BMA6102 Strategic HRM Project: Knight Frank Employee Motivation Report

This report details a Strategic Human Resource Management (HRM) project undertaken for the Knight Frank real estate company. The project investigates the challenges of employee motivation and retention, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report includes an introduction outlining the project brief, executive summary, and company background. A literature review examines the implications of COVID-19 on the real estate industry and the importance of employee engagement and motivation, including relevant motivational theories such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Herzberg's two-factor theory. The methodology used in the project is briefly described, followed by the findings and results of the analysis. The report concludes with recommendations aimed at improving employee motivation and retention within Knight Frank. The report emphasizes the importance of addressing employee needs and fostering a positive work environment to achieve organizational goals.

Strategic Human
Resource Management
Contents

INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................3
1.1. Project Brief...............................................................................................................................3
1.2. Executive Summary....................................................................................................................3
1.3. Company Background................................................................................................................3
2. LITERATURE REVIEW.....................................................................................................................4
2.1. COVID-19 and Its Implications for the Knight Frank Real Estate Organization........................4
2.2. Employee Engagement and Motivation......................................................................................5
3. METHODOLOGY................................................................................................................................8
4. FINDINGS AND RESULTS.................................................................................................................9
5. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION..................................................................................10
5.1 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................10
5.2 Recommendation.......................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................................11
Books and Journals:.........................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
1.1. Project Brief
In Human Resource Management, the society plays a very essential role which helps
create better workplace where employers and employees work together to get a common
objectives. And in Strategic Human Resource Management focuses on future oriented process of
developing and implementing Human Resource programs that highlights and resolve most of the
business problems and directly makes their contribution in future major long term organizational
objectives (Aid, G. and Et.al., 2017). It is the foundation for any business when it is properly
applied in business functions. It ensures the employers that the company as a whole is
contributing efforts to achieve that common goal which gives company a bigger opportunity to
succeed. A strategy of the company can include common goals and objectives, the kind of
products and services that managers plan to build, the consumers want to sell and deciding the
markets to serve by which profits can make.
Aim: This project aims to investigate the problems experienced by the Knight Frank
Company with employee motivation and retention in COVID-19 situation.
1.2. Executive Summary
Strategic HRM helps to link the human resource function with strategic aims of the
company to improve performances of their employees. The companies always want to attract and
keep talented and skilled employees in their work premises but it is also a challenging situation
for the companies. The companies may also develop competitive advantage through their
working people engaged in their company. It also ensures that the culture, structure and style of
the company as well as the commitment, quality and motivation of their employees so that it can
contribute towards achieving goals for the organization.
1.3. Company Background
Knight Frank is a leading property and real estate consultancy firm based out of London.
It has its global partner in New York that is Newmark Grubb. Around the globe Knight Frank
has more than 500 offices which covers more of 60 territories. These companies act as ridge
between people and builders. Knight Frank Company lends services to people in a segmented
and categorized way that are advisory services, agency services and management services.
Advisory Services where service provider evaluates the short and long term goals in real
estate business and also point out the best options in any given property. A real estate service
provider works within their advisory capability and must have a strong real estate background
with experience and resources that can help to plan more strategically and also increased the
value of the real estate's assets. The real estate consultancy company gives specialized
investment and financial advice to clients looking to buy, sell and investment in property.
Valuation in the real estate agency services provided to help or to assist clients with dispositions,
tax planning, compliance, mergers and acquisitions and many more. Market research involves a
key role in commercial as well as residential real estate business.
Agency services where agents or brokers are the ones who represents buyers and sellers
in the real estate dealing. They are licensed by the state to make sales agreements and manage
the paper work needed for closing the real estate transactions. These service agents takes

