Blue Star Employee Motivation Practices

Motivation can best be described as the force "that gives impetus to our behaviour by arousing, sustaining, and directing it toward the attainment of goals". For decades, numerous theorists have attempted to find a way of describing the concept of motivation. Much has been told about Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1970), Mc Gregor's XY theory (McGregor, 1960) or Herzberg's two factor theory (Herzberg, 2003) and there is no doubt that these content theories do provide valuable insights into motivation. Yet they also have limitations and do not necessarily apply nowadays . Likewise, process theories like Vroom's Expectancy-Valence-theory (Vroom, 1964) might be considered more meaningful as they are based on the assumption that motivation depends on different variables, but they still lack clarity as they overlook important interrelationships. Motivation depends on various external, individual and organisational factors. Moreover, the model makes clear that both incentives and threats are only part of the whole process. In this respect, it is worth considering John Adair's 50/50 theory (Adair, 2006), which stresses that one half of motivation is attributed to intrinsic factors (e.g. culture or job design) and the other half to extrinsic factors (e.g. incentives or threats). This implies that extrinsic factors alone do not help to motivate employees. Organisations therefore, first of all, need to align the various organisational factors in a way that they become an employer of choice and contribute to intrinsic motivation. For example, Blue Star, which is India's largest air conditioning (AC) & commercial refrigeration company, attracts and retains employees in part owing to the benefits, or expected and non-performance related incentives, it offers, such work performance benefits in the form of cash awards and out of turn promotions. But even more important is its outstanding creative culture. The latter is the gravitational force that puts all the bright and creative people together. It has an Employee reference scheme : reference candidates selected leads to a hike of Rs. 20,000 annually & offers holiday packages to senior officials based on performance. With regard to innovative organisations like Blue Star it is argued that employees' motivation is a key success factor and hence they need to be given incentives in order to foster creative thinking and sustain high motivation. Managing employee reward is a crucial element in encouraging flexibility, leveraging performance and competing for talent in tight labour markets. However, many authors disagree over which incentives are most appropriate. Wallace and Szilagyi (1982), for instance, believe that money is a key incentive as it enables people to satisfy their needs. On the contrary, Herzberg (2003) contends that monetary rewards only boost motivation in the short term. Kohn (1993) shares this view, as he states that there is no evidence for the contribution of money to sustainable employee motivation. Likewise, Pfeffer (1998) and Trott (2002) stress

that people are not only driven by financial incentives. Given the controversies in regard to incentives it is arguable that the whole concept is too complex to come to a universally valid conclusion.