Reward

A common and famous example of reward is provided by McDonald, employees good effort is always recognized and rewards consist in incentive bonuses, regional, sectorial and worldwide awards and company car prize; even if other companies often offer richer rewards, McDonald, create in this way a deep sense of belonging and enough competition to motivate its employees to work in order to gain a certain prize. Following rules and guidelines to give awards to its employees, McDonald ensures equal treatments among members respecting value as fairness and equity, in fact every single employee have the same opportunities to get rewarded according to their effort. Employees can not reach awards as soon as they get employed by McDonald, to become eligible to awards, an employee have to pass through a qualifying period of five years and ten years of activity, some awards are accessible after other years of qualifying period; in addition McDonald offer to his worker the possibility of a career progress in the company, in fact it encourage employees to involve themselves in the management of restaurants.

Chief Executives play a considerable role in the management of a company, their large bonuses is motivated by the effort they provide to achieve target set and by the influence they have on other employees; actions and decision established by the C.E. in order to provide benefits to the organization are always chosen to advantage and led towards goals the company, sometimes even if the purpose are good, these decision can led to a lower level of performance of the organization and some targets are not achieved. Large bonuses represent an important and relevant motivational factors for the C.E., and usually these bonuses represent the hard work they made in their career to gain that particular position and role; an other aspect that have to be considered is the effective responsibility of the C.E. concerning the disappointing performance of the company, many functions and levels are involved in the company working processes, and a lower level of performance often is caused by a combination of mistakes made by different sectors and employees; this is why I think that, not providing large bonuses to the C.E., can be big mistake, because it can demotivate them, feel too much responsible about the management of the company and can create conflicts among C.E. and other sectors of the company, in fact other employees will consider them as culprits of the negative performance, and their faith in them will be considerable damaged, and C.E. themselves will feel victim of injustice and blackmailed by managers.

Financial rewards and prizes represent the most simple way to motivate to someone to produce more effort in their work; a teacher at primary school can be motivated by offering an increase of the salary according to the results gained by students, special prizes can be offered to her if the development and improvement of students results concern not just few students but all the class, and the maintenance of a lower level of absence at work can be rewarded by offering additional holiday weeks. A non-financial way to motivate her could be a promotion, allowing her to reach a more important role in the organization, the improvement of students results can be motivated by organizing challenging tournaments between student from different classes or different schools, in order to make the teacher proud of the result gained by her students in these tournaments; other non-financial way to motivate her could also a constant recognition of good effort and the enrichment and enlargement of her role in the school, allowing her to teach to one more class, or adding an other subject to teach to her tasks.

References:

-Mullins, L. (2007) Management and Organisational Behaviour. 8^th ed. Pearson Education Limited: Harlow

-About McDonald (2009) Careers [online] Available from:http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/careers/ [Accessed 12 April 2010]