MagNet Corporation

MagNet Corporation was established to provide colleges and universities with educational software systems in their e-learning programs. For the two years MagNet has been operational. The corporation has registered a tremendous growth, a feature characterized by the increase in our staff from 5 to 35 employees and 55% market penetrations. Despite this achievement, the corporation has continued to face several challenges in its eight departments, from both competitors and the internal management of staff. In an effort to differentiate itself from its competitors and increase its market share, MagNet has been forced to implement strategies, which unfortunately have placed a lot of stress on the current staff. The company being aware of this and other problems has taken measures to improve motivation in all the departments. The General Administration is one of the departments under this plan.

General administration is a department consisting of three administrative support personnel and seven sales representatives, all of which are under the sales manager. The current target aims at increasing the productivity of the department by not less than 25%. Key challenges in meeting this target are that the employees are taking considerable time in learning the new products. In addition, in seeking to answer customer questions, the employees are becoming over-reliant on technical support, thus increasing the work overload on the technical department. In this case study, Kyle Lilly, the sales manager, together with the motivation specialist has developed a plan to improve the employee pride in the administration department.

Departmental problem review

The study conducted reveals that all the three administrative support personnel are threatening to terminate their services in the company if nothing is done concerning the workload. Their concerns are that they are doing most of the work and that the increased number of client requests is becoming a heavier burden to their already overloaded work. The other concern is that three of the members in the department are requesting for training in order to develop their professions. Other five members have issues with the administration and have already received warning letters.

After summarizing the problems, we found out that they all are in one way or another related. The employees have little sense of pride in the work they do and in the corporation as a whole. As a result, there is a little motivation to work harder in order to achieve more as expected in the departmental target.

Recommended solution

My collaboration with the motivation specialist has yielded the following motivation plan in light of the prevailing problems in the department. This plan involves motivating the employees towards higher performance using primary motivator, which does not involve money or promotions.

Building pride

Katzenbach (2004) argues that pride is a very important tool that an organization needs in order to succeed in the 21^st century. He equates it to a currency and thus a corporation needs to understand its value, exploit its potential, and take advantage of its benefits. According to the motivation expert, it is the sense of pride that drives performance and not the other way round. The best way to instill pride among the employees is by creating the sense of anticipation that their behavior is what will determine the level of success and the results from their work will give them satisfaction. Such a feeling will generate commitment and energy to achieve the goal of the department.

In the motivation cycle, there are two important types of pride: pride on the work the employees perform and pride on the corporation itself. Pride on the MagNet Corporation will lead to the employee loyalty to the enterprise, which will in turn boost morale of employees. The pride of employees on their individual work, on the other hand, will enable them to exceed the departmental expectations and offer a firm behavioral change (Katzenbach, 2004).

Good example how pride is building work is the Microsoft Corporation. The workers there have a belief that the products they make change the world. This way they develop a sense of pride that their efforts are very essential in generating products, which affect vital aspects of human life. Considering importance of pride building, the sales manager and motivation specialist make the following recommendation in the administration department:

• a) The corporation should be swift to clarify what exactly it requires from employees and why it is important. For example, MagNet should explain to the department why new products are necessary and how employees are supposed to contribute to the 25% increase in productivity.
• b) Employees’ minds must be kept stimulated at all times. Since the sense of pride might be strong over time and fade over time, it is important to keep them remembering how success is felt like in the past and how it will be felt in the future.
• c) There is a need to instill pride in both the little things and major achievements. Peters and Waterman (1988) explain that celebrating the “early wins” is an important aspect in overall success. It has the same effect on employees as the feeling a five-year-old girl would be in preparing and eating a fish that she never went to the river to catch.
• d) In meeting of expectations, a balance must be established between celebrating pride of a current achievement and expecting more achievements the next time. One of the corporation’s weaknesses is that it sets higher standards every time the lower ones are achieved without taking considerable time to celebrating the present accomplishment.