Motivation and Engagement in Human Resource Management

This essay discusses the challenges faced by HR managers in motivating and engaging employees in the present dynamic business environment. It covers issues related to diversity, team working, leadership development, recruitment, and retention. The essay also provides recommendations to foster motivation and engagement in the workplace. The subject is Human Resource Management, and the course code and college/university are not mentioned.

Running Head: Motivation and Engagement
Motivation and Engagement
Human Resource Management

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Table of Content
Essay..................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Issues/Challenges related to Human Resources................................................................................................. 3
Change Management................................................................................................................................................. 3
Leadership Development......................................................................................................................................... 4
Learning & Development......................................................................................................................................... 4
Staffing: Recruitment & Retention....................................................................................................................... 5
Workforce Diversity................................................................................................................................................... 5
Issues inhibiting motivation and engagement..................................................................................................... 6
Working in Teams........................................................................................................................................................... 6
Absence of Team Identity........................................................................................................................................ 7
Difficulty in making decisions................................................................................................................................ 7
Poor communication................................................................................................................................................. 7
Inability to resolve conflicts................................................................................................................................... 7
Lack of Participation.................................................................................................................................................. 7
Lack of Creativity........................................................................................................................................................ 8
Group thinking............................................................................................................................................................. 8
Ineffective leadership................................................................................................................................................ 8
Managing Diversity......................................................................................................................................................... 9
Language Issues........................................................................................................................................................... 9
Fairness........................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Understanding the differences.............................................................................................................................. 9

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Recommendation to foster Motivation and Engagement while tackling the issues of Diversity
and Team Working....................................................................................................................................................... 10
Openness in Communication............................................................................................................................... 10
Employee Empowerment...................................................................................................................................... 10
Workforce Planning................................................................................................................................................ 10
Motivation and Engagement................................................................................................................................ 11
References........................................................................................................................................................................ 12

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Essay
Business landscape is changing at a rapid pace due to the Technological innovation and
the rapid feet traversed by globalization. Due to such dynamic changing business
environment, human resource management is clouded by plethora of challenges in the
present day, and more so in the future. Thus, HR has a very important and strategic role
to play in the sustained growth and development of the business organization. Human
resource department which plays a major role in recruitment, hiring, talent scouting,
labour law compliance, training need assessment, relational assistance and many more,
becomes of strategic importance to the business organization. Hence, the need of the
hour is to rapidly evolve along with the changing times and come up with a set of
proactive strategies to contain the challenges(Bratton & Gold, 2017).
Issues/Challenges related to Human Resources
As mentioned in the introduction section, HR team and HR managers have a lot of
obstacles in the way of ensuring business sustainability. They have to ensure that they
are on their feet and proactive when it comes to assessing the challenges in the human
resources and creating strategies to overcome them. Some of the contemporary issues
faced by the human resource management are:
Change Management
Change management can be seen as a collective term which is used for all the
approaches to prepare and support individuals, teams and organization in bringing
change in the organization. Change is inevitable, more so in the present dynamic
business ecosystem. Change is seen as the proactive strategy or the business strategy
for the organization which is aimed at bringing improvements in the business process
and practices, and increases the efficiency of the employees in the organization.
Employees on the other hand fear change; this is the most natural reaction of the
employees of the organization towards the process of change. Employees fear change
due to many factors such as no involvement in decision making, less information about
the change in the organization, uncertainty in the business environment on the intent of

