Career growth opportunities

Extrinsicmotivationtakes place when objective gain in any form motivates humans. Here the chance/promise of gain brings them to such voluntary act (Deci, 1971). Side by side, the quest for best possibleleadershipin the corporateenvironmentwas also progressing, and soon the time came when the attributes of leadership were considered one of the great movers of the employees’ minds. Along with this, the newer business strategies started emerging in the business world, where it would integrate all this factors to create a sustained engaged workplace environment, which would ensure sustained development of the companies.

And all of the above activities gained rapid momentum with the rapid development in digitalcommunicationand flashing advancement of theglobalizationprocess. The recent global downturn has brought in several questions regarding the efficacy of the practiced models of business strategies, like ” Sustainable Competitive Advantage”, where it integrates the elements like Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM), human motivation and reward system and the leadership issues.

Yet thefailureof the big houses even after that now serves as a pointer to the quality of certain elements of the business strategies, like leadership and reward system. While the motivation principles are universal, the pointer would automatically turn to leadership, as it is assigned to keep the employees on top of their abilities and to bring out the best possible performance from them. Therefore, it would be pertinent to discuss about the leadership models, which can broadly be categorized into two from the perspective of business world, viz., transactional and transformational leadership, but not before discussing about the nuances of the ” engaging environment”, because that would heighten the role of leadership even more.

What Makes an Engaging Environment

The Conference Board, a prestigious non-profit business membership and research organization, carried a dozen major studies on employee engagement, where they have been able to underpin 26 key drivers of employee engagement, ranging from intangible, cognitive issues to the ones that are visible and four of such studies echoed the same about eight of such drivers as mentioned below:

Trust and integrity: It deals with the managers’ ability to effectively communicate with employees.

Nature of the job: The regular job should be mentally stimulating.

Line of sight between employee performance and company performance: Employees should be perceptive about how their work contributes to the company performance.

CareerGrowth opportunities: There should be opportunities for the employees for career-wise growth. Read also emerging business opportunities at IBM case analysis

Pride about the company: The employees should be able to link their self-esteem with the companies they work for.

Fellow feelings among coworkers/team members: There should be fellow feelings among the employees.

Employee development: The company should make an effort to develop the employee’s skills.

Relationship with one’s manager: The managers should maintain this relationship in a manner so that the employees value this as a zone of comfort. (Soldati, 2007).