BH6007 Business Psychology Assignment: Motivation, Hiring & Engagement

This assignment comprises three blog posts addressing key concepts in business psychology. The first blog post examines the correlation between motivation and job satisfaction from an individual's perspective, discussing the significance of both financial and non-financial motivators, referencing McClelland's theory, and providing practical recommendations for managers to enhance job satisfaction, such as identifying employee motivators and delegating responsibility. The second blog post focuses on hiring and employee appraisal, specifically selection and appraisal processes. It emphasizes the importance of careful hiring practices, the significance of assessing candidates based on merit and practical skills, and the necessity of a structured, flexible recruitment process. The final blog post explores employee engagement, differentiating it from mere job satisfaction and highlighting the characteristics of engaged employees. It emphasizes the benefits of employee engagement and suggests strategies for managers to enhance engagement, including incentivizing performance, setting short-term objectives, and fostering seamless communication within the workplace. The assignment draws on various theories and research to support its arguments.

Running head: BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Correlation of Motivation and Job Satisfaction-Individual’s point of view-300words
Hiring and Employee Appraisal-Selection and Appraisal-300words
Engaging the employees-Business Psychology-300words
Author notes:

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Correlation of Motivation and Job Satisfaction- Individual’s point of view
Although motivation and job satisfaction are different terms, there exists a mutual
relationship between them (Homber McCarthy and Tabvuma 2015). It is a known fact that
money is a motivator and results in job satisfaction. This expression however, ceases to be
viable if other aspects of motivation are absent. For instance, if the boss is always unkind,
provides unnecessary pressure, criticism and makes the employee work overtime in exchange
of huge amounts of money thinking that money will act as job satisfaction, it can be said that
the former has got no clue regarding what drives an employee.
Incentives and other such forms of monetary rewards are essential (Asch et al. 2015).
However, they are valued only until the employees are new in the organization. After that
point, they look for non-financial motivators. These are short term gains which would be fine
for employees hopping organizations but unsuitable for individuals looking to prosper in the
job and grow with the organization. McClelland’s theory rightfully informed that monetary
rewards do not act as key motivators for employees, even though they are essential
(McClelland 2015). Implementation of the theory can greatly improve job satisfaction. To
ensure greater job satisfaction manager should:
 Identify the motivators: What motivates one individual can be different from what
motivates another. Simple interviews can inform the managers about what motivates
the employee. Then the manager can address such requirements.
 Recognize the employees: McClelland’s theory of motivation calls for employee
recognition, which is being recognized by many organizations around the world.
Programs such as employee of the month are great ways to boost confidence in
employees.

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 Delegate responsibility: It is said that individuals looking to grow, often want to seek
challenging roles and job positions. Increased responsibility equals increased job
satisfaction of the modern day employee.

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BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY
Hiring and Employee Appraisal- Selection and Appraisal
Employees form the backbone of any company (Mishra, Boynton and Mishra 2014).
The HR personnel need to be extra careful while hiring new employees. Campus recruitment
is a popular method of employee selection. Suppose a company wants to hire sales executives
from a college and the former had three vacancies. The candidates who made through the
screening process were thirty in number. The company wanted to filter even further and
decided that the candidates will have to clear a test for further filtration. Ten candidates
cleared the test but only three could be chosen. After that interview, only one candidate faired
right and got selected. With two more vacancies the company decided to interview few
candidates who performed well in the group discussion organized thus after. Desirable
candidates were found who fulfilled the remaining vacancies. So in order to ensure that
perfect employees are selected for the organization must pay heed to the following,
Judge on the merit: Even though some candidates did not perform well in the test they were
the right fits for the job. Practical knowledge and theoretical knowledge are different things.
The suitable employees must have right set of skills, theoretical knowledge is great but
practicality is of greater importance.
Follow a process: The recruitment or selection process should ensure that a generalized
process is followed. Step such as screening, test and interviews should flow as parts of one
process. The process should be flexible enough to adjust with changes when required.
Employee assessment plays an important role in every organization (Townley 2014). It is
crucial since it allows employees to prosper, get valuable feedback on their performance and
helps a company reflect on their selection (Kirovska and Qoku 2014). Good employee
assessment ensures:
 Job roles are satisfied

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 Employees are motivated
 Role are not wrongly delegated
 A performance benchmark is set.

