OB Term Assignment

Topic: Analyse the motivational practices of any organisation discuss the extent
to which they are effective in maintaining the moral of the employees on the
basis of your learning of OB concept suggest different methods of improvement

By Group 8:
Name Roll No.

Emily Vanlalnunsangi 123

Nilanjana Jaysi 142
Suyash Kumar Agrawal 176
Vaishnavi Agrawal 192
Somya Kathuria 208
Veesam Srinivas 223
Rudraksha Bohra 159
Anangsa Biswas 108
TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 3
INTRODUCTION 4
LITERATURE REVIEW 7
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 8
Primary Research 8
Secondary Research 8
SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS 15
ANNEXURE 18
REFERNCES 20

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to Prof. Kavita Singh, FMS Delhi for providing us with
the opportunity to work on this project and for her continuous guidance, suggestions, and encouragement
during the course of this project. Due to her constant guidance, we could engrain our ideas into the
project, handle the minute details and rectify and avoid errors in this project. We also extend our gratitude
to all the professionals from Infosys for providing valuable insights & data for the project during the
primary survey.

Finally, we would like to thank FMS Delhi for all the support provided for the project.

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 INTRODUCTION

Motivation can be defined as a condition that is initiated by a physiological or psychological deficiency

or need of an individual, which causes the individual to behave in a certain manner in order to achieve a
particular goal or incentive.

The motivation process-

● Need is a psychological or physiological imbalance, a lack of something wanted or deemed

necessary
● Drive - both physiological and psychological drives push an individual towards achieving a
certain goal or accomplishing a certain goal
● Incentives - Anything that can mitigate need and decrease a need and increase the intensity of a
drive is called incentive.
● Goal is the end objective wherein all the efforts must lead to

Motivators vary from person to person and they can range from anything starting with work itself, clear
achievable goals, appreciation of good work by seniors and opportunities for future career growth. In this
project, we have tried to look into Infosys as an organisation to look into its motivational practices and
analyse the findings.

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WORK MOTIVATION

Motivation is the process of inspiring people to achieve their goals. Work motivation is a set of energetic
forces that originate both within and beyond an individual’s being, to initiate work-related behaviour and
to determine its form, direction, intensity, and duration. Getting people to do their best at work is one of
the hardest challenges of managers. The importance of employees satisfaction and motivation is
becoming more and more important every day in enterprises. Nohria, Groysberg, and Lee explain that
the four drivers that underlie motivation are: acquire, bond, comprehend and defend. They also point out
that the organisational levels of motivation are: the reward system, the culture, the job design and
performance-management, and resource-allocation processes. Motivated people make decisions to
dedicate considerable effort to obtain something that they value. Research shows that indeed there is a
relation between motivation and performance.

Theories of Motivation :

There are many theories of motivation, however Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs and Herzberg’s
Motivation-Hygiene Theory will be analysed more in detail since they are related with this research. The
most known theory is the Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs which consists of the physiological levels: safety
and security, social, esteem or egoistic, self-fulfilment or self-actualization. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs
can illustrate a theoretical explanation of why salary is important. In Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, when
basic necessities of human beings are fulfilled, the individual wants to use his capabilities at a full
potential. If the organisation is not providing him opportunities to overcome his job assignments up to
the level of his abilities, he will never be satisfied. It also increases the level of stress in the place of
work.According to Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory, to create satisfaction it is needed to address
the motivational factors that are associated with work (He calls it "Job Enrichment"). Every job should
be examined to determine how it could be improved to satisfy the employee. Considering the above, this
theory is applied to our research because training and development opportunities help employees to
pursue their satisfaction in the company and in their position.

Motivational Factors :

Motivation is yielded to many elements such as salary, promotion, personal goals, job security, working
environment, training and development, recognition, administrative practices and workloads.

➢ Salary : Money has been pointed out as a motivational factor by a large number of researchers.
It is often seen as a symbol of success and also associated with comfort and security. It is
considered as an advantage for the managers, because they can use money as a strategy since
money can have a great impact on employees’ performance. Some researchers have stated that
motivation is the main instrument to be used. Knowing that there exists a direct correlation
between salary and the results obtained. Some researchers suggest that the employee should be
motivated through a proportional salary according to the efforts done in the job. There are other

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 important factors as well, but having a satisfactory salary is among the top factors.

