Intinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation provides opportunity for an individual to establish a purpose in their work resulting in a culture where an employer and employees are able to be productive and grow together.

At the SAS institute the culture is one where the organization takes care of its employees resulting in employees taking care of the company. The management philosophy of SAS is to treat employees fairly and equally through intrinsic motivation, and to trust that the employees will perform successfully by setting short and long-term goals.

In an industry characterized with high turnover, SAS has the lowest in the industry-mainly due to life changes rather than losing an employee to the competition. Employees at SAS are given the opportunity to grow within the organization through in-house training to obtain necessary the knowledge, skills and abilities. SAS believes it is more important to invest in their employees and grow organically than via mergers and acquisitions. Through intrinsic motivation SAS has become one of the most successful companies in the industry.

After reading this case I realize the value of intrinsic motivation and rewards. I was previously a recruiter for a staffing agency. When I began at the agency I enjoyed my position and found great value in working with my co-workers to find unemployed workers jobs, when new management was brought in so were incentive plans. The incentive plans were based off of individual quotas to increase the offices' sales. Quickly team work disappeared in the office and the joy of helping the candidates find their dream job faded. The interview screening process became sloppy and candidates were being matched with any company that needed staff, regardless of their knowledge, skills and abilities to meet the weekly quotas. Management checked in daily to obtain sales statistics. While in the short-term revenues increased they quickly dropped. The poor placement of staff, lack of time spent understanding our clients staffing needs and moral of our staffing agency was low. Turnover began to increase and within a year the staffing agency had to be acquired by another agency.

In my current organization the Board of Directors is currently developing an incentive plan structure as a way to entice the staff to generate more members. Staff would be divided and there would be goals set on the amount of members brought in each quarter. Based on this case, and my prior experience, I believe this plan will segregate the office and reduce office collaboration and moral, resulting in decreased customer service--the organizations primary service.

Before implementing this plan I am going to suggest to the Board of Directors that we need to take a step back and evaluate the causes of our concerns, and what will be the effects of an incentive plan. As a membership driven non-profit we need to think about the long-term services