MBAF 503: Enhancing Employee Motivation During Tough Economic Times

This case study solution addresses employee motivation during tough economic times, drawing from Steven Stein's seven keys to an emotionally intelligent organization. It suggests additional strategies such as establishing clear goals, offering rewards, providing regular evaluations, communicating the organization's vision, and investing in training and development. The solution explores how supervisors can motivate employees through appreciation, feedback, open communication, and fostering a sense of ownership. It further applies these tips to group work, emphasizing personal recognition, valuing employee input, providing project-oriented feedback, and encouraging a positive work environment. The document concludes by highlighting the importance of happiness in the workplace as a key driver of productivity. Desklib provides a platform for students to access this solution along with a wide range of study resources, including past papers and solved assignments.

Running head: BUSINESS FUNDAMENTALS
Business Fundamentals
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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1. What other suggestions might you add to this list?
Apart from the valuable tips by a Toronto based psychologist and the entrepreneur,
Steven Stein in the article; Make Your Workplace Great: The 7 Keys to an Emotionally
Intelligent Organization there lies some of the other essential factors towards motivating and
supporting the employees in their difficult times (Stein, 2007). Some of the other suggestions
apart from changes in job patterns, offerings on ongoing feedbacks, involvement in decision
making procedure, being flexible and emphasizing on the personal accountability that are
beneficial for the employees to work efficiently in the challenging times are as follows.
Establishment of the goals – The employees of the organization should be motivated
towards the vision for the upcoming future. It is important for the organization to create a
working environment that enables the workers of the force to develop and identify the goals
and the objectives of the organization (Guan et al., 2017). Understanding of the dependency
of their work on the success of the entire business is essential for the employees.
Rewards – Employees can furthermore be motivated by the offerings of rewards and
gifts occasionally. Events like the contests and inter team a game tends to motivate the
employees towards increasing their productivity thus increasing their self confidence to deal
with the challenging situation (De Vito et al., 2018).
Regular Evaluation – Employees furthermore gets motivated and inspired when they
are given regular updates of their daily performances. This helps them in developing a sense
of self worth and effectiveness that motivates the employee to continue with their work and
understand their gaps in productivity for coping up in difficult times.
Communication for the current vision and mission - With the clarity of the current
mission and current vision of the organization, the employees can be motivated with the help

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of effective communication and soft talks with them targeting the understanding of their
issues and problems of the employees.
Training and Development – One of the most effective ways towards preparing and
motivating the employees towards dealing with the challenging situations in the employment
can be proper and efficient training and development (Rajiah & Bhargava, 2016). Workplace
training and development are essential for the employees towards sharpening their
knowledge and skills to grow professionally in the organization.
2. If you are employed now (or have been in the past), how has your supervisor motivated
you? If you have never been employed before, how can a supervisor motivate you?
One of the essential roles of the supervisor is to motivate the employees towards
increasing their productivity an believing in themselves so that they can reach the aims and
the target of the organization. It is the duty of the supervisors of the team to initiate thinking
out of the box and develop creative and reliable techniques for motivating the employees.
These help the employees to cope up with the organizational techniques and learn new and
innovative skills for increasing their productivity. While being employed in the previous
organization some of the essential factors was noted was no employee actually like a
dominating and careless supervisor. Instead every one encourages a helpful and motivating
one.
A supervisor can motivate his or her employees of the team in several ways. These
include personally appraising and thanking the employees for doing a good job and
contributing to the organization. This can be done by appraising by small note or email and