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the change, possible resistance due to the impact of the change on their job roles and
many such factor (Snell, Morris & Bohlander, 2015).
Now this becomes one of the most challenging issues for the HR team to overcome the
resistance in the employees due to change management and to bring stability to the
organization. According to the study conducted by Gartner, 48% of the HR across the
globe believes that change management is the biggest issue faced by them. Change
management in nature has the ability of creating havoc in the business organization and
in the lives of the employees. Thus, the HR department has to create strategies to
manage the resistance towards the change management in the business organization
(Bolman & Deal, 2017).
Leadership Development
Leadership development has been cited as the second biggest issue or challenge ahead
of the HR team. Leadership is the both a practical and a research area encompassing the
skills of an individual to lead, influence, motivate and inspire team to achieve the goals
of the organization. HR managers have to create conducive policies, personal
development plans, setting up of KPI’s, retention of the employees and training need
analysis to develop the leadership ability of the individuals (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014).
Organization in the present day are more focussed on succession planning, thus in order
to do so, HR department has to identify the talent who can be considered for the
succession planning and then work towards training them on leadership skills.
Leadership development is a time consuming process, and a lot of time goes into
training, feedback, 360 degree Performance management system, designing a
performance development plan for the individual and so on. Thus, during this time
period, the HR has to ensure that they engage the employee and retain them by keeping
them in loop regarding the career development plans organization is planning for
them(Bailry et. al., 2018).
Learning & Development
Employees across the globe strongly value three elements of success for themselves,
which are; Consistent learning, sustained growth and Learning and development.
Business organizations have to work towards the learning and development of its

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employees with the aim of retention, motivation and empowering them in the business
organization. HR team has to play a very important role here. They are required to
assess the skills of the individual, identify the competencies required for the job and
based on the gap analysis create a training calendar for the employees (Chelladurai &
Kerwin, 2017).
Learning and development is necessary not just for the growth of the employees, but
also serve as motivation for them. For instance an organization which is not concerned
with the learning and development needs of the employees have to suffer significant
loss due to high turnover rates of employees, in comparison to the employer which is
focussed on the learning and development needs of the individuals(Tafti,
Mahmoudsalehi & Amiri, 2017).
Staffing: Recruitment & Retention
Recruitment can be understood as a process of scouting and talent search of the eligible
candidates for the job. HR department has to ensure that they very well understand the
competencies required for the job, on the basis of which they have to recruit the best
candidate for the job. Besides finding the right candidate, they have to find the
candidate who is the right fit for the job, thus the candidates have to be assessed at
various front before the final selection.
The challenge faced by the HR manager here is to identify the right platform to
advertise about the job opening. The platform has to be selected on the basis of target
audience and their availability on the chosen platform. For instance, in the present day,
business organization are going forward with Social media tools such as Linked In and
Facebook to hunt for the right candidates. These social media platforms can be seen as a
store house of the millennial, similarly in order to fill the top level management
position, the HR team has to use their personal and industry contacts. Thus, the
challenge in finding the right candidate on the right platform makes recruitment one of
the major challenges at the hands of Human resources (Bennett et. al., 2015).
Workforce Diversity
Business organizations are getting global in nature in order to access a larger market
and increase its product and service reach. All this has become possible due to the

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advent of Internet and proliferation of Globalization across the globe. The boundaries
have shrunk in size which has made it easier for inhabitant of one nation to move across
to work in another country. Workforce diversity thus can be understood as the concept
wherein the employees belonging to different religion, nationality, caste, culture, creed,
race, language etc come together and work for the common organizational goals
(Brewster, 2017).
Workforce diversity along with the positives brings with itself plethora of problems not
only for the business organization, but also for the HR and the employees. Workforce
diversity leads to plenty of communication challenges, cultural clashes and conflict and
other such issues which have to be effectively addressed and handle by the Human
resources to maintain the sanctity of the business organization (Hollenbeck, Noe &
Gerhart, 2018).
Issues inhibiting motivation and engagement
Working in Teams
Teams in business organizations are seen as one of the important factors of success, as
the team have the ability to achieve the goals of the organization with efficiency and
enhanced productivity. Teams in the organization are created and formed on the basis
of the functional roles or department, and a team leader is assigned to the teams who
ensure that the goals of the team are met. It is a proven fact that team work can achieve
far greater result than an individual working alone. The outcome of team is greater than
the individual because of the synergies each team member create to achieve the team
and organizational goals. Very team member is accountable and responsible for their
own goals as well as the collective goals of the team, in order to do so, every team
member works with increased efficiency to ensure the goals are met in the stipulated
time. However, teams which are not cohesive in nature are most destructive to the
organization in place of being constructive. In such a situation the motivation of the
organization is reduced to the lowest point, and the employees are not happy with the
work environment. A sense of negativity is the order of the day in such teams. Due to
lack of motivation, the engagement between the members of the team reduces (Landy &
Conte, 2016). Which further leads to the problem of communication, conflict and

