Relationship between Leadership, Employee Engagement, Motivation, Reward and Performance Management.
Table of Contents
Effective Leadership, Employee Engagement and Performance. 4
Performance Management, Rewards and Employee Motivation. 5
Participatory Processes within Organization. 7
A Personal Development Plan. 9
Introduction
The core aim of any organization is to function well and articulate its mandates accordingly. This is both internal and external environments. In our case, we shall focus on internal environment which consist of the management and subordinates (employees) bodies. The management and subordinate bodies must have a good coexisting relationship. Leadership, performance management, employee engagement, motivation and reward are all functions of an effective administration. However, they are all dependent variables to one another. For one to function, the other one must have been existed or must have taken place. For example, for employee motivation to occur, the management must have involved the employees through an engagement. There must be a good leadership that would ensure good communication and interaction subordinates. Motived employees will scoops all the rewards set by the management. Motivated employees will also attain high performance thus ease the management and attain set goals by the high managers. A state of coherency and tranquillity will engulf the organization and its environs. Therefore, it is vital to take each aspects with due diligence and care since a decline on one, will lead to the collapse of the whole organization. In our study, we had tried to scrutinize each and every aspect and how they relate to one another. We have also apportioned our main body into three parts namely effective leadership, employment engagement and their performance, correlation between performance management, rewarding and motivation and finally processes within the organization that improve employees involvement and bring satisfactory not only to them but also to the management and the organization in general. We have based our arguments to some theories such as leadership theories, management theories and corporate theories among others.
Effective Leadership, Employee Engagement and Performance
There is a strong relationship bond between effective leadership, employee engagement and their performance. One cannot ignore any in expense of the other. Leadership can be defined as a process by which a senior guides and influence the work of subordinates in a more desired direction. It is one of the functions of directing (a function of management). It is through good leadership that we get a good interaction between senior management and lower subordinates. Employee engagement is the way employees perceive and behaves toward a workforce. Good engagement will make them less monitored while bad engagement will be the opposite. Employee engagement includes state engagement that is current feelings, trait engagement that describe someone’s disposition and behavioural engagement of how they perform their job. Employee performance highly depends on the type of engagement they have received from the top management. Good leadership leads to good engagement thus good performance.
Effective leadership involves leadership styles which are: participative, free-reign and autocratic styles. In participative leadership, there is involvement of employees in the management and decision making process. The leaders in this type of leadership style forms the guidelines but allow the employees involvement in the decision processes. Employee’s feels much associated with the organization and this makes them less monitored by the seniors. There is high productivity as employees’ esteem is high. Discipline among employees is also at the peak since their self-esteems is highly motivated. Both management and the subordinate are in good relation and cooperation is well kept. There is good communication and interaction between them. The whole group is easily governable and each plight of the employee is well taken off. Due to good coexisting communication with the subordinate, the management is able to work on a problem which lowers organizations level of production thus improving profitability which is one of the core targets of any organization. In autocratic type of leadership, subordinates take all forms of directives from the top level of management. There is no employee’s involvement in any decision making process (Truss, 2014, p. 260). Max Weber's bureaucratic management theory, leadership is categorized into three types: charismatic, traditional and rational leadership. Charismatic leadership exercise authority using special altitudes on personalities. Traditional leadership use customs, practices and status. Decisions are made based on traditional precedence. There is also rational leadership whereby authority is expressed by system of rules and procedures that are based on the office which a leader occupies. In this type of leadership, employees feels less recognized by the top level management and therefore tend to be less active toward achievement of the organization goals. It’s a discriminative form of leadership. Force has to exert toward the employees in order some achievement to be attained. This leads to poor performance as people work better when they govern themselves without any coercion (Zhang & Bartol, 2010 p.107). The other form of leadership is free-reign leadership. This form of leadership is relatively similar to participative except the fact that there is no involvement of top management in decision making. The employees generate their own rules and articulate them. Employees are given freedom to act the way they want and thus feels more associated with the organization. The level of performance is high and the outcome is favourable.
