Words: 3134
Introduction Secret Recipe is a lifestyle cafe chain which has become a household name following its introduction in 1997. Secret Recipe has reputable its brand name in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, China and Philippines by high calibre of its fine quality cakes and brownies, mixture food like western food, Malay food, and distinctive service. A foremost and largest cafe in Malaysia with Halal certification, Secret Recipe is dedicated to continue to remain to the standards all food in the restaurant in accordance to the regulatory procedure.
Customers can always enjoy in confidence from more than 20 types of mixture food, 40 types of cake and brownies creations, with a tasty range of ice cream and drinks offered in all Secret Recipe outlets. Secret Recipe had tried hard to surpass its own achievements and want to be acknowledged as a leader in the industry. In a period of ten years, Secret Recipe has successfully made up a speedy growth of over 150 cafes all over the region. The company had an impressive development for the past 5 years.
We had made a short interview with one of the secret recipe branch manager, John Ahlif, who in charge for Sungai Long and Mahkota Cheras outlets. He had been work for almost 4 years in Secret recipe as a manager. Below would be our result and analysis about how the manager motives his employee. Below would be our result and analysis about how the manager motives his employee. Content After interviewed the manager of Secret Recipe Sdn Bhd that located at the branch of Sg long, Selangor, we found that he has implemented few types of motivations theories towards his staffs.
These motivation theories can categorize into three learned needs, four- drive theory and goal setting. According to McClelland’s model, McClelland has focused on only limited set of needs which are the need for achievement, the need for affiliation and the need for power. These needs have received a great attention in the organizational behaviour literature and able to identify the appropriate needs to enhance the motivation level and effectiveness of a person in working environment.
First of all, we identified that the staffs of Secret Recipe Sdn Bhd do not have the need for achievements due to the complicatedness of accomplishment of the RM80, 000 monthly sales target. They felt that it is an unreasonably challenging goal and then they have extinguished the need to achieve their goal. On the other hand, the employees of Secret Recipe Sdn Bhd are full with the need for affiliation. Need for affiliation is about establishing close and friendly relationship with other people. Besides, it is also a key element in the services industry.
For instances, the staffs with high need for affiliation are able to serve up customer graciously and politely. Furthermore, the manager of that branch also has high level of need for affiliation. He used to obtain great satisfaction from being liked, accepted by his staffs and prefer to work with others in order to preserve a warm relationship with others. For example, he will let his staffs to participate in setting the monthly sales target and planned a trip for outing together with his staff for the purpose of maintaining a good relationship.
In additional, he found that giving advices for the staff that has done mistakes is better than giving warning letter to warn them. This can show that the manager is a cooperative and supportive person and has a strong need for affiliation. The need for power also required for the manager used to motivate his staff. This need is a motivation need that stems from one’s desire to influence, teach and control or encourage others. Needs for power can be divided into personalized power and socialized power. The personalized power is the power to control and influence others to make them weak.
Whereas, socialized power need is most often associated with effective leadership by helping the others to feel stronger and more capable. These leaders used to direct their power in socially positive ways that benefit others and the organization rather than their own benefit or profit. For examples, the manager of Secret Recipe will teach, persuade and coach his staff for performing well in servicing their customer in order to enhance the sales. Moreover, the manager also has to control the behaviour of staffs by understanding their tribulations and try his best to assist them solve it.
Therefore, the manager is highly supportive by his staff. Moving on, we continue on the four-drive theory. Drives is defined as a fundamental needs that energize individuals to be efficient or preserve the capability which silently within personal. Employees bring these drives to the workplace and they influence the employee’s workplace behaviour and productivity. The four-drive theory of employee motivation also plays a significant role on “Secret Recipe”. This model is effectively prevalent to observe the needs of employee. Each of these drives is important if we understand employee’ needs.
However, the first appropriate drive which was bound to the staff within the Secret Recipe was the drive to acquire. This drive is primarily satisfied through company’s reward system. Within the organization, staffs were being tied and evaluate by manager based on the individual performance, attendance, as well as attitude performed in the workplace. Thus, staffs are expected to carry out high performance in the workplace. It also comprises those normal expectations by senior management, such as achieving target, showing good manners and respect customers, and reports every single issue to manager and forth.
For that reason, employees’ performance has been established to be directly related to employees’ motivation. In order to maximize motivation, the manager provides opportunities for employees to satisfy their own drives. This assertion was always corroborated to ascertain from employees the motivating factors that can adequately motivate them to work tirelessly and to achieve results. Generally, Secret Recipe’ staffs will automatically perform properly in order to reach the level of expectation and gain a better rewards in belief.
However, the staffs in Secret Recipe are less motivated because they claimed that they are not satisfied with their salary. Subsequently, another active drive that humans seek to fulfil was drive to learn. The drive to learn is satisfied by working environment or people that stimulate curiosity and allow for exploration and developing understanding. Within Secret Recipe, staffs comprehended that high degree of job satisfaction will be given if knowledge can be derived from the challenges faced in the workplace.