➢ Training and Development : Training and development is the process of generating work
experiences related with knowledge and skills that exist to systematically improve the
performance of the employees. It is known that organisational training has prodigious potential
outcomes. Training has to begin with the recognition of the training needs through job analysis,
performance assessment and organisational analysis. After identifying training needs, training
programs are organised. As indicated by Nesan and Holt, a system of ‘‘performance measures”
is developed in order to monitor improvements among building teams

➢ Workloads : Workloads refers to the intensity of the job assignments. It has commonly been the
amount of work assigned or the amount of work expected to be completed by a worker in a time
period. It is a source of mental stress for employees. Stress is an active state of mind in which
humans face opportunity and constraint. Workload can negatively affect its overall performance.
The main objectives of assessing and predicting workloads are to achieve an even distribution,
manage workload and determine the resources needed to carry out the work. It is difficult to have
full control over all the workloads at all times. But it is possible to recognize its effects and take
some actions in advance. Finally, for using the workload analysis as a methodology, it is
important to set time, efforts and resources with the idea of enforcing the department’s activities
and achieve their objectives.

➢ Promotion : Promotion is one of the most efficient ways to keep employees motivated by
offering them opportunities along their careers, giving them more responsibilities or even more
authority. It may be applied by giving the opportunity to increase the salary compensation. This
commodity can also cover a part of security needs by increasing the buying power of the
employee. Promotions help assigning workers to jobs that better suit their abilities and is a way
to move up quickly the talented workers. It can be used to reward the employee’s past efforts,
promote investments in specific human capital and have lower rates of job turnover.

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 LITERATURE REVIEW

Importance of retention and motivation

For any organization, its employees form the foundation of its functioning. Hence, if employees begin to
leave or feel less motivated to work in the organization, it starts impacting the organization directly. This
is where the concepts of employee retention and motivation come into the picture. Employee retention
essentially refers to the strategies and principles employed to keep the attrition rate of an organization
low and to prevent employee turnover. If the attrition rate of any organization increases at the bottom-
line, it has a snowball effect all the way to the top-line of the organization and also on the bigger picture.
Employee retention and motivation have been the primary objectives to look at for any organization.
Employee retention is dependent on many factors, as illustrated in Bidisha Lahkar Das and Dr. Mukulesh
Baruah (2013). It depends on, majorly, employee satisfaction which can be achieved through
compensation, rewards, job security, training & development, work environment and familiar support.
Another study conducted by K. Sandhya and D. Pradeep Kumar has elaborated on how increasing and
uplifting motivation of employees would lead to retention. This can be done through initiatives such
enabling open communication, an employee reward program, career development program and more.
Keeping the employee at the center of the organization, as well as their priorities and beliefs, could have
a long-lasting impact on the functioning of the organization.

Factors Affecting Motivation among Employees in Consultancy Companies

Motivation is one of the most crucial part of Human resource policy. Motivation system is not only
useful to improve employee productivity but also play very significant role in attracting talent to apply
for the company .Human Resources Management plays a critical role in making organizations more
efficient and also strategically facilitates the improvement of talent acquisition, training & development,
remuneration, performance management and most important of all, motivation. To create an efficient
motivation system it is very important to know: What really motivates the employees in an organization?
This is an detailed study of a Construction Consulting Company in Vietnam and the purpose of our
research is to find the main factors affecting motivation amongst the employees of the company. The
researchers took survey among 135 employees of the company to understand their perception regarding
motivation in workplace. To understand their perception and expectation from the company to help
recognize the pain point of the employee. Find out the opinions of the General Manager about the same
issue and understand his role as a motivator for the employee. This paper also has recommendation for
the comapany regarding the issue faced by the company regarding employee motivation.

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 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Primary Research

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered how people view their jobs. As a result, it has also significantly
altered where and how the work is done. The staff now have to quickly adapt to a new way of working
with or without any prior planning. Working from home hasn't been easy, though. Lack of experience
causes problems for some, while inadequate living quarters caused issues for others and unhealthy
working conditions caused problems for others. Identification of employee willingness, productivity
levels, and work-related motives is therefore crucial. The process involved requesting survey-based
descriptions of employee motivational practices used in Infosys. The following methods were used to
accomplish this:

● Employee surveys are used to evaluate employees' opinions and levels of satisfaction as well as
to pinpoint any specific areas that require more research and/or possible action.