Performance Management, Rewards and Employee MotivationPerformance management, employee’s motivation and rewards have a relative relationship. Performance management is a joint exercise by management and employees to strategize, evaluate and review employee’s task (Armstrong, 2012). The top-level management involves the employees in planning on employees activities which are; they come up with a more efficient plan that will be more effective. This is because the managers are able to include all the problems raised by the employees who are the ones who will implement the plan. During evaluation stage, an involvement of the employees helps in realizing whether the set plan is being articulated and carried on as agreed. Inclusion of employees at review stage helps in analysing the mistakes which might have been committed and possible solution. Motivated employees are happy people. Therefore when there is good performance management, the employees will have a sense of belonging. This sense of belonging will make the employees feel much appreciated and included in decision making by the management. This is because the plan was well formulated. Each and every employee knows his duties and roles. They also know their rewards toward completion. These motivations might be inform of incentives, job appraisals, job promotion or any other enticement. According to expectancy theory of motivation by Victor Vroom, motivational force is as a product of effort performance, performance reward and valance (Zhang & Bartol, 2010 p.108). Rewarding is one of the key elements that motivates employees. Rewarding creates a form of a healthy competition amongst the employees. Employees should be rewarded according to their performance in order to motivate them. This will eliminates redundancy within the workforce. Rewarding include appraisals and promotions. When doing performance appraisals, the managers should follow the following steps in order to be effective. He should set up the performance standard, communicate the set standard to the intended users who are the employees, measure employees actual performance, compare actual performance against the set standard and finally communicate the level of performance and standard with appraisals to the employees. Job promotion also acts as a form of motivation and reward too (Thomas, 2009 p.43).
A well planned performance promotion plan will leads to high expectation from the employees. Remuneration is also another form of reward. Employees tend to work well when they are promised good remuneration whether overtime pay, bonus or basic salary increment. From this scenario, we can deduct inferences that there is a strong bond between performance management, employees’ motivation and rewards. This is because one element leads to the other. An employee is motivated because there is a reward set for him to which will be given after attaining set limits. A reward will occur only if there was a good performance management whereby each cost associated with the reward would have been accounted (Armstrong, 2013 p31). Therefore, a good manager ensures that appraisals, promotions, incentives such bonuses and overtime have been planned well, accordingly and communicated to the employees on time. This ensures that the whole process has been attained as expected and with a minimal disturbance (Macey, Schneider, Barbera, & Young, 2011, p. 18).
Participatory Processes within OrganizationAccording to Armstrong (2013) employee participation is a process whereby power is decentralised to solely decision making within an organization. It is the most useful function of motivation. Employee feel appreciated and associated to the organization. It is therefore important for the top level management to come up with an all-inclusive employee program. This program should consist of all employees’ participatory process so that it can absorb everyone. Such processes includes; consultation meetings and exercises. This is whereby the management divide employees into small groups probably using criteria’s such departments, line of production, division’s et al. The main purpose of this group is for the employees to have meetings and exercises whereby they interact with one another and share ideas of how to curb problems and improve the workforce. The second process is management forming suggestion channels whereby employees can offer new ideas to the top level management. This channel can be in form of a suggestion box placed in a strategic position within the organization where it is reachable by each and every employee. Employees are then encouraged to bring any suggestion concerning how to improve the organization and a reward would be given afterward. The third process is through delegation of responsibility to the employees. Since the employees mostly the ones who have get in touch one on one with the customers, the management should place trust on them. This can be achieved when the management acknowledges the work of the employees. Also the management should also offer guidance to where they think improvement effort should be made. By doing this, employee will have self-esteem, build up confidence and have a positive perception toward organization task (Thomas, 2009 p.46). The fourth process is through the formation of employees’ project teams. The management should divide employees into small teams to perform certain project task. This should be done in accordance with the organization rules and regulations. There should be considerably assigning of responsibility toward the team. Each member of the team should be active and involved with the project assigned to the team. The can be selected by their abilities, preferences, efficiency or any other form of criteria that the management would feel is appropriate. A brief on what is the purpose of the team should be communicated to the team members on time. This will ensure that the team to be well prepared and focus toward achieving set goal. Last but not the least, the management should provide an environment of multi-channel decision making. This will enhance communication within the organization. Employees are associated with administration if good communication channel coexist with the top level management. This is because employees can offer their grievances, plights and ideas directly to the people who are mandated to solve them. The management can attain this by decentralising decision making process. Decisions can be made from downward-upward way, vertical and horizontal streams. The management should scrutinize the decision projection raised taking on account the companies rules and come up with more comprehensive rules and regulations (Sparrow & Cooper, 2017 p19).
