TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING WORKERS PERFORMANCE IN AN INDUSTRY

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Background Of The Study

The study of improving workers performance have being longed for starting from Hawthorne experiment made by Etton major and his colleagues in the Western electric company in 1920’s. Those engage in industrial psychology up to this point have been more interested in examining the effect of physical conditions and equipment design to improve workers productivity. The indication of such experiment shows that factors like social interactions contributes so much to motivate a workers and as such increase productivity.

Other attempt made shows that individual performance is generally determined by three things: motivation (the desire to do the job) ability (the capability to do the job) and the work environment (the resources needed to do the job) but it can be seen that motivation plays an important role here because, if an employee lacks ability, the manager can provide training or replace the workers. If there is a resources problem, the manager can correct it. But if motivation is the problem, the task for the manager is more challenging individual behaviour is a complex phenomenon and the out the precise nature of the problem and how to solve it, in order to increase workers performance thus, motivation is important because of its significance as a determinant of performance and because of its intangible character.

In order to influence employees’ performance, organizations have it as their primary purpose to give employees reward in order to influence their performance. Extrinsic rewards affect employee’s performance, which, in turn, plays a major role in determining whether an employee will reward system also influence patterns of attendance and absenteeism and if rewards are based on actual performance employees tend to work harder to earn those rewards.

In recent times employee’s performance has bordered many managers which led to propounding many theories of motivation which will lead to high performance. Some of them are the content perspective of motivation, the process perspective of motivation and reinforcement perspective on motivation as well as using reward system to motivate performance. All these and many more are attempt to look for technique to increase workers performance in an organization.

1.1.2 Historical Background Of Niger-Mills Company Limited Calabar

Niger-mills Company limited, calabar is renowned for producing flour, semovita, offal for animals feeds, wheat processing and maize grinding. It has been in operation for over 32 years. The company is situated on number 10-acre land along the murtala Mohammed highway, NTA road, Calabar.

The company was established between 1970 and 1972 during the Gen. Yakubu Gowon era. This was to serve then esteem state to meet the scarcity of flour in region with the establishment of the industry 60% equal share went to the federal government.

The industry was established under the state edict. Thereafter, its registered trade name became known as Niger-mills Company limited. This was primarily because of its poor quality production. However, it continued till 1978 when it was finally wound up production resumed again between 1978 and 1980, with the flour mills of Nigeria, Apapa taking over fully the management responsibility for its operations and they sent raw materials, spare part, experienced executives and Supervisors to the Company. Between 1980 and 1983, the company increased its productive capacity and profit with staff strength of about 590 for the sales production, engineering, technical and administrative department. However, because of the economic recession, the staff strength has be reduced.

This study is based on the production department. it has about 200 workers distributed over the 5 section of the department. The workers here are both male and females many of the workers here have high qualification ranging from first school leaving certificate to master’s degree and they were all employed on a permanent basis. They start their work at 8.00am in the morning and close at 5.00pm in the evening there is an hour break from 12.00 noon to 1.00pm.

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1.2 Organization Structure

Niger-mills Company limited has five basic section. This comprises general administration, finance division, production, legal and sales. Each of these 5 basic sections is manned by a controller or director each section housing in turn many department. This is made clear in the organization chart the general administration and sales division have straight task, which requires formalized and controlled organization structure for maximizing the productivity of the workers. The legal division is concerned with personal policy, medical catering and pensions. The tasks in the production division are complex and ambiguous, and therefore ensure informal and participative organizational structure to integrate the individuals’ personal goals with the formal goals of the organization. It is responsible for producing the main products of the company. The department sees everything about product design, production processes.

The general administration sees about the running of the company, conditions of employments, probations, retirement benefit, roles of pay, salaries, wages, incremental salaries staff training and classification of employees. The work of the sales division is mainly the storage and marketing of finished product. There is the sales controller and the sales manager. They study the market situation and determine allocations of the company’s products.
The production workers are given working instruction by their departmental supervisors. The problems of each department are usually worked on during departmental morning meetings.

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1.3 The Statement Of The Problem

There has been wide spread complaint, complaint and write ups on the poor job performance and the resultant unimpressive productivity of employees. Some people advance reasons for this ugly phenomenon to the negative attitude of workers ranging from loitering during work hours, idleness to lateness to work et al. But one many ask here what is within an individual that makes him behave the way he does?

The human element is the most intricate and the most intricate and the most complex of all resources available to the manager. It is the same human element that is affected by even the slightest physical psychological and sociological changes and around him.

The problem focus of this study therefore is those internal needs within individual or his environment that indicates and sustains his behavior and the determinants of effective job performance.

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1.4 Significance Of Study

The project will serve as a practical guide to explore ways and means of improving workers performance in the organization in order to enhance higher productivity toward achieving the organizational goals. It is the belief of every researcher, which by blending his educational attainment so far, will carry out a project that will serve as a reference material for further research works and will help the researcher to improve on the already researched works on this topic.

The study will help us to know more about the researched form, the personnel manager and the policy makes of the researched company and other companies. Although the information contained in this project will be used firmly for academic purposes and kept in the polytechnic library, it will help the researcher to know the different methods and techniques of motivating workers and determine its effectiveness as it influence the performance of the workers in and outside their work place.

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1.5 Research Questions

In the course of this work the following research questions will be addressed.

1. Does any cordial relational exist between motivation and effective performance in an organization.
2. How often to industries/firms engage in organizing an in service/refresher course for their staffs?
3. To what extent does the fundamental change on the nature of a job improve a worker performance on this job. It is hoped that answers would be provided to the above questions in the course of this study.

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1.6 Scope/Delimitation Of The Study

The researcher chose a manageable population due to the unyielding nature of workers. In this connection therefore, the researcher has made Niger-mills company limited has only source of primary data collection. The questionnaire is also to be administered exclusively to randomly selected number of staff of the company the entire Niger-mills company staffs from the population of study and from it, is selected the subject of the sampled. The researcher believed however, that since almost or the same condition of service applies to all the firms in the industry, it is possible to see the result of this research work as applying to all work in industry, in question.

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1.7 Limitation Of The Study

Some problems nevertheless were encouraged while caring out this research. The major problem was the length of time the study is to complete. The short duration under which the study was carried out was not enough for a study of this nature especially as it has to be combined with academic work. Another limitation in the course of carrying out this study was the nonchalant attitude of the respondents in supplying the necessary information due to their ignorance. Fund was also another factor that posed a problem to this study. This problem was compounded by high lost of transportation the problem equally led to the printing of only a hundred, (100) questionnaire form despite the above limitation the researcher tried to do reasonable measure of justice to the study. It is possible to see the result of this research work as applying to all workers in industry, in question.

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1.8 Definition Of Terms

1. Performance:

This is the output of each worker based on his/her activities in the department.

2. Productivity:

This is the efficiency and the rate at which goods are produced. It is a concept that expresses the relationship between output and input and resources that produced the output.

3. Motivators:

These are both intrinsic and extrinsic factors used to induce workers in an organization to action.

4. Job Security:

Is the guaranteed status of employment which the employee enjoys from arbitrary dismissal from his employer.

5. Promotion:

This is the advancement of an employer to a better job in term of greater skills and especially increased rate of pay or salary.

6. Pay/Salary:

Monetary reward received by a worker for his labour.

7. Upgrading:

A practice closely related to promotion here one is moved up to the next level without any appreciable increase or decrease in duties and responsibilities.

8. Fringe Benefit:

Those additional privileges enjoyed by a worker in additional to his wages and salaries to enable him stay comfortable on the job.