Microsoft_Motivational_Practices

Running Head: MICROSOFT MOTIVATIONAL PRACTICES Microsoft Motivational Practices Abstract Business today’s global markets is highly competitive. Top companies strive to employee the best and brightest minds to maintain that competitive edge. While attracting the best and brightest is a difficult task, keeping these highly sought after employees motivated and content is the true challenge. The top professionals in a field are always sought after and constantly approached by competitors. They are offered lucrative benefit plans, better wages, and employee perks. Many times these efforts pay off as the employee leaves for greener pastures. While this happens in most business arenas it is most prevalent in the technology and software organizations. Microsoft is considered the premier software company. It has established itself as the benchmark in which all software companies strive to achieve, and has made itself a household name throughout the world. Because of it's enormous success, it has grown into a multi-faceted organization with operational centers in all comers of the globe. This broad scope of operations requires many levels of management, corporate, departmental and divisional. While the immense scale of it's operations are daunting, basic concepts are still needed at every level with respect to managing personnel., and while most new young software engineers, developers, and workers consider being hired on by Microsoft as a career high point, they still need leaders to give them vision, purpose and motivation to keep them satisfied in their work. After all, Apple is just a phone call a way. This paper will look one position within the Microsoft Corporation, the Divisional Vice President, and detail it's motivational philosophy with respect to employee retention and ensuring employee's perform to the level excepted from the largest software company in the world. Major Components and Motivational Practices Microsoft's organizational structure is very intricate and diverse. Although it started with two young visionaries in a garage is quickly grew into global organization venturing into multiple associated software markets. With operation centers and subsidiaries all over the world employing more than 95,000 workers. Half are located in the United States, and the average age for a Microsoft employee is 37 years old. The largest division of the company is the business group, employing 46,000 of Microsoft's workers. (Leigh, 1999). "Microsoft is the world's largest computer software company, and as a result, there are a lot of people behind the scenes. A 10-person board of directors runs the company, with Steven Ballmer as the CEO and Maria Klawe as president. The board is made up of 5 committees including: the audit committee, the compensation committee, the finance committee, the governance and nominating committee and the antitrust compliance committee. In addition to this board, Microsoft is made up of an executive team to handle leadership and the corporate staff council, which oversees staff functions throughout the company." (Leigh, 1999) Having such a diverse and broad scope of operations, at a divisional challenge it is difficult to manage and engage workers to stay on mission. With so many different corporate mission objectives, VP's need to ensure that their particular division is meeting corporate objective and ensure that it meshes flawlessly within the larger picture. research and development has a corporate mission, it may not be the same as global marketing or, IT solutions. Employees may be easily distracted by different issues within other divisions and stray from their very specific divisional goals. Being as the average worker is 37 years of and most are the top performers in their field, the common distraction that VP's deal with are employees striving to make Microsoft a better organization by delving into areas out of their scope of responsibility as stated by Steve McConnell a former Microsoft executive, "Motivating yourself and other employees is part of the Microsoft corporate culture. Microsoft avoids the problem of phony-sounding management motivational speeches because, as often as not, the question doesn't come from a manager; it comes from the person who will have to do the work if the person in question doesn't do it." ( McConnell, 1996, para. 6). The motivational structure at Microsoft is very intrinsic. Employees strive for excellence for the good of the corporation, and often overextend their boundaries by trying to solve issues with other employees in suffering divisions. The Divisional VP's have a great responsibility in dealing with this issue. While the need to keep their employees focused on their divisional responsibilities, they also do not want to impede good old fashioned initiative derived from company loyalty. VP's encourage inter-divisional discussion concerning other division problems but ask that they be the ones to address them one-on-one with the respective VP. Doing this validates the employees concerns and ensures focus within the division. Keeping the employees focused in an environment such as Microsoft can be a difficult challenge as well. During new software launches, product development, and customer service, workers can be excepted to put in extremely long hours. "I have seen fold-out couches, cots, and sleeping bags in offices at Microsoft. I know of one developer who had a Murphy bed custom-made to fit his office. Dave Moore, Microsoft's director of development, described a typical day at Microsoft like this: "Wake up, go to work, do some work. 'Oh, I'm hungry.' Go down and eat some breakfast. Do some work. 'Oh, I'm hungry.' Eat some lunch. Work until you drop. Drive home. Sleep" (Michael Cusumano, Microsoft Secrets, Free Press, 1995). In this type of environment VP's need to ensure that their managers have the tools necessary to keep their employees, engaged, motivated and focused. Simply paying them a lot of money is not enough. These individuals are the top of their field. Money is not an issue for them. They need something more to keep them engaged. Microsoft developed some very inventive ways to keep their employees happy during these long hours. They knew that the long hours would cut into their free time and as a result the social aspects of their life would suffer. They decided that would develop a work environment that bordered on a social gathering rather than a sterile business environment. In this environment, employees can work and interact as if they were doing so at a social gathering or at their home, relaxed and fun. Rewards Systems Utilized VP's of each division are encouraged to create relaxed and fun work environments to combat the rigors of long work hours and tedious tasks. Many of these types of practices would have been considered unproductive and unprofessional in the past but today's worker in the high-tech fields need outlets away from their computer screens in order stay fresh and