Strategic Human Capital Leadership
Strategic Employee Motivation and
Creating Productive Work Environments
Introduction
Jonathan H. Westover, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Management, Woodbury School of Business
Email: jon.westover@gmail.com; jonathan.westover@uvu.edu
About Me: about.me/jonathan.h.westover
What we will Cover
This session will address the following 2 main topic
areas:
• Proven best practices and principles of employee
motivation with a focus on how to leverage
employee capacity to optimize workplace potential
and overall firm success.
• Proven best practices and principles of productive
work environments with a focus on creating a high
performance work culture.
What we will Cover—Cont.
We will:
1. Explain the importance of human capital maximization.
2. Identify approaches to designing a job to make it more motivating.
3. Explain how dissatisfaction affects employee behavior and firm
performance.
4. Describe how organizations contribute to employees’ job satisfaction and
retaining key employees.
5. Define high-performance work systems, conditions to create such a
system, and summarize the outcomes of a high-performance work
system.
6. Explain how human resource management can contribute to high
performance and the purposes of performance management systems.
7. Explain how to provide performance feedback effectively and summarize
ways to produce improvement in unsatisfactory performance.
Self-Assessment: How Are We Doing?
–We are confident that:
1. We consistently attract the best available talent to fill our human
capital needs.
2. We know who our most talented performers are and that we hire
“like talent.”
3. We have a handle on future needs for leadership and an
outstanding strategy for filling these needs.
4. All of our employee’s job assignments “fit” their unique talents and
skill sets.
5. Employee turn-over is low, particularly with our best people.
6. Morale is high and that our people are happy in their jobs.
Self-Assessment: How Are We Doing?
–We are confident that:
7. We know the dreams and aspirations of our people and have
developed career planning tools to match these desires with
opportunities for development.
8. We have put in place strategies whereby we will lose fewer of our
talented people this year than we did last year.
9. We know where strategic improvements are needed and we ARE
making them.
10.We have a performance appraisal system that is both accurate and
fair.
11.When our best employees choose to leave, our exit evaluation
process identifies with great clarity why we suffered this loss.
12.Our middle management supervisors possess the skills required to
develop the people entrusted to them and have earned the trust of
those they serve.
The Challenge of Utilizing Human
Capital
• How can I get the right people into
the right job?
• How can I reduce employee
turnover?
• How can I improve my
performance management
process?
• How can I create a highengagement work culture?
• How can I best tap the full
potential of my employees?
Maximizing Your Human Capital
Potential
Designing Jobs That Motivate:
The Job Characteristics Model
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Skill variety – the extent to which a job requires a variety of
skills to carry out the tasks involved.
Task identity – the degree to which a job requires
completing a “whole” piece of work from beginning to end.
Task significance – the extent to which the job has an
important impact on the lives of other people.
Autonomy – the degree to which the job allows an
individual to make decisions about the way work will be
carried out.
Feedback - the extent to which a person receives clear
information about performance effectiveness from the
work itself.
Characteristics of a Motivating Job
The Truth about Motivation
Mastery
Autonomy
Job Withdrawal and Dissatisfaction
Job withdrawal – a set of behaviors with which employees try to
avoid the work situation physically, mentally, or emotionally.
Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction – a pleasant feeling resulting from the perception that one’s job
fulfills or allows for the fulfillment of one’s important job values. The three
important components are: (1) Values, (2) Perceptions, and (3) Ideas of what is
important
Employee Empowerment
• Employee Empowerment – Giving employees responsibility and
authority to make decisions regarding all aspects of product
development or customer service.
• Employee Engagement – Full involvement in one’s work and
commitment to one’s job and company. This is associated with higher
productivity, better customer service, lower employee turnover
Pike’s Place Fish Market
1.
2.
3.
4.
Play
Make Their Day
Be There
Choose Your Attitude
Designing Motivating and
Empowering Jobs—What will you do?
• How do these principles of designing jobs that
are both motivating and empowering apply to
your organization?
• Which concepts do you think are most helpful
and what are the first steps to implementing
them?
• What can you do immediately to start making
a difference?
Performance Management
• Performance management:
the process through which
managers ensure that
employees’ activities and
outputs contribute to the
organization’s goals.
• This process requires:
– Knowing what activities and
outputs are desired
– Observing whether they occur
– Providing feedback to help
employees meet expectations
Stages of the Performance
Management Process
Performance Management
Types of Performance Measurement
Rating Errors
• Contrast errors: the rater compares an individual, not against an
objective standard, but against other employees.
• Distributional errors: the rater tends to use only one part of a
rating scale.
– Leniency: the reviewer rates everyone near the top
– Strictness: the rater favors lower rankings
– Central tendency: the rater puts everyone near the middle of the scale
• Rater bias: raters often let their opinion of one quality color
their opinion of others.
– Halo error: when the bias is in a favorable direction. This can mistakenly tell
employees they don’t need to improve in any area.
– Horns error: when the bias involves negative ratings. This can cause employees
to feel frustrated and defensive.
Progressive Discipline
Hot-Stove Rule
Principle of discipline that says
discipline should be like a hot
stove, giving clear warning and
following up with consistent,
objective, and immediate
consequences.
Progressive Discipline
A formal discipline process in
which the consequences become
more serious if the employee
repeats the offense.
Improving Performance
Outcomes of a High-Performance
Work System
Key Features of Learning
Organizations
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Continuous learning – each employee’s and each group’s ongoing
efforts to gather information and apply the information to their
decisions.
Knowledge is shared – one challenge is to shift the focus of training
away from teaching skills and toward a broader focus on generating
and sharing knowledge.
Critical, systemic thinking – is widespread and occurs when
employees are encouraged to see relationships among ideas and
think in new ways.
Learning culture – a culture in which learning is rewarded,
promoted, and supported by managers and organizational
objectives.
Employees are valued – the organization recognizes that employees
are the source of its knowledge. It therefore focuses on ensuring the
development and well-being of each employee.
High Performance Work Culture
—What will you do?
• How do these principles of performance
management and creating a high performance
work culture apply to your organization?
• Which concepts do you think are most helpful
and what are the first steps to implementing
them?
• What can you do immediately to start making
a difference?
QUESTIONS?
Jonathan H. Westover, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Management, Woodbury School of Business
Email: jon.westover@gmail.com; jonathan.westover@uvu.edu
About Me: about.me/jonathan.h.westover