1. From Chapter 13 explain one of the motivation theories in your own words and give an example: 2. As a manager what are some motivation strategies you would use to motivate your staff? 3. Is compensation the best motivator? Why or why not?13-3b Motivating with Expectancy Theory What practical steps can managers take to use expectancy theory to motivate employees? First, they can systematically gather information to find out what employees want from their jobs. In addition to individual managers directly asking employees what they want from their jobs (see Subsection 13-Id, "Motivating with the Basics"), companies need to survey their employees regularly to determine their wants, needs, and dissatisfactions. Because people consider the valence of all the possible rewards and outcomes that they can receive from their jobs, regular identification of wants, needs, and dissatisfactions gives companies the chance to turn negatively valent rewards and outcomes into positively valent rewards and outcomes, thus raising overall motivation and effort. Mark Peterman, vice president of client solutions at Maritz Incentives, says that individual employees are motivated in vastly different ways: "For some, being honored in front of one's peers is a great award, but for others, the thought of being put on display in front of peers embarrasses them." And companies have a long way to go to ensure that their employees feel valued, Peterman says. A Maritz survey found that only 27 percent of employees who want to be recognized by nonmonetary incentives are recognized that way. Such findings suggest that employers should routinely survey employees to identify not only the range of rewards that are valued by most employees but also to understand the preferences of specific employees. Second, managers can take specific steps to link rewards to individual performance in a way that is clear and understandable to employees. Unfortunately, most employees are extremely dissatisfied with the linkbetween pay and performance in their organizations, and their companies are, too. A survey by compensation consulting firm Willis Towers Watson found that 80 percent of companies report that merit pay, which links pay to performance, does not increase employee performance. Not surprisingly, 68 percent report that pay is not clearly tied to performance differences, either. " Of course, it doesn't help that a third of companies, according to Willis Towers Watson, "pay incentives to employees who do not meet expectations,"* One way to establish a clear connection between pay and performance (see Chapter 1 1 for a discussion of compensation strategies) is for managers to publicize the way in which pay decisions are made. "This is especially important given that only 52 percent of employees know how their pay increases are determined. " Inspired by fantasy sports leagues, Clayton Homes director of inside sales, David Schwall, had his sales managers become team "owners" who drafted sales representatives onto their sales teams, which competed against each other in a rotating schedule, with the best four teams moving on to the "championships." Sales reps (players) scored points by making more calls to sales leads, by increasing the percentage of leads who made appointments at Clayton Homes retail stores, and upping the percentage of leads whose phone calls were successfully transferred to a local store. Scores were tallied in real time, and the best scores were posted on TVs for everyone to see (poor scores were only visible within teams). Each sales rep's theme music played when they reached sales milestones. The connection between efforts and results was clear, prompting one sales rep to say, "When I saw one of my colleagues leaving, I thought, "Yes, now I can catch up and climb above him in the ranks."" Calls rose by 18 percent, appointments jumped by 200 percent, as did visits to stores. And, after the "season" was over, employeeswere eager for the next season to begin, saying they missed the immediate feedback, recognition, and energy. Finally, managers should empower employees to make decisions if management really wants them to believe that their hard work and effort will lead to good performance. If valent rewards are linked to good performance, people should be energized to take action. However, this works only if they also believe that their efforts will lead to good performance. One of the ways that managers destroy the expectancy that hard work and effort will lead to good performance is by restricting what employees can do or by ignoring employees' ideas. In Chapter 9, you learned that empowerment is a feeling of intrinsic motivation in which workers perceive their work to have meaning and perceive themselves to be competent, to have an impact, and to be capable of self-determination. "So, if managers want workers to have strong expectancies, they should empower them to make decisions. Doing so will motivate employees to take active rather than passive roles in their work