commission by both the parties. The primary job of these kind real estate brokers helps their
clients in the difficult process of buying and selling the properties. These are the activities that
real agents would perform make appointment for presentation with sellers, reviewing pre
appointment questions, research the last few months sale activities from public database and
more activities which are performed by them.
Management services directly deals with tenants and the prospects that intended to saves
time and think over marketing rentals, managing issues, handling maintenance and collecting
rents responding to tenants reaction and even pursuing evictions. A property manager requires to
be able communicate and listen as well as involved and be proactive and knowledgeable. A
property manager should be levelheaded, personable and resourceful.
Project Management helps in controlling schedules, costs, and specifications. It refers the
process which is leading by a team to get goals and meet success criteria in a specified time
period (Akhmetshin, E. M. and Et.al., 2018). The primary objective these projects is to get all the
project aims within the given constraints.
Facility Management refers to the third party service for the maintenance of building or office, or
outsourcing the management of entire facilities to a different specialized service company.
Facility managers are accountable for the security, maintenance and services of job facility to
ensure that meet with the requirements of employees as well as Knight Frank Company.
Knight Frank deals in both Commercial and Residential Properties. The company’s core values
are trust and integrity, teamwork, professionalism and drive.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. COVID-19 and Its Implications for the Knight Frank Real Estate Organization
As per the view point of El-Kassar, A. N. and Singh, S. K. (2019), there was the first time
where business and the whole world faces such a challenging situation where travel is restricted,
socially distancing are applicable to whole world. The cold-hearted March of COVID-19 around
the whole world is first and foremost a human tragedy which health of many get affected by this
disease. The consequences of measures are taken by all over the world to limit the pandemic
situations with a greater impact of economies of nation. All business no matter what the business
size is facing serious challenges, especially those in real estate businesses with an actual threat of
declining revenues, job loses or insolvencies in particular job sectors. It has been impact harsh to
small and medium size business. For 2020, industry experts have predicted that due to this
pandemic situation there was decline in an estimated profit of 11-29%. The KHN (Kaiser Health
News) has said that the safety measures taken to limit this emergency consequences has already
affect the industry in a serious way. The real state executive are concerned with preserving value,
liquidity, maintaining visitors and tenants safe including increase in safety measures about
cleaning as well as complying with the requirements of government agencies.
Effects of the COVID-19 on the real estate business:
 Strong correlation between financial performance, national economies and the real estate
company.
 Many employees lost their jobs in these type of industries.

 In retail, the end users in the particular sectors highly depend upon the real estate Knight
frank Company for recurring profits.
 In UK, the prices of share in real estate and construction industries have seen unmatched
volatility with vital declines in worth experienced in March-April 2020 till present date.
2.2. Employee Engagement and Motivation
Employee motivation defined as the level of energy, creativity, persistence and
commitments that the employee of Knight Frank Company bring to their work. It is very genuine
and obvious that higher motivated employees leads to better engagement and productivity. Many
companies know the importance of the motivation among employees (Bickett, D., Schweitzer, J.
and Mastio, E., 2019, July). It is not a amazement that managers put motivation strategies and
pay more attention and resources into employee motivation. Mangers must know that unhappy
and dissatisfied employees in the organization won't pay attention and proper involvement in the
business. But employers must put into action and take every employee on board to next level of
the Company.
Benefits of Employee's Motivation:
 Handling uncertainty better: If employees are motivated to get better work done and
much more engaged in the activities. Hence, they are confident to react the complicated
situations like COVID-19.
 Innovative and Creative: When employees are engaged in the work plus appreciated for
their hard work; they can think about innovations and creativity that might help in the
performance optimization.
 Are better problem solvers: These are the skills that managers are looking in their
employees. Motivated employees are also the problem solvers and able to face new
challenges.
 Better understand the company's objectives: If the employees working in the
organization understand their hard work that puts into the overall success of the
organization. That also makes them to understand company's goals, mission and vision
where the company want to achieve the position in the future.
Theories of the Motivation:
It is important to the Knight Frank Real Estate Company to ensure that every team
member at the workplace is motivated. Motivation is a force that pushes an employee to work
harder and give his best to the organization. It also highs the level of commitment and motivates
to take things in a positive way that are against the employee.
1. Maslow's hierarchy of Needs Theory
This theory of needs introduced by the founder Abraham Maslow in which an employee
is motivated to fulfill his needs and desires. This theory suggests the basic needs of an employee
and keeps moving to upper level of needs and desires with an aim to fulfill them. Abraham's
theory argues that humans have a series of needs from basic needs that a human cannot survive
and this needs and desires grow one by one after fulfilling one by one needs.