ConclusionIn summing up effective leadership, employee engagement, employee performance, performance management, employee motivation and rewarding procedures have a strong relationship that bond one to another. A failure of one will lead to a collapse of all the system. It is more of sequence series. This is because an effective leadership will lead to a good employee engagement with the management. This will lead to a good performance by the employees. Employee performance relies on the level of motivation by the management. This motivation is in form of rewards from the organization. A good rewarding can only be carried out well if and only if they have been planned well. This is done through performance management. A good performance management program will only be articulated and carried on accordingly only if there is an effective leader within the organization. The cycle becomes complete. Therefore each element depends on the other. There is a transitional process between them. We have also seen that for this whole cycle has to occur, management has to ensure there is participatory process within the organization. This is whereby the management uses certain techniques in order to improve employee’s involvement in the firm. Such techniques are project and suggestions teams, consultation meetings and exercises, the delegation of responsibility; multi-channel decision-making process et al. the management has to ensure that every technique applied is in accordance with the norms, culture, rules, and regulations of the organization. Communication to the intended users of the technique should be done in time to avoid any misleading information. Communication also helps in identifying key areas where improvement should be done over those techniques to ensure that employee feels connected to them (Sparrow, & Cooper, 2017). The management should also free some responsibility to those team members in order for them to be independence. Employees work well when they feel that they are in control.
A Personal Development PlanFirst, as a manager, I would start by setting and defining goals of my plan. My plan will be performance management. This is collectively acquired through questionnaires and direct contact with the employees. After collection, I would scrutinize the data to come up with the most urgent problem to the least one. These are redundancy, go-slows, and strikes. I will evaluate the available resources to carry on with my plan. These resources are time, assets and management board. This will enable me to allocated and work with available resources to attain my goal. It is at this point that I would formulate my goals for the plan. I would then arrange them in how much they require attention. This will help me during resource allocation. The most urgent goals would require much attention and thus resources are allocated to it while the least urgent requires little attention, therefore, fewer resources can be allocated. The strikes are the most urgent task followed by go slow and finally redundancy. I would set a deadline date which would have accommodated aspects such as time adjustments, variation among other time factors. This duration will be a year. This is to ensure that the plan is concluded as planned. After I have set goals, I will weigh my strength and weakness toward carrying on the task.
My strength is good administration record, numerical skill and communication skills. This would help me with identifying where I can flourish to putting more effort, allocate the resources well and have a good relationship with employees. Also, I will work on my weakness which is poor teamwork so that I can be a good team player to work closely with the employees. The next step is identifying opportunities available such as motivational leaders for the programme to run efficiently and to be more efficient. Also, I will try to look for any threats such as rebellion to change by the employees. From this point, I would develop a new skill by which are techniques that I would use to carry on my plan. These are forming project teams, suggestion teams, consultation meeting and exercises, a delegation of responsibility and enabling a multichannel decision making. The next step is the implementation stage. I would put all the paperwork into actions. I would offer training to supervisors who will ensure that the plan is going on as planned. I will also monitor the plan and try to ensure that it is going toward achieving its intended purpose. The review of the plan starts after the implementation stage whereby I will check whether the project has attained its intended objective. There will be an evaluation at this stage. This is to ascertain whether the project has been successful or not. Any rectification would be done later as the program will be in operation.
References
Armstrong, M. (2012). Armstrong's Handbook of Management and Leadership: Developing Effective People Skills for Better Leadership and Management. London: Kogan Page.
Armstrong, M. (2013). How to Manage People. London: Kogan Page. Top of Form
Macey, W. H., Schneider, B., Barbera, K. M., & Young, S. A. (2011). Employee Engagement: Tools for Analysis, Practice, and Competitive Advantage. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Sparrow, P., & Cooper, C. L. (2017). A research agenda for human resource management. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.Top of Form
Thomas, K. W. (2009). Intrinsic motivation at work: What really drives employee engagement? San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Top of Form
Truss, C. (2014). Employee engagement in theory and practice. London: Routledge.
Zhang, X., & Bartol, K. M. (2010). Linking empowering leadership and employee creativity: The influence of psychological empowerment, intrinsic motivation, and creative process engagement. Academy of management journal, 53(1), 107-128Top of Form
