Case study - 3 Patil, RK Materials, is very angry, anxious and restless.

He bumped into Mehta, RK Materials, threw the resignation letter on his table, screamed and walked out of the room swiftly. Patil has a reason for his sudden outburst. Details of the story will tell the r easons for Patils anger and why he put his resignation, only four months after he took up his job. In the year 2000 Patil quit his prestigious Mittal plant at Vishakhapatnam. As a manager Materials, Patil had various powers like he could even place an order o f materials worth Rs.50 Lakhs. He required nobodys prior consent. Patil Joined a pulp-making plant located at Kerala, as RK Materials. The plant i s part of a multi-product and multi-plant conglomerate owned by a prestigious bu siness house in India. The perks, reputation and designation of the conglomerate attracted Patil away from the public sector steel monolith. When he joined the eucalyptus pulp making company, little did Patil realize that he needed prior approval to place an order for materials worth Rs.25lakh. He th ought that he had the authority to place an order for materials by himself worth half the amount of what he used to as at the Mega Steel maker. He placed the or der, materials arrived, were received, accepted and used up in the plant. Troubl e started when the bill for Rs.25 lakh came from the vendor. The accounts depart ment withheld the payment for the reason that the bill was not endorsed by Mehta . Mehta refused to sign on the bill as his approval was not taken by Patil befor e placing the order. Patil felt very angry and cheated. A brief encounter with Mehta only made the si tuation worse. Patil was rudely told that he should have known company rules bef ore venturing. He decided to Quit. Questions 1. Do you think the company has any orientation programme? If yes, discuss its e ffectiveness. Ans. No according to me the company hasnt provided any orientation program. Becau se when one join a new company often have lots of questions about the structure of their new company, its culture, and its goals. A good orientation program can answer many of those questions and start off new employees working in the right direction. Orientation is a programs which can take place in-house or off-site, with audi o-visual tools such as informational videos or slides, through role playing or s imulations, or through simple discussion and question-and-answer time. However c ompany structure an orientation program, it should make sure it occurs during a new employee s first week on the job. And a good orientation program should cove r the following areas: A welcome. An overview of what the firm does as a whole. A big-picture look at where the firm fits into its industry. Corporate culture. The company s history. Expected work habits and policies This shows that the company do not provide any orientation program . 2. If employees were properly selected, there should be no need for an orientati on programme. Comment on the statement. Ans: I do not agree on the statement that if employees were properly selected th ere should be no need for an orientation programme this situation will not help employee how much good he is and also results in the poor results to the organis ation because giving a proper orientation program can leads to: To Reduce Start-up-Costs Proper orientation can help the employee get "up to speed" much more quickly, t hereby reducing the costs associated with learning the job. 2. To Reduce Anxiety

Any employee, when put into a new, strange situation, will experience anxiety t hat can impede his or her ability to learn to do the job. Proper orientation h elps to reduce anxiety that results from entering into an unknown situation, an d helps provide guidelines for behaviour and conduct, so the employee doesn t h ave to experience the stress of guessing. 3. To Reduce Employee Turnover Employee turnover increases as employees feel they are not valued, or are put i n positions where they can t possibly do their jobs. Orientation shows that th e organization values the employee, and help provide tools necessary for succee ding in the job. 4. To Save Time For Supervisor & Co-Workers Simply put, the better the initial orientation, the less likely supervisors and co-workers will have to spend time teaching the employee. 5. To Develop Realistic Job Expectations, Positive Attitudes and Job Satisfac tion It is important that employees learn early on what is expected of them, and wha t to expect from others, in addition to learning about the values and attitudes of the organization. While people can learn from experience, they will make m any mistakes that are unnecessary and potentially damaging. And if we go with statement it will be really harmful for productivity. If a new employee has received a ten minute talk with the manager, and directed to his or her office position, with no further guidance or instruction. Not only is t his exceedingly stressful for the employee, but it virtually guarantees a very long period of unproductiveness for the employee. 3. If You were Patil, how would you react to the above situation? Ans: 4. Discuss the purpose of orientation. What are various requisites of an effecti ve programme? Ans:

Here is a second case studyThe reality of software development is a huge company like Microsoft-it employs more than 48,000 people- is that a substantial portion of your work involves day s of boredom punctuated by hours of tedium. You basically spend your time in an isolated office writing code and sitting in meetings during which you participat e in looking for and evaluating hundreds of current employees and potential empl oyees. Microsoft has no problem in finding and retaining software programmers. T heir programmers work for very long hours and obsess on the goal of shipping pro duct. From the day new employees begin at Microsoft, they know they are special. New h ires all have one thing in common-they are smart. The company prides itself on p utting all recruits through a grueling interviewing loop, during which they confro nt a barrage (an overwhelming number of questions or complaints) of brain-teaser s by future colleagues to see how well they think. Only the best and the brighte st survive to become employees. The company does this because Microsofties truly believe that their company is special. For example, it has high tolerance for n on-conformity, would you believe that one software tester comes to work everyday dressed in extravagant Victorian outfits? . But the underlying theme that unite s Microsofties is the belief that the firm has a manifest destiny to change the world. The least important decision as programmer can have a large importance which it can affect a new release that might be used by 50 million people. Microsoft empl oyees are famous for putting in long hours. One program Manager said In my First