Maslow's theory classified the needs of an employee into the following manner:
1. Physiological needs: The primary and basic needs are come into these needs that
includes such as air, water, sleep, food, shelter (Hartmann, P. and Henkel, J.,
2020). These are the needs that must met continuously for a human to survive, but
if these needs are not fulfill employee feel displeased and dissatisfied.
2. Safety Needs: Safety needs are just above the physiological needs which helps in
ensuring the physical survival of an employee. These includes the needs of safety
such as physical security, securities for the employment, safety against accidents
or injuries. In short, an employee wants to secure about their physical and well
being is safe and protected. Employees always seek jobs where they can feel safe
and getting health benefits such as health insurance, health care, contribution of
money to the savings account.
3. Sociological needs: The social needs can be defined as an affection, love,
acceptance and belongings. At this stage employee behavior can be drive to
satisfy the human's emotional needs. Some of the examples of such needs are
family, friends, romantic attachments, social groups, community groups or
religious organizations. With a view to avoid issues like depression, loneliness or
anxiety (O'Neill, T. A. and Mclarnon, M. J., 2018). It is very much needed to
fulfill such needs for employee to feel loved and accepted by other people in the
Knight Frank Company.
4. Self-esteem needs: At the fourth level of this theory, it indicates the need of
appreciation and respect. These needs begin to play salient role after fulfilling the
first three needs of employee with an intention to motivate them towards work. It
is the time where employee's needs are gaining and wanted more after satisfying
those needs. Employees want that their efforts are appreciated in the company by
the seniors and the team members as well. With an addition to the needs of
feelings of accomplishment and prestige, esteem needs also includes personal
worth and self-esteem. Employees can participate in the activities such as
academic accomplishments, professional activities, athletic participation, also
personal hobbies. But if these are lacking among the employees, it can make them
to feel inferior. It can level up the satisfaction of employees if fulfilled.
5. Self-actualization needs: These are the people who are self aware and concerned
with their personal growth but the less concerned with thoughts of others; and
interesting with their self potentials. This motives and accomplishments can
include things like pursuing goals, seeking happiness and personal fulfillment,
parenting.
2. Herzberg's two factor theory of Motivation
Herzberg’s motivation theory or model explains that the two factor can adjust to influence
motivation in the workplace. According to the Frederick Herzberg, there are some job factors
that can result in the satisfaction while others factors focus on to prevent dissatisfaction.
Herzberg classified these factors into two categories:

