already internally motivated, the existence of external goals is less significant for those with high achievement needs, who are typically a minority in any organisation. The next decision to be made is whether the goals should be set collectively with the employees or individually by a manager. The answer to that question is based on how goals are perceived and on the culture of the organisation. The use of participation in goal-setting should increase acceptance if resistance to goals is anticipated. However, if participation goes against the culture, goals ought to be set. Employees are likely to view the participation process as manipulative and suffer as a result if participation and the culture are out of sync.

KEY POINT THREE

Paragraph E: No matter how easily management believes an employee is capable of achieving a goal, if an employee believes it is impossible, they will put forth less effort. Therefore, managers need to make sure that workers have faith in their ability to achieve performance objectives. For managers, this means that staff members must be capable of performing their duties and must accept the legitimacy of the appraisal procedure.

KEY POINT FOUR

Paragraph F:  Since every employee has different needs, what motivates one employee might not motivate another. Managers could tailor the rewards they have control over by drawing on their knowledge of each employee. Pay, promotions, autonomy, job scope and depth, as well as the chance to take part in goal-setting and decision-making, are some of the more obvious rewards that managers give.

KEY POINT FIVE

Paragraph G: Rewards must be tied to performance, according to managers. Rewarding non-performance-related factors will only strengthen those non-performance-related factors. Amounts of important rewards, such as pay raises and job promotions or advancements, should be set aside for the achievement of the employee's particular objectives. Managers should look for ways to raise their visibility in line with maximising the impact of rewards. Actions that will make rewards more visible and perhaps more motivating include removing the secrecy surrounding pay by publicly disclosing everyone's pay, advertising performance bonuses, and allocating annual salary increases in a lump sum rather than dispersing them over the course of the year.

KEY POINT SIX

Paragraph H: To give employees the impression that rewards or outcomes are fair and proportionate to the inputs provided, the way rewards are distributed should be transparent. Simplistically, differences in pay, responsibility, and other obvious outcomes should be explained by experience, aptitude, effort, and other obvious inputs. The existence of numerous inputs and outcomes, as well as the fact that different employee groupings place varying amounts of importance on them, complicate the issue. For example, a study comparing clerical and production workers identified nearly twenty inputs and outcomes; the clerical workers placed factors like job knowledge and work quality near the top of their lists while the production workers placed these factors at the bottom of their lists. Similar to how production workers perceived intelligence and personal involvement in task completion as the most crucial inputs, clerks gave these two factors relatively low importance ratings. On the outcome side, there were also significant differences, albeit less pronounced ones. For instance, while clerical workers rated advancement in the bottom third of their list, production workers gave it a very high rating. According to these findings, one person's equity is another person's inequity, so a perfect system would weigh various inputs and outcomes in accordance with the employee group.

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