● Effects of unique efforts inside the company.

● Ongoing discussions with resource groups and staff networks.

● Keeping track of the quantity and timeliness of rewards and recognitions in the company to
motivate employees.

Secondary Research

Motivational practices of Infosys

Infosys Technologies Ltd is one of the prominent companies in the Indian IT sector. Infosys is praised
for being an employer that values its employees, according to more than 2,500 evaluations and a 3.24
rating on JobBuzz (an employer rating platform) and scored 3.9 rating on Glassdoor from 87,891 reviews.
It provides a wide range of career choices for entry-level workers in a demanding and stimulating
workplace. There are several reasons for Infosys being hailed as a friendly organization, few of which
are good work-life balance, work environment, brand name, training and development.

Infosys has employed a lot of techniques to motivate its employees and made the work culture engaging
so that employee retention and satisfaction remains high. These are some of the ways in which Infosys
motivates its employees (especially during the pandemic):

1. Connect Programs: Creating shared goals for the teams with virtual employee connect platforms, the
pillar focuses on manager engagement, quick-start onboarding and a common engagement platform.

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iEngage: : This is an effective platform to inform, inspire and build a happier workplace. It helps drive
vertical engagement between employee and unit leadership.

QuickStart: An immersive and integrated onboarding experience for the new lateral joiners, this
platform focuses on building a safe and agile workplace environment, drives collaborative platforms and
intelligence, establishes trust and psychological safety through peer and manager coaching as well as
mentoring.

Pulse: This employee engagement mechanism collects employees’ perceptions on areas that really
matter to them. Employees are polled every quarter through a real-time micro feedback format to get
their sentiments on the company culture, resilience and value proposition elements.

2. Collaborate Programs: Driven by digital growth, the focus has been on coaching, reskilling and
enablement through collaboration opportunities. Infosys works to accelerate careers for high performing
talents with a performance management framework in place.

PowerTeams: Infosys created short and specific team intervention modules with concerned project as
the nucleus. Manager enablement and engagement playbook: Infosys launched a comprehensive
engagement playbook for managers, focusing on various mechanisms and levers of engagement to
promote team building and drive purposeful collaborations virtually.

3. Celebrate: To create a ubiquitous reward culture in the new world of work and augment employee
experience, ‘Celebrate’ focuses on timely, frequent, specific, inclusive, innovative and value-based
appreciation

RISE recognition framework: RISE is a unique foundational framework that aligns the core values and
positively influences the workplace morale, driving desired behaviors through Real, Instant, Specific and
Exciting (RISE) rewards.

Awards for Excellence (AFE): Excellence is an integral component defined in the core values. To
recognize employees who pursue excellence, the Awards for Excellence (AFE) was institutionalized in
1995 and in the silver jubilee year Infosys Awards for Excellence remains their largest rewards and
recognition platform for employees.

4. Care: The employee care focus has comprehensive programs to address concerns on employee health
and the impact of work stress on employees and their families. With uncertain times often inducing
anxiety among employees, there was a renewed focus on specific interventions this year.

Infy Ikigai: The pandemic brought forth a stark decline in the work-life balance for employees, higher
stress levels due to a disproportionate number of meetings and no days off, and managing the dual
responsibilities of work and household, especially in case of women employees. As response, they

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conceptualized an initiative ‘The Infy Ikigai’, emphasizing the importance of stepping away from the
physical and mental demands of everyday lives and focusing on taking care of oneself.

HALE: The Health Assessment and Lifestyle Enrichment program helps build and sustain a healthy and
productive workforce by promoting health and well-being, ensuring safety, and encouraging work-life
balance.

5. Culture: While each of their employees plays a key role in defining the collective culture of the
organization, the core principles are based on the value system they have nurtured over the years.

C-LIFE: Infosys’s core values are Client Value, Leadership by Example, Integrity and Transparency,
Fairness, and Excellence (C-LIFE). These are the key drivers of their culture and act as a commitment to
stakeholders – employees, customers, investors, regulatory bodies, partners and the community around
us. They emphasized the importance of life and C-LIFE with focused virtual initiatives, such as C-LIFE
Superheroes series, Lex channel, interactive video quizzes and competitions, podcasts, among others.

