Serene Night

Employee Motivation

With attrition rate at 50% in Indian BPO industry and 20%-30% in ITES, companies have started to ponder on employee retention techniques. NASSCOM places the number of job openings to 1.6 millions. To the concern of top magnets in IT industry the trained work force is not enough to meet the demand of resources. Growing rate of attrition and less skilled workers are bringing companies into a crunch situation. Employers put lot of money on training the human resources for quality work but that does not guarantee their retention. It’s been heard quiet often that a well trained and productive team member resigning from the job to take another one because of low salary, no appreciation, unsatisfactory management or work atmosphere.

Friderick Herzberg (1950) states that there are two dimensions to job satisfaction: Motivation and Hygiene. Hygiene includes company policies, supervision, salary, interpersonal relations and working conditions. They are issues related to the employee's environment. Motivation creates satisfaction by fulfilling individuals' needs personal growth. It comprises of issues such as achievement, recognition, kind of work and growth. When an employee finds all these suiting him he sticks to the company. Research and surveys have repeatedly brought the same reasons for demotivation of employees.
In other words when Achievement, Equity and Camaraderie are maintained then employees get enthusiasm to work. To implement the three factors both the organisation and managers need to work together.

Achievement: Companies need to state a purpose that provides employees the zeal for work. Managers need to communicate the purpose to each employee so that as an unit everyone has a single goal and can achieve targets. Recognizing talent and appreciating good work becomes very essential for setting the level of quality work. Employees feel the need of compliments or appreciation in team parties, certificates to know that manager and company are noticing his hard work. Every person desires growth and repel stagnation. This is also true in the area of work. Employees require paths to grow in their work. For this mangers and company should organize training, hold review meetings and give them ample opportunity to know the latest in their field.

Equity: Communication gap between management and employee have led to frustration amongst the staff leading to attrition. Queries should be resolved and transparency should be maintained wherever management and staff require working together. Crunch in projects can easily be overcome if communication between team and manager is focused.

Camaraderie: Nowadays all projects and companies require a team to reach the target. With projects requiring different profiles and skills, the teams formed are a mix of kinds of individuals. Whenever possible manager should organize team activities to bridge the communication-gap between team members, and assist them to work together. Also manager needs to assess the team chemistry so that everyone gets equal opportunity.

Understanding the employee’s aspirations and expectations from a company and giving him opportunity to work as a member of the organisation will help in motivating the employee. This will get the attrition rate down.



Online References:
Michael J., David W., and Ulmer Deborah, 1999, Job Satisfaction: Putting Theory into Practice, viewed 31st Aug 2007,< http://www.aafp.org/fpm/991000fm/26.html#2>

NASSCOM for education reforms to check attrition, 2007, 13th Aug, Business Standard, Bangalore, viewed 31st Aug 2007, < http://www.nasscom.in/Nasscom/templates/NormalPage.aspx?id=51998>

Sirota D., Mischkind A.L., and Meltzer M. I., 2006, Why Your Employees are Loosing Motivation, viewed 31st Aug 2007,< http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5289.html>

Writing Styles

I stubled on to something quiet intriguing . It was about writing styles. Never did I imagine that there are styles to refer and create reference lists or bibliography. With research, information overflow and online publishing happening , it was high time to list rules to organise references for any paper or article. Till now have come across the following styles:

1. Harvard
2. APA
3. MLA

Harvard

• In this the author's name and the year of publication appears
• Bibliography is at the end and in alphabetical order
• The name of the author comma and the year of publication within brackets should end before the last punctuation mark of the refered text.
• If there are four or more authors, then mention the first author followed by et al.
• If there is more than one reference by an author in the same year they are generally labelled in order of publication with a lower case letter (e.g. 1992a, 1992b).
  other researchers faced this problem (Stairs 1992a, p.98 , James 1994, p.107) while Stairs (1992b, p.3) recognised...(ref:http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/infosuss/referencing/h_textref.shtml)
• If the author is unknown then the title of book or web page is provieded.
• In bibliography of journals, the details should be put together as under: 1. Author’s surname, followed by the initials.2. Year of publication, in brackets.3. Title of the article.4. Title of the journal in full, in italics or underlined.5. Volume number.6. The number of the first and last pages on which the article appears.
• Check: http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:zZezhGd1LkkJ:www.sapmea.asn.au/conventions/wexdev2006/downloads/wexdev2006_sample_style_guide.pdf+harvard+style%2Bline+space&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=be