Essay Example on Forced Ranking: Unmotivating Employees?

Forced ranking performance appraisal is not a good way of motivating employees. The employee's distribution in regards to age and performance will enable them to maintain their exact positions. Employees in an organization usually rely on motivation and appreciation for them to be more productive. However, if the forced ranking is in existence, they will get the chance to improve their performances as they have the know-how regarding being defined under a specific category (Alshmemri, Shahwan-Akl & Maude, 2017). Therefore, this will only develop a bad atmosphere that fails to encourage the employees to work together. Besides, the manner in which managers take a colder look at the employee performances will fail to encourage them to do their best. Therefore, employees will not be motivated in this way or even made creative. In Proverbs 26: 16, '' The appetite of laborers works for them; their hunger drives them on''.

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The Bible considers one's hunger as a form of motivation. This means employees can be self-motivated at work because they know what is expected of them. In relation to the expectancy theory, expectancy depicts the reflection of the effort of an employee towards a job on actual performance. Employees with the mentality of doing their jobs exemplary well have a very high expectancy while those thinking the contrary have lower expectancy. Therefore, if the employees possess confidence in regards to skills and ability to do a job and believe in their performance, this translates to desired outcomes as they will perform their tasks extremely well. So, managers should play a role of instilling the employees with trust and support of doing the tasks and offer them the required motivation with good appreciation to boost productivity.

The equity theory elaborates on how individuals compare themselves with others who are subjected to the same working conditions to check whether they receive fair treatment and how that affects their motivation. This is because a huge percentage of people get motivated when they feel they are treated equally, like others within the same work environment. Therefore, equity theory is enough to explain some employee's negative reaction to the forced ranking because they will compare the salaries paid and performances with other employees within the same environment. Every employee requires good compensation for the work done, just like the rest receives. For instance, a scenario whereby one of the employees within a marketing team, an innovative and hardworking one thinks he receives a good salary but get to discover the salary of another person within the same team through coincidence and happens to be more than his. This will highly alter his motivation and performance and may even result in the failure to achieve the desired goals for the organization

Instead of using forced ranking, I would motivate employees through Herzberg's two-factor theory. This is a theory with two factors that entail the motivation factors and hygiene factors. According to Herzberg, an organization should both have hygiene and motivators because they make employees feel motivated (Zeng, 2016). Hygiene factors constitute components such as salary, good working conditions, job security, procedures of an organization, technical supervision quality, and good relations among the subordinates, coworkers, and superiors. On the other hand, motivators include factors such as achievement, advancement, growth possibility, and the work itself. I strongly believe that it is extremely significant to avail of the employees with job satisfaction factors alongside the motivational factors. For instance, offering employees a good salary without recognition or subjecting them to difficult tasks is enough to ensure a healthy work atmosphere.

References

Alshmemri, M., Shahwan-Akl, L., & Maude, P. (2017). Herzberg's two-factor theory. Life Science Journal, 14(5), 12-16.

Zeng, M. (2016). What Alternative Performance Appraisal Methods Have Companies Used to Replace Forced Rankings?.