Five Years, I was the Microsoft stereotype. I lived on caffeine and vending-machine hamburgers and free beer and 20-hour wor k-daysI had no life..I considered everything outside the building as a necessary ev il. More recently things have changed. There are still a number of people who put in 80-hour weeks, but 60 and 70 hour weeks are more typical and some even are doing their jobs in only 40 hours. No discussion of the employee life at Microsoft would be complete without mentio ning the companys lucrative stock option program. Microsoft created more milliona ire employees, faster, than any company in American history-more than 10,000 by the late 1990s while the company is certainly more than a place to get rich, exec utive still realize that money matters. One former Manager claims that the human resources department actually kept a running chart of employee satisfaction vers us the companys stock price. When the stock was up, human resources could turn off the ventilation and everybody would say they were happy. When the stock was dow n, we could give people Massages and they would tell us that the Massages were t oo hard. In the go-go 1990s, when the Microsoft stock was doubling every few month s and yearly stock splits were predictable, employees not only got to participat e in the Microsofts manifest destiny, they would get rich in the process. By the spring of 2002, with the world in a recession, stock prices down, and the growth for Microsoft products slowing, it wasnt so clear what was driving its employees to continue the companys dominance of the software industry. Questions 1. If you were the programmer, would you want to work at Microsoft? Why or Why n ot? Ans: If i were the programmer i would love to work at Microsoft but not interest ed to work like BULL just to become a MILLIONAIRE. I would to give preference to ADVENTUROUS and CHALLENGING WORK CULTURE but not BORING and STRESSED which will impact my PERSONAL LIFE. 2. How many activities in this case can you tie into specific motivation theorie s? List the activities; list the motivation theories, and how they apply. Ans: To my knowledge STOCK OPTION PROGRAM v/s MASSAGES They were applied in such a way, that made employees to react based on circumsta nces and prevailing situation. 3. As Microsoft continues to get larger and its growth rate flattens do you thin k Management will have to modify any of its motivation practices? Elaborate. Ans: MOTIVATION has a specific purpose but cannot be applied for everything. Man agement need to consider BITTER REALITIES that could help in making their employ ees understand what could be done proportional the situation prevailing. Let man agement seek inputs from employees rather deciding on their own. Because if they believe they have a brilliant staff then seeking opinion from every one of them will provide them with hundred of great idea which can be practice at that mome nt and can help the management to decide easier and better ways. 4. Can money act as a motivator? Explain. Ans: Motivation and performance are very complex issues affected by many factors . No one factor can guarantee motivation or performance in the absence of other critical factors .Money cannot be effectively substituted for good management. S ome people think that money can t be used to motivate employees and that is true for some employees, but for a large percentage of the workforce it does not hav e to be that way. Studies show almost everyone is motivated by money to some deg ree, many to a moderate degree, and most to a great degree when compensation is properly designed. Some psychologists would argue that money doesn t change beha viour because they do not consider it properly termed a "motivator", but rather

they call it a "director" of behaviour. This is a semantic argument. The idea is whether money can be used as a tool to change employee behaviour in a desirable direction. It is unfortunate that in most companies and for most jobs, pay is a small factor in managing and changing employee behaviour. However, inadequate u se of incentive plans and problems with compensation design and strategy are usu ally to blame. What the Research Shows Behavioural scientists, employee and management surveys, show compensation can b e a strong driver of employee behaviour under the right circumstances when prope rly designed. In a survey of over 1500 compensation and productivity professionals by the Amer ican Compensation Association and the American Productivity Center various types of compensation or rewards systems that they utilized were rated as having a "P ositive" or "Very Positive" impact on performance in 66% to 89% of the companies where the companies used specific techniques such as gain sharing, small group incentives, profit sharing, individual incentives, and lump sum bonuses (source: "People, Performance, and Pay"). In a national survey of 1200 randomly selected U.S. employees across many differ ent types and sizes of companies 54% of employees rated direct financial compens ation as "very important" or "extremely important" to motivation. When stratifie d by age group there was statistically insignificant difference by age group. Ge n X and Gen Y were no different than Baby Boomers in this respect (source: "The Rewards of Work - What Employees Value") In a national survey of 2500 employees, 84% of those who understood their organi zation s reward/performance link believe they can help make a difference. If the y also believe that the company will share its success when the strategy is achi eved, 91% say they are motivated to help the company succeed (source: Workplace Index) In a study of 663 companies with performance reward compensation plans covering 1.3 million employees and a broad section of the workforce of each company (not just managers and salespeople) by the American Compensation Association, they fo und that at the median, organizations earned $2.34 for every dollar they spent o n payouts; thus a close approximation of the net return on plan investment is 13 4% (source: "Organizational Performance and Rewards"). By all this factor we can see if In jobs where significant variability in pay occ urs in compensation and where it is closely related to key performance factors, then pay can be a big motivator.