Culture Management: Develop an American and Japanese Employee Motivation Plan

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Employee Motivation Plan:

Introduction:

This employee motivation plan analyses ways of motivating a multicultural team of Japanese and American employees. The firm has opened a new outlet in Japan Tokyo. The sales employees in the company who are American and Japanese have been having problems and are unable to work together well with some having a negative attitude. This has hindered team and sales performance. These problems could be attributed to cultural differences, ineffective communication and probably a lack of understanding for each of these two groups' values and the way they perceive things. This motivation plan intends to address these issues and enhance cohesive work between the different groups. The outcome of the motivation plan is to enhance a cohesive team environment, increase team performance and understanding between team members and increase sales by 10% by the end of the year.

Understanding what the employee's value and what motivates them:

The American employees are motivated by empowerment of the employees, praise and recognition on individual's performance, effective reward schemes, training and development, opportunities for promotion, job rotation and flexible working time. On the other hand Japanese employees value team recognition on performance, working in a team, effective reward schemes, training and development, opportunities for promotion, long term position in the company, and loyalty (Allen et al, 2004).

These values have been influenced by the cultures of these two groups of people from two different cultures. Unlike the American employees who adopt individualistic approach towards their work and put self interest ahead of the companies, the Japanese are group oriented and puts the interest of the company before individualistic goals. Japanese employees prefer not to be given a negative feedback in the presence of a group but on a one on one basis so as not to lose face. They also do not prefer getting praised in front of team members. They rather prefer either private recognition or if it is to be public, then it should be public recognition. Public recognition of one member would most likely cause a rift in the team. While the American sales force values financial incentives in order to perform, in Japan, money alone is not efficient and sufficient enough to motivate the employees to ...