inventive. Steve McConnell, a former executive at Microsoft explains how small inventive motivational tools made a great difference in the quality of life of the employees. "How does Microsoft achieve such a high level of motivation it's simple. Microsoft explicitly focuses on morale. Each group at Microsoft has a morale budget that can be used for anything the group wants to use it for. Some groups buy movie-theater style popcorn poppers. Some groups go skiing or go bowling or have a cookout. Some groups make T-shirts. Some groups rent a whole movie theater for a private screening of their favorite movie. "(McConnell, 1996, para. 3). Employee selected reward is a great tool. It shoes the employee that the corporation values their efforts and trusts them to self-assess their own performance. The idea of setting up moral budgets and allowing teams to choose what they would like to spend it on is very forward thinking. It says to the employee that we know that everyone is different and we employee a diverse group, who are we to decide what is fun or what you value as a reward. It coveys a very powerful message of trust and respect. With respect to work support and procurement of needed resources McConnell details another inventive system, "If you need office equipment--bookcases, whiteboards, and so on--you just send email, put a note on the wall where you want the office furniture, and within 24 hours someone will have installed the furniture in your office. If you have a computer problem, you call the company's help desk and within an hour or two a knowledgeable computer technician will have fixed your problem. They lend you a computer if necessary, and they will even swap your hard disk into the loaner to minimize downtime."(McConnell, 1996, para. 5). This type of practice gives the employee a sense of worth and importance. The individual is putting in long hard hours to benefit the corporation, in turn the company works hard to meet his needs in a timely manner to help they complete their work. It shows mutual appreciation. You work hard for us so we work hard for you. McConnell also detail the use of non-monetary rewards to as motivational incentive. "Microsoft also makes extensive use of non-monetary rewards. I spent a year at Microsoft working on Windows 3.1. During that time, I received three team T-shirts, a team rugby shirt, a team beach towel and a team mouse pad. I also took part in a nice team dinner on the local "Dinner Train" and another dinner at a upscale restaurant. companies with excellent motivation don't miss any opportunity to shower their employees with non-monetary rewards. (McConnell, 1996, para. 5). As McConnell points out, money isn't everything. Even the smallest gesture in non-monetary reward can yield great reward. It's a personal touch that tells the employee we don't just think of you as an employee but rather a part of our team or a member of our family. It gives the employee an emotional connection with the organization. Goal Setting Compared to Position (written by Michael Beeler) In the Microsoft Company it is important for Divisional VP's to set goals and maintain them without losing his or her focus. “Goals and objectives provide organizations with a blueprint that determines a course of action and aids them in preparing for future changes. A goal can be defined as a future state that an organization or individual strives to achieve.” (Maurler, L. 2009). The best process for this is to break long term goals up into several short term goals. This elevates the risk of the vice president or the employees from getting discouraged and losing track of the ultimate goal. In this type of position it is also important to be organized, and part of organization is the ability to create achievable goals and follow through with them. For example, a long term goal that will be needed to be completed in a four year time period is a long time for a person or a team to have to wait for the final outcome. By breaking this long term goal up into several manageable short term goals will keep the team on track with the feeling of success and accomplishment along the way. This will in turn build the teams’ moral and keep them focused on what needs to be done. The goals that will be set will be those that will build organizational structure and help the company to move forward with the newest technological advances possible. Microsoft is a company that is well known in the technological arena and to remain on top of the game the organization needs to accomplish these goals set. “Realize that no matter what your goals are, they are affecting your live everyday you live it. We need goals that inspire us. With strong and compelling goals we are driven to grow and expand and develop ourselves towards what we want from and for our lives. Compelling goals have the power to move us. Done properly and specifically goals transform our lives.” (Plessis, D. 2009) For these reasons and many more it is important for the VP's to have the ability to set and manage goals that are achievable. In order to keep the moral of the employees going forward the VP's must also know how to break long term goals into short term goals so that small achievements can be made periodically and the organization can see the benefits of the ultimate goal. Furthermore, by creating goals that will help build the company he or she will also need to incorporate goals that will also help build the employees as a whole Conclusion Microsoft has raised the bar and changed the way corporations operate. In the past in which the workplace was sterile and tedious, it was difficult for employees to stay focused and motivated throughout the work day. During those times, it was not uncommon to have a high turnover of employees due to low moral and the dreaded employee" burn-out" . In today's cutting edge high tech world companies need to become very creative and cast aside the old dogma of the suit and tie professional. While it may still be appropriate in some aspects of today's business, such as finance and banking, in the world of software and computer engineering it's unproductive. Employees in these types of industries are working in highly creative and ever changing environments. What's new and exciting in the world of high tech could be obsolete six months later. Microsoft has created a very inventive and lucrative work environment and has set the bar for all software companies to emulate. References McConnell, Steve. (1996). Microsoft: A Highly Motivated Environment. Software Practitioner, 4(1), 1. Retrieved from http://www.stevemcconnell.com/articles/art05.htm Leigh, Jessica. (1999). Facts About Microsoft Corporation. eHow , 1(1), 1. Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/facts_5019305_microsoft-corporation.html Cusumono, Michael A. (1995). Microsoft Secrets: How the World's Most Powerful Software Company Creates Technology, Shapes Markets, and Manages People (2nd ed.). 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