As a result, the sense of stimulation and excitement from individual staff in Secret Recipe might acquire new skills and challenges that actually can outweigh pay and benefits as a job satisfaction factor. Additionally, manager looks at how they actually can enhance or create challenges for employees and provide them opportunities to learn. Within Secret Recipe, they provide training to staffs as they believe that it can boost up sales target as well as showing sincerely manners to customers. Therefore, it creates a win-win situation in Secret Recipe as taffs learned from nurturing and manager attained sales target. Moreover, drive to bond also plays a vital role in the motivation development of the employees. It manifests itself in our urge to find others and to engage in a relationship of mutual caring. If employees are successful in establishing individual relationship, then the connections can grow to group indirectly too. Thus, the company able to take advantages of this drive by promoting attachment related to teamwork among the staffs in order to achieve the goal effortlessly.
For example, the staff of Secret Recipe can depend on their peers or manager to lend a hand when he faced predicament of jobs. Besides, the manager will always support his staff in order to gain self confidence among the staffs. Besides, a specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. A specific goal makes the goal become more concrete, measurable action-steps that tell employees what are the goal looks like in real-time terms. In Secret Recipe, senior management set their goals with their staffs to achieve the goal together.
For instance, they set their sales target on RM80, 000 every month. Despite of the goal is objective, it provides guidance to employees on what and where they should focus into so that they may not lose on their way towards the goals. On the other hand, another vital ingredient of the goal setting process is to set a goal that is realistic, challenging enough and suited to team members’ resent capabilities. Challenging goal setting is an effective self-regulation tool.
Setting a goal and monitoring your performance allow you to track your progress along the way and evaluating how far away you are and taking confidence from the progress you made. As we know that, nobody can go from habitual couch potato to world –class athlete overnight. For instance, in Secret Recipe, senior manager always place the target sales higher than the minimum requirement in order to challenge employees by putting more effort to reach the target, even though the goals are not 100 percentages certain employees can achieve them.
In addition, Secret Recipe also set a higher target on sales in order to slowly catch-up the progressive steps towards the goals. If they set the goal too easy to achieve, it can lead to a team member settling into a comfort zone or acquiring a false sense of confidence due to easy success. Hence, challenging goal setting is designed to bring the best out in an individual and has multiple benefits. On the other hands, a challenging goal setting can encourage a team spirit and get all team members united and focused on achieving a higher aim within the Secret Recipe’s workplace.
By setting challenging and effective goals in Secret Recipe, it allows manager to progress toward them and achieve success. As a result, employees and managers may be given a sense of past victories from accomplishing challenging goals. Hence, manager can conclude that the setting a series of short-term goals building up to a long-term goal provides confidence as employee beat personal bests and take steps on the road to success. Recommendation We would like to recommend the following recommendation to Secret Recipe to improve on their overall performance.
We identified that the staffs of Secret Recipe Sdn Bhd do not have the need for achievements (nAch). Individuals with a high nAch seek to achieve reasonably challenging goals through their own effort and they take responsibility for it. They also desire clear feedback and recognition for their work, where, money is a weak motivator for high nAch. So, individuals with a low nAch score perform better when money is used as an incentive. If the Secret Recipe increases the employee’s salary and this will lead the employees put more effort to achieving the companies goal where reach RM80, 000 sales monthly.
The company has followed the four-drive theory except the drive to defend; they need to improve on the drive to defend because it defines about the need to protect the employee themselves. The drive to defend is a self-protective drive both physically and socially. It originates from the ‘fight-or-flight’ response when responding to dangerous situations but also involves defending relationships, acquisitions and belief systems. Unlike the other three drives, which are proactive, the drive to defend is reactive and is triggered by perceived threats.
The defend drive must be stimulated by a threat to become active. Threats to the individual, their group, and the firm as a whole can trigger the drive to defend . By improving on this drive, the Secret Recipe Company’s employees will be able to press their legitimate claims for resources and support from the overall firm. They will be able to defend their identity and reputation from unjust. Besides, this improvement will lead the company to achieve the goal RM80, 000 sales per month. Secret Recipe has a goal of achieving RM80, 000 sales monthly and yet now it has not been achieving its goal.
The main reason might be Secret Recipe did not fully imply the characteristics of effective goal. In order to achieve the goal, I suggest that each employee of Secret Recipe should put extra effort. Although the goal is challenging, I believe that it is achievable. First of all, Secret Recipe should gather the relevant people to achieve the goal who are the manager as well as the employees. Each of them plays an important role in reaching the goal. As a Secret Recipe manager, he has the responsibilities to lead his employees towards the goal. While as an employee, he has to obey the manager’s instruction and perform his own job well.
With the employee’s cooperation, Secret Recipe will move ahead towards its goal. It is also important to make sure that the employees are committed to accomplish the goal. The manager should explain to his employees the purpose of goal. It helps the employees to understand more about the goal and then they will be committed to accomplish the goal. For example, the manager should tell his employees if the goal is achieved, Secret Recipe will earn a higher profit and Secret Recipe might issue a higher rate of bonus to every employee. This will benefit the employees as well as motivating them.