 Hygiene factors: These are essential factors at the workplace for the existence of
motivation of employees. Of course these are not the long term positive motivation
factors but if these are lacking in the Knight frank Company, leads to dissatisfaction. In
short, these are the reasonable factors in the company to satisfy the employees with their
work. These factors include:
 Physical working Conditions: The work environment should be safe, clean and
hygienic; also the work equipment and machinery are updated and well-maintained.
 Job security: It must be provided by the company so that employees feel safe about
their lives.
 Interpersonal Relations: The relationship of the employees with their superiors,
subordinates must be acceptable and appropriate.
 Motivational Factors: These factors are used as a motivational factors to motivate
employees in the company for their work performance. Such factors are involved in
performing the jobs (Para-González, L., Jiménez-Jiménez, D. and Martínez-Lorente, A.R.,
2018). Motivational factors includes:
 Growth and promotional opportunities: Companies such as Knight Frank agency must
have the ways to growth and promotions to motivate employees to perform well.
 Responsibility: Employees must have the mindset that they are a part of an
organization and responsible for their jobs done. But it does not mean it lacks control
in the environment.
 Achievement: It must give the sense of achievement to the employees working in the
environment. It will makes them to feel proud and worthwhile.
Engagement of Employees in the Company:
Employee’s engagement is very essential for the succession of the firm, it is affect as any
others aspects of the organization will do that includes profitability, customer experience,
employee turnover, revenue and many more. Employee who feel connected with their company
work harder, perform well, motivate other too and stay longer with the Knight Frank Company a
well. It can also be taken as a strength of mental and emotional connection of the work they
perform for the company, with their team. Engagement of the employees is very important in
appealing to HR also just because of their instant benefits in employees retention, job
satisfaction, happiness and recruitment.
Benefits and impacts of employee’s engagement:
 Lower absenteeism: When employees give their 100% commitment with the mission of
the Knight Frank Company, they will show it very well to the company and this can
make the highly engagement for the company.
 Decreased workplace accidents and injuries: Employees who work with satisfaction in
their work surroundings, are the ones who are more aware and also focus on the tasks.

 Higher employee retention: Employees who are engaged, have no time to look jobs in
somewhere else plus have no reason to leave the present job. This will lead to employee
turnover less often (Pires, R. A. R., Alves, M. D. C. G. and Fernandes, C., 2020).
The role of employees in employee engagement:
 Provide honest, actionable and candid review and feedback about their work is
performing well or not.
 Helps to build relationships with other employees, managers.
 Brainstorm new solutions that address with their concerns.
Penna’s model of employee engagement
It is a hierarchy model developed in 2007. It is model in pyramid shaped starts with basic
working conditions. Then it shifts to the next level of learning and development which is
followed by the promotional activities, opportunities, leadership, trust and respect. And, the
meaning is at the top of the pyramid model (Stoian, C. and Gilman, M., 2017). Employee
engagement will increase as the company develops each of the levels. Firms that allows this
model, delivering meaning within the work surroundings to employees. It will increase the
employee retention and make better employees to attract.
3. METHODOLOGY
Research methodology explains the significant and fundamental part of study as it will help
in the collection of data and the analysis of the data by the use of the accurate approaches,
methods and techniques. It presents to a systematic investigation, defining a problem, framing
questions for the research and collecting and analyzing the data and information. Secondary
research helps in collecting the deep and detailed information about the impact of COVID-19
over the real estate business. For collecting secondary data, the researcher might use books,
journals or articles (Ravenda, D. and Et.al., 2019). Also these researches will be used in
literature review by the investigator with an intention of gathering secondary data. The main
purpose of these research study is to achieve familiarities or attaining new insights towards a
specific study or topic. This part of research includes various research methods that has been
mentioned as below:
Research Philosophy: It familiarizes to the set of beliefs that helps investigator in collecting,
analyzing and interpreting of data systematically and effectively. It is mainly considered in type
of epistemology and ontology. Ontology can refer a type of philosophy that means collecting
information in form of authenticate and valid. Epistemology is another form of philosophy that
announces to the valid evidence required within a study and how a person can find it. Along with
this, this excretion primarily has two types which are known as interpretivism and positivism.
They are the two types of research philosophy that has been used for gathering and interpreting
of data in an effective manner. Interpretivism philosophy titles that an individual detects their
own understanding as well as perception of reality while positivism philosophy assumes that
information is free and independent of the particular area of topic being studied. For carrying out
current study on the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects on real estate companies such as

