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Motivation in the Workplace

In: Business and Management

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A manager faces several challenges in motivating his or her employees in today's workforce. Three challenges are diversity, organizational restructuring and fewer entry-level employees. These challenges did not exist in the workforce of 50 years ago. In today's workforce, managers face both genders instead of one, different sexual orientations, different ethnicities, races, and religion. The American workforce of fifty years ago had more men and they were primarily Caucasian. The second challenge is organizational restructuring. Today there is a trend of mergers and acquisitions that did not exist fifty years ago. Mergers and acquisions leads to layoffs. Layoff's impact an employee's job performance, leaving managers unsure how to reassure them in the face of political upheaval. Lastly, today's workforce has fewer entry-level employees because the workforce is growing slower. Managers are faced with hiring qualified applicants for entry-level positions and then must also motivate those individuals to pursue higher job positions.
One challenge that managers face is diversity. It is hard to come up with one motivational technique and apply it to everyone. Today's workforce is comprised of different job performance styles that are impacted by gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, and religion. Several challenges are entertwined with diversity. These variables affect how the manager interacts with his or her employees. For example, communication is one area that is hugely impacted by diversity and cultural differences. Communicating tasks to a diverse workforce can prove to be more difficult due to socioeconomic or even linguistic challenges such as a heavy accent. If a manager does not pay attention to cultural nuances when doing business, huge misunderstandings can occur. Communication will suffer and the employees' morale will as well. Conflict between

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