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Engaging the employees-Business Psychology
Employee engagement is far from getting a generalized idea about whether an
individual approves and likes the job or not (Shields 2015). It has a much bigger scope than
that and is the degree to which the individuals are committed to the organization. Engaged
employees are well distinguishable from the rest. Engaged employees exude confidence,
achievement drive and positive vibes. One can be well assured that an engaged employee
achieves better results as compared to someone who is not.
Some managers might be happy with ‘just satisfied’ employees who are happy with
their work benefits and incentives but importance of employee engagement cannot be
undermined. A manager should make sure that the employees are engaged rather than being
just satisfied.
Engaged employees ensure:
 Working place atmosphere improves workplace culture
 Zero to few disputes arise
 Feeling of being in a team and sense of belongingness(Ozguner and Ozguner 2014)
 Achievement of desirable outcome.
To make sure that employees are engaged a manager should implement the following in his
operations:
Incentivize the performances - Vroom’s expectancy theory
A great way to engage employees is through incentives (Parijat and Bagga 2014). Receiving
the proper recognition for work can work wonders in the process of engaging an employee.
An environment that ensures employees are well recognized and appreciated is necessary if
one aims to create employee engagement (Chughtai, Byrne and Flood 2015).

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Setting short term objectives - Goal setting theory
According to Berson et al. (2015), setting short term goals make it clear about what the
management wants from an employee. The managerial goals interlinked with the employee’s
goals ensure that the desirable objectives are achieved. Furthermore, the sense of achieving
the task fulfills the employee’s need for recognition and achievement and thus employees
becomes engaged.
Seamless Communication
An office environment that is characterized by seamless communication ensures that there are
freely flowing ideas and information. A climate of mistrust triggers attrition. So a climate of
trust should be developed in every organization. An unfiltered communication structure
provides ample opportunity for the manager to communicate and clearly state their vision and
long term goals to the employees.
Employee engagement is what differentiates a healthy organization from an
organization that is not. Although one cannot understand the differences between the two
types of organizations, the long run performance can make it clear to the public. It is up to the
managers to unsure that they fully utilize the methods of employee engagement if they want
to turn out as a successful organization with driven individuals.

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REFERENCES
Asch, D.A., Troxel, A.B., Stewart, W.F., Sequist, T.D., Jones, J.B., Hirsch, A.G., Hoffer, K.,
Zhu, J., Wang, W., Hodlofski, A. and Frasch, A.B., 2015. Effect of financial incentives to
physicians, patients, or both on lipid levels: a randomized clinical trial. Jama, 314(18),
pp.1926-1935
Berson, Y., Halevy, N., Shamir, B. and Erez, M., 2015. Leading from different psychological
distances: A construal-level perspective on vision communication, goal setting, and follower
motivation. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(2), pp.143-155
Chughtai, A., Byrne, M. and Flood, B., 2015. Linking ethical leadership to employee well-
being: The role of trust in supervisor. Journal of Business Ethics, 128(3), pp.653-663
Homberg, F., McCarthy, D. and Tabvuma, V., 2015. A meta‐analysis of the relationship
between public service motivation and job satisfaction. Public Administration Review, 75(5),
pp.711-722
Kirovska, Z. and Qoku, P.N., 2014. System of employee performance assessment: Factor for
sustainable efficiency of organization. Journal of Sustainable Development, 5(11), pp.25-51
McClelland, D.C., 2015. Achievement motivation theory. chair in human resources at the
State University of New York–Buffalo and was faculty director of the Center for
Entrepreneurial Leadership there. Previously he was Research Professor of Management at
Georgia State University. He has written over fifty books and over 135 other publications.,
p.46
Mishra, K., Boynton, L. and Mishra, A., 2014. Driving employee engagement: The expanded
role of internal communications. International Journal of Business Communication, 51(2),
pp.183-202

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Ozguner, Z. and Ozguner, M., 2014. A managerial point of view on the relationship between
of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Herzberg's dual factor theory. International Journal of
Business and Social Science, 5(7)
Parijat, P. and Bagga, S., 2014. Victor Vroom’s expectancy theory of motivation–An
evaluation. International Research Journal of Business and Management, 7(9), pp.1-8
Shields, J., Brown, M., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P.,
Johns, R., O'Leary, P., Robinson, J. and Plimmer, G., 2015. Managing employee
performance & reward: Concepts, practices, strategies. Cambridge University Press
Townley, B., 2014. Selection and appraisal: reconstituting. New Perspectives on Human
Resource Management (Routledge Revivals), 92