Employees Of The Old Navy Corporation example essay topic

Old Navy is a corporation that exhibits all of the characteristics of a business in an industry where good tactical management is the key to long-term success and survival. There can be little doubt that the backbone of every successful business or company is its staff of employees. Employees are the vital parts of the business machine that can aid in its success or contribute to its failure. It is, for this reason that it is imperative to possess the ability to acquire and maintain effective employees. The chief method by which a business or company can accomplish this task is through employee-centered motivational programs. While being an assistant manager at Old Navy I was able to look into how the business motivated its employees, what problems arose from the companies motivation policies and the techniques I chose to implement to create a better workplace.

The goals of the motivation programs are to encourage employees to maximize their performance by targeting three specific motivational stimuli. The three-targeted stimuli are morale, satisfaction, and rewards. While working at Old Navy I found that the Old Navy Corporation used Fredrick Taylor's approach to motivating their employees. He believed that when highly productive people discover they are being compensated the same as less productive people, then the output of highly productive people would decrease. Consequently, the scientific management approach to motivation is based on the assumption that money is the primary motivator. Old Navy has several programs in practice, which support the scientific management approach to motivation to produce high morale.

The most commonly used program used by the management was that the company offers overtime compensation for the employees who worked over the amount of hours they were scheduled per week. The company pays one and a half times their regular hourly rate of pay when an employee works more than their scheduled hours per week Although Old Navy also had implement other motivation programs into their corporation such as reimbursement of college courses related to the job, paid vacation, and banquets which recognized superior employees each month. I found while working there that management stressed too much on their employees to meet the sales goal set each week by the employee. Management expects all employees to achieve that goal in order to receive a monthly bonus in their paycheck.

The problem with this motivational technique was that each employee was to push the sale of clothing and other retail in order to make the bonuses each month. This would cause some employees to get hostile because they were not selling the most that they had set for themselves. Another problem that arose from this motivational technique was that employees began to dislike the employees that had met their quota for the month because they had received bonuses, while the other believed that had worked just as hard but not received the extra money for their effort. This technique was based solely on the amount of inventory that was sold, not on the effort that was put into it by the workers. One final problem that arose with this was that the employees working the cash register and not the floor on particular days were at a disadvantage then their coworkers. They did not have the opportunity to interact with the customers and help sell the retail.

Since Old Navy followed the Fredrick Taylor approach they believed monetary units were the best motivator, but I believe that this approach was taken to far. I believe that their are many alternatives that could be used to motivate their employees and increase the company's sales at the same time. One alternative to this motivation technique would be that the company creates a program like the one they already have, but make it so that each store should set a goal on sales as a whole. Then the store at the end of each month with the higher sales would receive a lump sum of money, which would be given to all the employees that worked over that month period. Another alternative that the company could use to motivate its employees would be to create a schedule with the employees at each store that allocated the same amount of time for all sales representatives to spend on the sales floor. This would get rid of the uneven amount of time that some employees feel they spend at the cash register.

One final alternative that could be used for motivating employees would be to still give bonuses to each employee that has the most amount of sales in a month, but once that employee has received a bonus, they should not be allowed to receive a bonus for three months. This would cause less tension between the employees and it would allow employees to not have as tough competition between all the employees. The alternative that I would chose to use for motivating employees would be a combination of the three mentioned above. I would allocate an even amount of time to each employee so that the time spent on the sales floor would be even. I would then allow each employee to receive a bonus at the end of the month if they had received the most amounts of sales for the month, but once they had received that bonus I would not let them receive this bonus for another three months. Although this may cause anger in the competitive employee, it would allow employees that fear competition to have a better chance of feeling successful at work.

A broader study of the company may reveal deeper problems that I may not have witnessed. Collectively, Old Navy I believe does an outstanding job of motivating their employees, a task that many companies that are larger and older have not yet mastered. The Frederick Taylor method has proven, at least in this situation, to be an effective manner in which to retain high morale, satisfy, and reward the employees of the Old Navy Corporation..