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resistance to follow the order to the top management? Some of the major issues at hand
while working with team, which effectively mask the motivation of the employees in the
organization, are:
Absence of Team Identity
The biggest problem while working in teams is the lack of mutual accountability and
responsibility towards the objectives of the organization. While working in team,
everyone is more or less dependent on the other individual to complete the task, but in
absence of positive team work, this dependency creates issues. Thus, the problem of
absence of team identity occurs due to improper working teams in the organization
(Guillaume et. al., 2017).
Difficulty in making decisions
Team members while working in teams become adamant at times, due to their
seniority, experience in the organization and their perceived understanding of their job
roles. Thus, in such a situation the working of other team members get affected as other
members of the team work individually. They do not understand the fact that even if
one person does not cooperate, it is highly unlikely to meet the objectives of the team.
Poor communication
Certain members in the team are more confident and vocal about their thoughts and
needs in comparison to other team members. This puts the other employees working in
the team in a spot of disadvantage, as due to their lack of communication skills they are
unable to contribute to the working of the team. Their motivation and confidence goes
down in the absence of good communication which again creates troubles in achieving
the goals of the organization (Greene & Kirton, 2015).
Inability to resolve conflicts
Organization use plethora of conflict management strategies such as avoiding,
collaborating, compromising and accommodating to reduce the heightened tension in
the team. But due to interpersonal conflicts of the individuals in the team, it becomes

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difficult to reduce the conflict which leads to the problem in meeting the team
objectives.
Lack of Participation
Teams are often plagiarised with the problem of poor participation and absenteeism
which leads to troubles while working on a given tasks. Due to lack of attendance of the
members from team meeting, it becomes very difficult to communicate the tasks or
some set of instructions to all of them at once.
Lack of Creativity
Working in teams is considered better than working alone, because when a lot of people
are working on a brief or a situation, the ideas presented on the table are
comprehensive in their approach and provides better brainstorming results. But due to
lack of creativity in the team, the implied benefit attached with the team working is not
realized to its full potential, leading to trouble in the organization.
Group thinking
Group thinking is one of the benefits of working in team which also leads to better
engagement and motivation among the members of the team. Group thinking gets
seriously distorted in the teams when authority, unity and team agreement are in
jeopardy. In such a state, none of the members is able to contribute positivity towards
Group thinking (Wrench, 2016).
Ineffective leadership
Leadership is the art and practical skill encompassing the ability of a leader to influence,
motivate, lead and help the organization and individual to achieve the organizational
and personal goals. Leaders have the ability to make or break the organization, in
absence of good leadership, the entire team and the organization falls like a deck of
cards. Thus the inability of the leadership to create a vision for the organization and the
team leads to issues while working in the teams.
The above mentioned challenge of working with teams is a limiting factor for the
growth of the organization as well the employees. The members of the team and

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organization are not able to contribute to the goals of the organization in absence of
group cohesion. This results in reduced productivity or the employees in the
organization. It is also one of the biggest factors for employee turnover in the
organization which is a result of poor working environment in the organization. Thus, it
is definitely one of the most challenging problems which have to be tackled effectively
by the management (Luthans, Luthans & Luthans, 2015).
Managing Diversity
Diversity in the workplace is a very common phenomenon, and the factors which
contribute to the growing diversity are Globalization and Internet. Globalization has
made it possible for a company to set up its business organization, or any other
subsidiary in any part of the world. On the other hand, Internet has provided the
organization with plethora of communication and collaboration tools which allows for
the business organization to work seamlessly. Despite a lot of regulations and laws
pertaining to diversity in the business organization, there still occur a lot of issues
pertaining to diversity in the workplace. Some of the challenges are:
Language Issues
Diversity in the workplace is a factor of difference in caste, colour, creed, religion, race,
language, ethnicity, beliefs and attitudes. These are the factors on which the employees
are differentiated from one another. Now, in cases where employees are working from
different parts of the world, there occurs a problem of communication. As not everyone
has the same primary language, thus leading to problem in the organization. This also
becomes a limiting factor while engaging with the workforce and working on the
motivation of the employees (Wagner & Hollenbeck, 2014).
Fairness
Inclusion of work makes it clear that every employee in the organization must and
should be treated with the same level of respect, faith; fairness and justice, there should
not be any biasedness on the basis of diversity factors. While working in groups which
are diverse in nature, the manager always tend to favour the group or the employees
who have the same culture as them. This leads to unfairness in the organization towards