Besides that, Secret Recipe should let the employees participate before setting the goal. In the goal setting process, Secret Recipe should discuss with the employees and encourage them to raise their opinions. Through the participation of the employees, employees will be more motivated because the goal is part of them. They will work hard and try to achieve the goal since the beginning; every employee has taken part in setting the goal. Moreover, the manager should pay attention on the feedback of goal. This means that the manager should gather information available about the progress towards the goal.
For example, the manager aims to reach RM2700 sales per day. When shop is closed, the manager will conduct a 15 minutes briefing with the employees to discuss whether they are on track towards the goal by viewing the daily sales. If the daily sales are not ideal, the manager and employees should discuss what can be done to increase the sale. When all of these characteristics gathered together, I believe that the goal can increase the motivation of the employees of Secret Recipe. Conclusion As a conclusion, we have learned a lot in this assignment. Through the interview with Mr.
John Ahlif (manager), we learned that managing a business outlet needs a lot of special skills especially the skill of motivating employees. He managed the Secret Recipe branch well together with the support of the employees. The assignment concludes that employee’s motivation is a vital aspect in success for every business. Therefore, each employee is motivated by Mr. John but there are weaknesses that still can be improved. The employees are not fully motivated because they are not clear with the goal that has been set in the organization. The staffs need to put extra effort to achieve the goal if they are aware of the main goal.
We understood that, some of the employees in Secret Recipe lacks of motivation because they did not reach the RM80, 000 monthly sales. We also have learned the importance of drive and needs in an organization in the assignment. Drives are neural state that energizes individuals where it should be practice in every organization. Besides that, the implications of four drive theory are important because employees will continually seek for sufficient rewards, learning opportunities, and social interaction. A reward is essential for an employee because reward and work performance have positive relationship.
The better the reward given, the greater work performance will be obtained. The organization should provide learning opportunities to all the employees where they can express the feedback to the management. Moreover, social interaction between lower management and top management can provide employees better working environment as they will enjoy working together. Moving on, employee motivation is a major factor in the success or failure for an organization. To survive in the competitive environment, an organization must invest in effective strategies to motivate the staff in order to compete with strong competitors.
Various factors motivate individuals and teams differently as we discussed above such as money, opportunity, social interaction and so on. Lastly, if a company wants to have a competitive workforce advantage, it must have a keen understanding of what motivates the employees. In conclusion, Secret Recipe will perform better than previous after implementing the recommendations or solutions suggested above. Reference 1. Reviewed by SPEstes (August 03, 2010) What Are the Benefits of Challenging Goal Setting? Retrieved from http://www. livestrong. com/article/192501-what-are-the-benefits-of-challenging-goal-setting/ . Article by Arina ( December 07, 2010) How to Get Motivated – 11 Simple Ways Retrieved from http://www. goal-setting-guide. com/motivated-11-simple-ways 3. Kurt Nelson, (May 20 2011), How leaders can impact employee’s motivation using the 4-Drive Theory, Retrieved from http://www. leadersbeacon. com/how-great-leaders-use-the-4-drive-model-to-impact-employee-motivation/#more-2984 4. Kurt Nelson, (June 20, 2009) Four Drive Model: New Theory on Employee Motivation Retrieved from http://www. leadersbeacon. com/four-drive-model-new-theory-on-employee-motivation/ 5.
Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria, (October 9, 2001), Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Organizations, Retrieved from http://hbswk. hbs. edu/item/2543. html 6. Lawerence, P. & Norhira, N. (Dec 31, 2009) The Four Drive Theory in the Workplace Retrieved from http://www. articlesbase. com/human-resources-articles/the-four-drive-theory-in-the-workplace-1650121. html 7. Lawrence S. Kleiman (2011) EMPLOYEE COMPENSATION Retrieved from http://www. referenceforbusiness. com/management/Em-Exp/Employee-Compensation. html 8. Christina Teter, eHow Contributor (May 15, 2011) What Works to Motivate Employees to Achieve Goals?
Retrieved from What Works to Motivate Employees to Achieve Goals? eHow. com http://www. ehow. com/info_8422178_works-motivate-employees-achieve-goals. html#ixzz1TEAjCLcS 9. In Reference List In Text Citation Steven L. McShane, The University of Western Australia Mary Ann Von Glinow, Florida International University Organizational Behaviour : Fourth EditionMcShane, Von Glinow illustrated Needs, Drives, and Employee Motivation (p. 134-142) Questions that we asked Mr. John Ahlif (manager): 1. When did this he start work with this company? 2.
How long it take him to achieve the post of manager? 3. As a manager, how does he or the organization motivate the employees? 4. Do you or the organization set a goal for the employees? 5. Are they well motivated to achieve the goals? 6. How do you motivate your employees? 7. Are the employee’s works very hard to achieve the goal? 8. How they use 4 drive theories to motivate the employees? 9. How they use the 3 learned theories to motivate the employees? 10. How they imply the characteristics of effective goal in the organization? Below is the photo taken when we interview Mr. John: