Harrah’s Discussion Note
Jiahao Yang
9/13
In Harrah’s case, they had come up with an incentive pay plan to decrease turnover rate, which worked well at first. However, new problem arised that employees were becoming tired of working hard and coming close to reward levels and then not getting rewarded. The cause of the problem might be that as customer service metrics had increased positively, raising service improvement levels now became harder and harder than before.
According to self-determination theory, competence is a fundamental need. When employees had the self-efficacy in doing well in the specific task and went pass the reward level, but it turned out that they were close to it but hadn’t reach it, the competence needs were fading. What managers can do about this issue is to turn the motivation scheme from extrinsic to intrinsic to better increase job satisfaction. According to two-factor theory, to increase job satisfaction there are some motivational factors to be improved. Of which personal growth and recognition would be important in this case to switch their focus from reaching goals to improving themselves. Also according to expectancy theory, manager should ensure that employees are aware that the outcome of working hard is producing more and getting promotion rather than getting short-term reward.