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by sharing the achievement and the productivity details of the employees. The supervisor can
also be willing to take out time towards meeting and listening to the employees. Provision of
specific project oriented feedbacks regarding the performances of the employees can also
motivate them (Weske & Schott, 2016). Furthermore the supervisor can strive towards the
creation of open, fun and reliable work environment together with the encouragement of new
initiatives and ideas. They can provide some of the data regarding the upcoming strategies
and products and how the employees can increase their productivity and chances of
incentives and bonuses which will overall motivate the employees (Strauss, Parker & O'Shea,
2017). Encouragement of the employees towards a sense of ownership regarding their work
environment and creation of the partnership with the employees will help them to motivate
themselves and meet their goals in the context of meeting the goals of the organization
(Shrestha & Mishra, 2015). Finally the supervisor can use the performance of the employees
under him or her as the basis or the tool for the recognition, promotion and rewarding of the
people in the organization (Závadský, Hitka & Potkány, 2015). This will help the supervisors
to identify and deal with the marginal and the low performers in the organization and help
them and motivate them towards improving their performances.
It can thus be summarized that supervisor should encourage happiness to the
employees to motivate them. This is because happy and enthusiastic members of the
organization generates positive vibes and encourage the employees towards performing
better towards the achievement of the goals of the organization and also their individual
targets.

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3. Apply each one of these tips to group work. How might you implement these suggestions
so that group members, including yourself, are motivated to do well in the assigned
work?
The above factors illustrated some of the noteworthy suggestions on how a supervisor
of an organization can initiate in motivating and encouraging the employees of the
organization towards their achievement of the goals.
Aiming to successfully apply each of the tips to the group work, the scenario can be
summarized as follows.
 In case of personal thanks giving and appraising by the supervisor the employees
of the group members would personally be encouraged and feel special towards
his or her dedication towards the team performance (Raspor & Rozman, 2017).
 In case the supervisor is listening to the requirements of the employees, the team
members of the organization will feel valued as human being and will dedicate
their best for the organization if the management understands their issues.
 In case of project oriented feedbacks from the supervisor the employees of the
team will be knowledgeable regarding the area they are strong in and would
identify his or her area of specialization for the upcoming project (Kuvaas et al.,
2017).
 In case of strategies and techniques from the supervisors the employees will be
helpful to increase their productivity as a whole. They would feel helpful and
happy.

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 In the case of promotion and rewards by the supervisors, the employees will be
motivated and take the employment and their job as a challenge and the
opportunity to gain more rewards in the upcoming days (Eggert, 2015).
 Finally the encouragement of happiness by the supervisor will automatically help
the employees of the organization to increase their productivity since happy
employees are most productive and beneficial for the organization.

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References
De Vito, L., Brown, A., Bannister, B., Cianci, M., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2018). Employee motivation based
on the hierarchy of needs, expectancy and the two-factor theories applied with higher education
employees. IJAMEE.
Eggert, M. A. (2015). Motivation pocketbook. Management Pocketbooks.
Guan, Y., Jiang, P., Wang, Z., Mo, Z., & Zhu, F. (2017). Self-referent and other-referent career
successes, career satisfaction, and turnover intention among Chinese employees: The role of
achievement motivation. Journal of Career Development, 44(5), 379-393.
Kuvaas, B., Buch, R., Weibel, A., Dysvik, A., & Nerstad, C. G. (2017). Do intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation relate differently to employee outcomes?. Journal of Economic Psychology, 61, 244-
258.
Rajiah, P., & Bhargava, P. (2016). Motivational leadership: tips from the business world. Journal of the
American College of Radiology, 13(5), 585-589.
Raspor, A., & Rozman, T. (2017). Impact of Tipping on Workers’ Motivation: Comparison between the
Hospitality and Gaming Industries in Slovenia. СОЦИОЛОШКИ ДИСКУРС, 6(11).
Shrestha, A. K., & Mishra, A. K. (2015). Interactive effects of public service motivation and
organizational politics on Nepali civil service employees' organizational commitment. Business
Perspectives and Research, 3(1), 21-35.
Stein, S. J. (2007). Make your workplace great: The 7 keys to an emotionally intelligent organization.
John Wiley & Sons.
Strauss, K., Parker, S. K., & O'Shea, D. (2017). When does proactivity have a cost? Motivation at work
moderates the effects of proactive work behavior on employee job strain. Journal of Vocational
Behavior, 100, 15-26.

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Weske, U., & Schott, C. (2016). What motivates different groups of public employees working for
Dutch municipalities? Combining autonomous and controlled types of motivation. Review of
Public Personnel Administration, 0734371X16671981.
Závadský, J., Hitka, M., & Potkány, M. (2015). Changes of employee motivation of Slovak enterprises
due to global economic crisis.