Motivation

You are employed as the Senior Operations Manager for "BOLT Wireless Solutions", an electronics company who have operated for two years in Sydney. It has been 6 months since you started and you have found that the majority of the employees who work in your department will get the job done and follow your instruction however there are two particular employees who are not pulling their weight.

Luke and Jake have been working at Bolt since it started 2 years ago but do not do a very good job. They often get distracted and do not put a lot of effort into their work. They will get some work done but it's of a very low quality and it takes a lot of reminding and effort from you to get them to do that little bit of work. When you ask them to do an extra task or need their help on other tasks they are very resistant, saying that they don't have time or can't do the work. Also you often find that the work they do needs to be fixed or improved but when you give them feedback they do not listen and believe that what they have done is good enough. This has an overall impact on your department as customers and also company directors are noticing the poor quality.

You have been thinking about how to improve their motivation because the rest of your employees are really unhappy that Luke and Jake don't do a lot of work. It also causes a lot of stress and takes energy out of you because you feel like you are always arguing with them and you never get what you need from them.

The company employment policy requires you to try to help Luke and Jake rather than fire and you have also noticed that they were never provided a 'job standard' which means you have no way of proving their not doing their job. A suggestion you have been given is to increase their wages to try and motivate them but you don't know if this will work and it could have an impact on the rest of your staff but you need to make a decision this week.