Knight Frank Company, interpretivism philosophy has been surveyed as it is more suitable and
valuable for collecting and evaluating secondary information without any complications.
Research design: It is an essential and major section of research methodology that basically has
three type of research design such as exploratory, experimental and descriptive. All these are
effective forms of research design that benefits researcher in identification of research
challenges. For doing current dissertation over a subject of COVID-19 pandemic and the impacts
on real estate companies, exploratory design of study can be useful as it serves insights into the
common nature of a research challenge. Main rational behind selecting exploratory research
design is it support investigator in analyzing of secondary data collected for literature review in
an effective and systematic manner.
Data collection Method: It presents to the collection of data process in context of cureent
research by collecting the information from sources where it is accessible and are already being
considered by someone before over same form of study. It is mainly tracked to develop the
understanding the current area of research and its feature that act as a base of future research of
dissertation (Saurombe, M., Barkhuizen, E. N. and Schutte, N. E., 2017). Current dissertation is
entirely based on secondary research and for collecting secondary data, there are several sources
available for the research which are known as books, magazines, articles, journals, publication
study many other options appropriate to the existing study. All these are valuable sources of
collecting secondary data that will be used within a specified topic. In order to gather
information from view point of many authors’ journals or online articles will be surveyed so that
genuine data regarding the impact of COVID-19 has been obtainable so that aim and objectives
can be accomplished.
4. FINDINGS AND RESULTS
The theory simply focuses on human needs or the fundamentals of individual needs. It
simplifies the nature of human growth with the help of a triangle which shows 5 stages of human
where he attempts to satisfy the more basic needs before directing behavior toward satisfying
upper level needs. The triangle shows the needs of individual as follows from bottom to top of
the pyramid/triangle. It starts from Psychological needs, Safety needs, Social needs, Esteem
needs and self-actualization. The same follows in an organization too where the employee works
for his professional growth which includes in self-actualization. Hence, it is important and
relevant in today’s work environment to every organization to seek and follow in order to obtain
success and excellence. The other theory focuses on two factors which are Hygiene and
motivating factors (Черковська, Г., 2019). The applicability of the theory is narrow and it is
prescriptive. The two factors might not act as motivators in the theory. The factors depicts the
satisfaction of employees at workplace which can be more or less. The term satisfaction
corresponds with motivators in the theory which explains that employee can feel more or less
about the Motivating factors and whereas the employee might feel more or less dissatisfied with
the hygiene factors within the organization.

5. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
5.1 Conclusion
This can be concluded for the above stated information that there are number of functions
which are performed by business firm in order to motivate employees in this environment. It
being difficult for business firm to improve employee engagement in business firm after the
situation of COVID-19. There are number of things which have to be managed such as social
distancing and other. This stop firm and management to implement effective training programs
and also leads to difference in performed. All these is managed by using effective tools and
techniques which are used according to needs of business firm. This can also analysis that there
are number of motivation and retaliation strategies which can be used by business firm in order
to meet needs of employees and gain maximum satisfaction.
5.2 Recommendation
In order to improve current situation and perform task in effective way, there are some
recommendation which can be used by business firm. These are related to meeting needs and
performing task in effective way. in context to this, there are number of function which are used
by business firm. Some of the major recommendation are discussed below:
 Firstly, it is recommended to business firm that there are number training programs which
can be used in order to motivate employees. In context to this, firm can use to develop
and effective training program which will helps in meeting needs. This must be consist of
training associated with working as well as COVID guidelines. This will help in booting
performer of employee and understanding about the function of business firm.
 Secondly, it is also recommended to business firm that effective implementation is also a
good strategy which can be used by business firm in order to retain talented employees in
business firm. In this firm can use to provide perks and other incentives which will help
employee in meeting needs and perform task in effective way.
 Along with this, it is also recommended to business that there are number of approaches
which can be used in order to evaluate the performance of employees. These are related
to understanding the issues and enhancing perform of employees. For this, business firm
can use 360 appraisal approach. This approach will help in meeting target needs and
understanding the business function in effective way.
The above mentioned recommendation can be used by chosen firm in order to meet needs
and perform the function in effective way.

REFERENCES
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