PART 2

Program Proposal

By Priysha Kapoor

Bus 520-Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Professor Obioma Iwuanyanwu

February25, 2019

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Western Union has decided to review few protocols for their company. Firstly, the company will discuss how emotional intelligence can help motivating the employees. If employees are given reinforcement than the employees are motivated to work. Employees feel special and feel that their manager or even the company Western Union appreciates them. When the employees are motivated to work, the company can grow nationally and internationally. It also helps the employee to grow in their career.

However it all depends on how the reinforcement is done. If positive reinforcement is given out to employees than the positive results come out. Sometimes negative reinforcement also helps motivating employees. However, a good manager would go with positive reinforcement than negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement can many times lead to an discouraged employee.

Second discussion would be about how Emotional Intelligence helps with social skills and making discussions. Western union is an international company and it is very important to have the right social skills and being emotionally right in order to make the right decisions.

In order for a company to grow and in order to keep giving reinforcement it is important to have a good effective team. There are different characters for a team to be an effective team. It is important for the team to have same goal and know ahead of time what goal they are achieving. Once they know the goal, it is important that the whole team is on the same page. If the whole team is not in the same page that can create an issue for the team, since everyone will be working on different tasks to meet different goals. It is also important that the team knows their duties and takes accountable of their tasks. Once they are accountable for their job duties it is important to also build the necessary skills. If the company does not hire the right people with right skills or train the employees to build the skills than that can cause a problem for the company. Some of the problems could be not completing the tasks in time or even the employees not being motivated to work since they do not have the right skills to work.

Lastly, it is important to discuss the rewards as well. It is important to reward the employees as well. There are two types of rewards, which will be discussed later. Western union can reward their employees by giving spotlight points so that the employees can eventually safe those points to buy something or even give bonuses by end of the year as well.

EI AND MOTIVATION

“A person who feels no impetus or inspiration to act is thus characterized as unmotivated, whereas someone who is energized or activated toward an end is considered motivated (Desi and Ryan, 2000).” For any individual, emotional building blocks are basic emotional skills and are important to any management’s ability to enhance the performance for their employees.

When an employee does well or even goes above and beyond positive reinforcement is used as a motivational tool (Sethi 2014). When employees excel in their roles, it is very important that they receive reinforcement for it. This way they will be encouraged and motivated to keep working. When employees are given incentive pay or bonuses for completing tasks that are above and beyond is a great positive reinforcement that the managers can use.

Negative reinforcement is tool that seems like a penalty for not doing a job right. One day when a coworker did not complete a case correctly which lead to an upset customer. The team manager/leader talked to her directly in front of everyone, which lead to an embarrassment for the coworker. Sometimes reinforcement of embarrassing an employee can lead to other employees being careful of their job duties and being aware of handling their duties carefully. Negative reinforcement can be utilized when employees don’t carry duties properly or break company’s policies. For example when my coworker did not complete a compliance case properly which lead to a dissatisfied customer.

EI AND SOCIAL SKILLS AND DESCISION MAKING

Core concepts of Emotional Intelligence can enhance social skills and decision-making. Core concepts are important for both the management and the employees of the company, especially if they want to improve their performance. Some social skills that are very important for not only leaders/management to have but also employees are: communication skills, conflict management skills and team building skills.

Communication is important because it is important for leaders to pass any information that is necessary to the employees. Communication can be done, either arranging meetings or having town halls.

Second most important is conflict management skills. As we all know conflicts are very important to take care of. If there are conflicts that are not taken care of, which is also known as unresolved conflicts it can lead to more conflicts or other problems or issues. Having to many conflicts can lead to performance issues or even problems for company to go downhill because the conflicts never got resolved in time.

Lastly, it is important for management or a leader to have a good team building skills. If the team is falling apart than that’s when a good leader/manager would step in and start doing team-building exercises. Teamwork makes the work effective for any organization since it can increase the performance for both the employees and the management. If management and employees work well with each other than that can be very beneficial for the Western union.

When those social skills are build than the decision-making becomes easier and smother for any leader/manager, which leads to smother running organization.

EFFECTIVE TEAMS

Many times people forget the meaning of a team or even the importance of having effective team. Swarthout describes in her article that an effective team is made up of at least two people working together to achieve a common goal. Swarthout also states a list of Characteristics of effective teams. Few characteristics of effective teams are Ideal size and membership, clear purpose, open communication, creativity, accountability and fairness in decision making.

Ideal size and membership means the team should have the minimum size of employees to reach team’s goal. But it is important to have the right people who have the right skills to achieve the goal and not just have members in the team with no set skills. If proper skills are not there, than the goal will be much harder or impossible to achieve.

Whenever there is a new project being started either by individual or by a team than it is important to set a clear purpose ahead of time. It is very important to set a purpose before starting a project as a team so that the project can be done smoother. Everyone in the team needs to understand and also accept the team goal and also understand how important his or her role is in there team.

Third important of having an effective team is open communication. In beginning of my career I always thought people will laugh at me or even not accept me when I give some ideas. However, what employees like myself don’t realize is that their ideas are welcome. No idea is a stupid idea and that idea could help with the problem that the team may be facing or help receiving a better result. It is important for everyone value diverse points of view and encourage and be encouraged of open and honest discussion.

Fourth important of having an effective team is creativity. As time progresses it is important to have creativity. Creativity can help the organization stay in business or even help get more clients or even help with motivating employees. It is important to value original thinking that will produce solutions to organizational problems.

Accountability is another important aspect to having effective team. Employees should not be reminded of their job duties. They should be accountable of their work and each other for getting the work done in time and following the rules and procedures for the team and the organization. It is important to also be aware of another team member’s duties-incase the other team member is sick and not able to make it to work.

Lastly, fairness in decision-making is equally important as well. Many times people make decisions unconsciously not realizing that it may affect the rest of the team positively or even negatively. Ideally teams should make decisions by consensus. However, it is understandable that making decisions by consensus is not always going to work and at those times it is important to use fair decision-making procedures that everyone in the team agrees on.

REWARDS SYSTEM

An effective reward system is important for any organization since it can motivate employees to work and eventually help with the team effectiveness (Hartzell).

It is important that a reward system incorporates both positive and negative reinforcement (Sethi 2014). In my personal experience negative reinforcement has never helped. It discourages employees to work, which could lead to them leaving the company for another to get treated better. Positive reinforcement encourages employees to work harder since they feel appreciated in the team and organization.

Rewards can include intrinsic and extrinsic. Most of the financial sectors use intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. PNC used both rewards when I worked for them and it had worked greatly. In-fact all companies including Western union can use it as well. Intrinsic rewards are rewards that employees reward themselves, depending on their personal interests. An extrinsic reward is when the rewards are given out by someone else when another employee believes that the work done was exceptional and work well done.

Western union can create a rewards system of Intrinsic and extrinsic to keep the employees motivated to work. An intrinsic reward could be something when an employee sets few personal goals in the beginning of day/week/month or even beginning of the quarter. When they received that personal goal they an either treat themselves by giving themselves a golden star or even treat themselves by something that they were wanting to have for the longest time.

An extrinsic reward can be given to employees by recognizing them in front of the team so that other team members can be motivated. Many organizations give out spotlight points to employees who do something exceptional or even giving points out to just recognizing an employee for their hard work. When employees collect enough points they can buy something from the store that they desire for without spending their own money. This way a person is motivated to work and working towards accumulating those spotlight points. Besides giving out spot light points, Western Union will be giving out bonuses at the end of the year.

RESOURCES