Manager Code: They conceptualised the manager code (Code M) with 7 principles. A flip-book with
enablement kits, leader blogs, manager enablement sessions, inspiring stories of ‘Awesome Bosses’,
communication tool-kits to manage the pandemic were some of their stand-out interventions.

InfyMe: The platform provides digital native mobility solution and computational design principles
through a mobile-first approach. It helps employees with first-hand information and access to systems
and processes from any place at any time. The application has transformed employee experience in the
remote work environment with an accessible and secure ecosystem.

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs): They are the active agents in helping organizations craft inclusive
workplace policies and practices, such that everyone can perform to their potential and stay motivated.
ERGs also reflect local and geo-specific diversity dimensions of Infosys’s way of life.

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 FINDINGS

Based on the motivational practices employed by Infosys, we have done primary research on determining
the effectiveness of these techniques. We have approached the employees and ex-employees of Infosys
while simultaneously gauging their perspectives and awareness of the different motivational practices of
Infosys.

Amongst the 36 responses received on our primary survey, we have found a certain trend that seems to
stand out much which would be discussed further. One of the note-worthy points is that most of the
employees or the ex-employee rate their performance between 7-9 out of 10 which could point towards
the fact that employees are being tasked with responsibilities at par with their capabilities.

The major findings of the survey and noticeable trend are given below.

1. Development is the key: Atleast 30% of the employees look towards development as the main
motivators behind their performance.

2. Culture wins: Judging from the responses and feedback of the employees and ex-employees, the
culture that Infosys follows which are based on Integrity, transparency, inclusivity, etc is found
to be the most effective tool to motivate the employees.

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3. Individual effectiveness of each motivational practices:
A. Connect Programs ( connecting employees, leadership and new lateral joinees ) such as
iEngage, QuickStart, and Pulse in motivating the employee: Of all the 36 responses
received, a little over 90% falls within 6-9 rating, which points to a good implementation
of the practices.

B. Collaborate Programs ( coaching, reskilling and collaboration practices ) such as

PowerTeams: Around 95% responses react positively to collaborative programs, with
around 40% at 7 rating. However, around 17% falls in the rating 2-6. This points to the
fact that although the feedback is excellent, the wide ranging feedback could be due to
differences in personal experiences which are related to their synergy with their
colleagues and team mates.

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C. Celebrate Programs such as RISE and AFE ( excellence awards ): 98% of the responses
falls within the rating 6-10, which disclose that excellence awards such as AFE appears
to work best in motivating the employees’ performance at Infosys.

D. Care programs ( address work stress and health of the employee ) such as Infy Ikigai:
Although around 90% of the responses fall within the rating 6-9, however 10% of the
responses give a rating of 2 and 3. This point towards the fact that Care program, even
though being effective has some room of improvement.

E. Culture Programs such as InfyMe, Manager Code, etc: Around 89% of the responses falls
within 7-9 rating which reveals that Infosys employees find the culture programs such as

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Manager Code, ERGs and C-LIFE are effective in motivating the employees to perform
their best.

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SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS

Infosys is well known in the industry for its HR practices with good work-life balance and proper
policies and practices in place to facilitate employee motivation. The company has faced several
challenges in the past with its HR department and it has come out strong every time with improved
policies making the company one the most highly regarded in terms of employee handling and
motivation. After conducting research for this project that focuses on the motivational strategies used
by the renowned IT company Infosys, we have come to the conclusion that Infosys has a well-thought-
out motivational strategy. It has modified different techniques for every level of management
throughout the entire Infosys organization and employs cutting-edge motivational techniques.

Whatever the strategies were chosen for use, the objective is to motivate employees and make them
more qualified, committed individuals in the organization and ensure that the provision of Infosys to
their employees is timely and effective, that the goods are of consistently high quality, and that the
organizations are successful. In many territories, the strategies are manual but, as automated methods
become more pervasive, those mechanisms that support their use will become more popular.

Still, there have been a few areas where the company can improve upon to make the experience of the
employees better.

Based on the responses we got and the experiences we were able to gather there have been a few issues
we’ve been able to identify a few issues that have been happening in the organisation recently.

