Hovey and Beard

I believe the job design was very poor. The manager can not expect to train these 8 painters as a team and for none of them to ever quit. Once they quit the job performance will lack and then it's going to take more time and training for another employee. I don't think they should have ever had a learning bonus which decreased every week. Why would a person want to make less money every week. They should have started off with a training period with training pay like normal companies. After the training period they would make a normal wage plus commission for the amount of products that were completed. This would keep them motivated to work hard because the harder they worked the more money they would make. I agree with the weekly meeting with the employees. This way they can voice their opinions on what they like and don't like. The employees must understand that everything they want is not going to happen. I feel it is the managers job to decide what changes will be necessary. I also felt it would be a good idea to have a floor manager, somewhat like they employee who was taking charge on the florr. It was a great idea having him control the tempo of the hooks because in the long run their output was 30 to 50 percent higher than the engineers expected.

The reinforcement theory they are using is the learning bonus in the beginning and the group bonus to keep them motivated. If they fall behind their punishment will be not earning the group bonus. I still feel there should be no learning bonus. The employees should just be earning the training pay. After that period they will receive their regular pay plus comission. If they decide not to work hard their punishment will be lack of commission. I know when I was working for commission I did everything possible to make that sale. All the employees need to do is their job with some extra motivation to make more money. If the manager feels they are doing a great job and their performance is excellent he might want to up their commission in brackets so they will have the motivation to work harder. By using a bracket system, an example would be for the first 100 items completed in an hour they would receive 2 percent extra of their pay. For every 50 items completed after that for the hour they would receive and additional 1 percent of their pay.

Using the performance diagnosis model the main problem I saw was the manager was experimenting with many cures for the problem and by the end the superintendent was so frustrated a downward spiral started and he was back to the beginning. The supervisor went back to the old system and the employees were unhappy and quitting. The supervisor only stayed a few more month's and then left. Things where working out great when they were using the model and listening to the employees. The production was great and the employees were happy. When a growing irritation between the superintendent, supervisor and