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the diverse employees. In such a condition the motivation of the employee to work for
the achievement of the organization is adversely affected (Dwertmann, Nishii &
Knippenberg, 2016).
Understanding the differences
Organizations are unable to combat the problem of diversity in the business
organization because they themselves are not adept to handle the diversity. The lack of
proper training, understanding of the cultural difference puts them on a back foot while
understanding the rationale for the cultural differences. It is the cultural differences
which sets an individual differ from another, thus better understanding of differences
have to be developed in the organization (Manuti et. al., 2015).
Recommendation to foster Motivation and Engagement while tackling the issues
of Diversity and Team Working
Openness in Communication
One of the biggest factors which can alleviate the problems caused by diversity and
working in teams in an organization is to establish a culture of openness in
communication. Communication is the life and blood of the organization and openness
in communication fosters engagement, enhanced productivity, managing diversity and
conflict resolution. Communication opens up the gates of solution for the employees, as
the employees can unabashedly knock on the doors of the managers or the top
management and communicate their grievances. This will certainly help in building up
the motivation of the employees and foster better engagement in the work groups or
teams (Finkelstein et. al., 2015).
Employee Empowerment
Employees are mostly demotivated because they feel that the organization does not
include them in decision making, neither gives any weightage to the feedback of the
employees. This most certainly demotivates them and puts them in an unwanted place.
Organization can easily lessen these problems by considering for the feedback provided
by the employees and also to include them in important decision making in the

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organization. An empowered employee works with enhanced productivity towards the
achievement of the goals of the organization (Al-Jenaibi, 2017).
Workforce Planning
Workforce planning in the organization can be seen as a continuous process which is
used to align the needs and the priorities of the organization with those of the
workforce to ensure that it meets the legislative, regulatory, service and production
requirement of the business organization. Workforce planning thus helps the
organization to better allocate tasks to the individual on the basis of their competency,
thus proper allocation of the task certainly raises the motivation level of the employees.
Organization that effectively uses workforce planning is better able to manage its
employee, better able to manage the issues of diversity and can contribute effectively
towards the goals of the organization (Hopkins, 2016).
Motivation and Engagement
Motivation in an organization is a resultant of many factors such as work environment,
working teams, employees, managers, training, employee empowerment and other such
factors. Managers in the organization have to ensure that they use different strategies to
motivate employees in the organization. Different theories such as Maslow, 2 Factor
theory, Herzberg theory of Motivation, McGregor Theory of X & Y are used to motivate
the employees after assessing the pain points of the employees. Such motivation
techniques help the employee to ignore certain nuances created in the organization and
they work with enhanced productivity in the organization (Hislop, Bosua & Helms,
2018).
Engagement in an organization is very important concept as it reduces the conflict
among the employees and keeps them busy with the organizational goals. Businesses
these days have understood the growing euphoria around the concept of engagement
and are building communication, collaborative tools and using social media in its
strategy to engage with its employees. High level of engagement with the employees
does away with the problem of diversity, motivation and certainly empowers the
employees.

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Thus, in order to conclude, it can be said that motivation and engagement in the
organization are the primary pillars on which the success of the organization rests. In
order to achieve the goals of motivation and engagement, it is advised to bring openness
as the culture in the organization, workforce planning and usage of motivation theories
to motivate the employees of the organization.
References

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