1. Unavailability of Senior Leaders

This differs from team to team, but sometimes the managers or senior leaders are unavailable to
guide and give direction to the team which may lead to the team being demotivated and might
affect the performance of the employees.

2. Less Support to new team members

In many projects the team has a high workload due to which the members are unable to give
time for a proper knowledge transfer to any new member that might have joined. Also if the
managers are busy he/she might not get much support from the seniors. Due to this, the
employee is left with less knowledge about the project and will not be able to work with full
commitment on project

3. Project-based Work-life balance

During our survey some people told that their work-life balance is not that good and there is
high parity between the pay and workload, for such employees motivational practices become
key in driving them to work to the best of their abilities.

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 4. Inconsistent mapping of projects

After the training process of the new employee they are assigned their projects, in this process
sometimes the person gets a project in a different domain from the training say a Java trainee
might get a C++ project, in that case, it can be very demotivating for the employee.

5. Delay in relocation

Infosys has a policy where on medical grounds or if your spouse is located in a different city the
employee is relocated to the requested city and given a project there. This transfer is dependent
upon the availability of the relevant project. But this process is very long and tedious, and the
delay caused here can be demotivating for the employee as he/she is in a fix of where his/her
project will be.

There are a few methods that the company can employ to improve upon the above situations

1. Ask for anonymous employee reviews from time to time

Considering the benefit of team working and its existence at all levels of the organisation ,every
employee has to be dealt with in the nature of his/her importance. Also, the management have more to
do with the routine functioning of the company, strategic planning teams are more involved with
shaping the overall longer term strategy of the company so taking employee reviews time to time not
only helps in improving the company performance and boosts employee morale too.

2. Leadership development in Infosys

Many employees at manager positions do not have a full connection with their subordinate interns in
terms of coordinating with them and helping them out with the problems. This issue can be resolved by
taking interaction sessions between all employees of the organisation.

3. Recognition and encouragement

This need to be increased for employees with higher parity in pay and work-life balance

4. Changing world needs Changing tactics for employee motivation

Boosting the engagement and performance of employees and teams is not a new challenge for people
leaders. But the goalposts have shifted. The stakes are now even higher in a business environment
where exponential change is combined with growing and changing workforce expectations.

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 1. Reimagining the employee journey: The best place to work leads to the best work

Times have changed, people don’t stay at the same company for their entire careers. Just as consumers
will switch brands in a heartbeat if their expectations haven’t been met, employees – particularly
Millennial and Gen X - will too. That’s if you can attract them in the first place. If your experience
from the initial interaction doesn’t match their values, you’ll have a hard job convincing them to join –
and that’s before they’ve read through Glassdoor or Indeed reviews. They value culture, work
environment and leadership, so will be keen to see positive experiences around those before they will
even consider you.

2. Setting the course for transformation

Every employee embarks on a unique journey when they join a company that will have highs and lows
– but with some significant moments that matter – which will be personal to them. They could be
moving to another role or location, having a baby, being promoted for example. They advise to pay
attention to these moments and to create peaks for employees and customers.

3. Adapting your offering to the modern employee in the AI age

As consumers, AI is an increasingly natural part of many of our digital journeys, guiding us in our
journeys with recommendation engines or chatbots that are available 24/7 to answer questions and
provide support.

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 ANNEXURE
Below attached is the form used to conduct the survey

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 REFERNCES
● Gupta, Bhumika, and Jeayaram Subramanian. "Factors affecting motivation among employees
in consultancy companies." International Journal of Engineering Science Invention 3.11 (2014):
59-66.

● https://studymoose.com/motivational-techniques-used-by-infosys-essay

● https://www.infosys.com/navigate-your-next/talent-transformations/workforce-
transformation/documents/crafting-best-employee-experience.pdf

● https://content.timesjobs.com/these-factors-make-infosys-a-great-
employer/articleshow/62603647.cms

● https://www.perkbox.com/uk/resources/blog/why-employee-motivation-is-important-and-how-
to-improve-measure-and-maintain-it

● https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Factors+affecting+motivation+a
mong+employees+in+consultancy+companies.&btnG=

● https://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jbm/pages/v14i2.html

● Factors Affecting Motivation among Employees in Consultancy Companies

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