Employee motivation in light of Vroom’s theory of expectation

Victor Vroom’s theory of expectation developed in 1964 strives to predict and describe the task-related effort prolonged by a person. Expectancy, instrumentality, and valance are the three key terms in the theory (Baumhof, Decker, Röder, and Menrad, 2017).  Force, valance, and expectancy are the sub-divided categories by Vroom. Theories on expectancy as applied to employee motivation are commonly attributed to Vroom. Even though its historic roots are in the works of Lewin and Tolman who suggested that organisms improve intellectual expectancies concerning the outcomes of behavior and subsequently behave in a manner that is expected to result in favored outcome states (Oliver, 1974). Abdul Rehman, Sehar, and Afzal, (2019) State individual factors play a major role in goal achievements and behavior of the employee. The effort the individual puts in along with performance and motivation is interconnected.  Vroom believes to better motivate employees a positive correlation between effort and performance is necessary. 

 

Expectancy

An individual’s assessment of the probability that work-related effort will result in a given level of performance is defined as expectancy. The expectancy level would be one (1) if the individual is certain that the performance can be achieved, expectancy would equal zero (0) if the individual feels the performance cannot be met. Expectancy is based on 3 factors that can either be encouraging or obstructing. These are perceived difficulty of the goal, self-efficiency, and past experiences. An individual’s belief in his or her ability to perform the task successfully is defined as self-efficiency. Two factors would determine the perceived difficulty of a goal to the degree to which an individual trusts the he /she has control over the expected outcome can be seen as seeming control over performance effect. The expectancy is high if the belief is highly pronounced. Motivations are low when an individual believes that the ability to influence the outcome is beyond his or her control (Baumhof, Decker, Röder, and Menrad, 2017). If an individual has a feeling that it is unrealistic to meet the expected performance such goals lead to low expectations hence resulting in low motivation (Parikh and Gupta, 2010). 

 

Valence

According to Lee, (2007), Valence was defined by Vroom as an effective direction towards a specific outcome. An outcome becomes positive when an individual prefers accomplishing it to not accomplishing it. When an individual is uncertain about accomplishing a task the outcome has a valence of Zero (0) and it is negative when an individual decides not accomplish the task but rather to accomplish it. The amount of effort one exerts to reach one’s goal is described as a force. The level of attractiveness or unattractiveness will be expressed through valance and it can be graded +1, a result that is highly attractive to the individual, and -1, a goal that is highly unattractive. Zero (0) valance would indicate that the individual does not seem interested in the goal (Gyurko, 2011).

 

Instrumentality

The perceived relationship between performance and reward is referred to as instrumentality or how exactly on the job performance leads to rewards.  Instrumentality can also be defined as the individual’s perception that the outcomes of the 1st level are linked to the 2nd level outcomes (Pool and Pool, 2007). According to (Lee, 2007) an individual’s perception of the probability of performance that will lead to an exact outcome is defined as instrumentality. The individual’s beliefs and expectations are related to this “if the individual behaves in a certain way, the individual will get certain things”

  

Below is a simple model depicting Vroom’s expectancy theory.

 

Source: (Baumhof, R., Decker, T., Röder, H. and Menrad, K., 2017)

 

Applying the theory to the organization I work for in the insurance industry

The organizations I work for highly regard employee achievements and believe that they should be rewarded. From time to time many such reward programs are launched in line with organizational objectives. While many have been successful some have not so. We would be able to identify why certain programs were successful while others were not applying Vroom’s theory of expectation to one of those initiatives.

Until the beginning of 2022, an incentive program was in place for sales executives as well as managers based on achieving a set of KPIs. To acquire the reward the following criteria needed to be met,

•  100% achievement of the given monthly target

•  100% achievement of the monthly targets breakdown on subclasses such as motor, non-motor as well as health insurance targets.

• Collection period of payments was capped at 60 days hence all sales done in the particular month need to be collected within 60 days this was seen as an almost impossible task.

Bullet point three was seen as a very difficult KPI to achieve hence the sales team did not make an effort to pursue the incentive on offer rather they let it go. According to Vroom’s theory, the valance of achieving the task becomes zero (0) with the uncertainty of achieving it.

That being said the organization has introduced a much more lucrative incentive scheme from the inception of 2022 making changes to bullet point three as stated above to the following,

• While the 1st and 2nd bullet point KPI remained as it is the KPI on collections were changed as follows, Collections need to exceed the monthly target and for the additional collected premium an incentive will be paid. This was seen as achievable by the sales team and motivation levels were high the employees viewed this as a worthy reward for their performances.

Therefore when we apply this scenario to Vroom’s theory on the instrumentality factor we see that it was met with prior clear-cut communications on the reward scheme, trust was built right away as the payouts were done the very next month, and most importantly the employee had clear expectations of the financial reward that was in place. 

Expectancy factor has also been met by employees as they see the task ahead of them can be successfully performed based on their skills, the goal ahead of them was not as difficult as before as well as the control they have over performance can be controlled by the employee. 

 

Conclusion

Generally, motivation can be considered as the selective and preferred aspect of specific behavior. Motivation is accountable for the explanation of force towards a particular behavior or action. The importance of motivation is emphasized in Vroom’s expectancy theory.  In today’s world under challenging conditions, Vroom’s theory can be adapted to better achieve organizational goals, that been said organizations at all-time must follow the set of guidelines given in the theory to achieve maximum performance which can be summarized as follows,

01.          Ensure the promises given to the team are in line with the company policy

02.          Create challenging but achievable goals

03.          Make sure the assigned task matches the individual’s skill set

04.          Set clear connections between performance and reward

05.          Reward distribution should be fair and logical

 

Reference

Abdul Rehman, S., Sehar, S. and Afzal, M., 2019. Performance Appraisal; Application of Victor Vroom Expectancy Theory. Saudi Journal of Nursing and Health Care, 02(12), pp.431-434. [online] Available at: http://DOI: 10.36348/sjnhc.2019.v02i12.008 [Accessed 11 August 2022].

Baumhof, R., Decker, T., Röder, H. and Menrad, K., 2017. An expectancy theory approach: What motivates and differentiates German house owners in the context of energy efficient refurbishment measures?. Energy and Buildings, 152, pp.483-491. [online]  Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2017.07.035 [Accessed 11 August 2022].

Gyurko, C., 2011. A synthesis of Vroom's model with other social theories: An application to nursing education. Nurse Education Today, [online] 31(5), pp.506-510. [online]  Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2010.08.010 [Accessed 11 August 2022].

Lee, S., 2007. Vroom's expectancy theory and the public library customer motivation model. Library Review, 56(9), pp.788-796.  [online] Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710831239 [Accessed 11 August 2022].

Oliver, R., 1974. Expectancy Theory Predictions of Salesmen's Performance. Journal of Marketing Research, 11(3), pp.243-253. [online] Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/002224377401100302 [Accessed 11 August 2022].

Parikh, M. and Gupta, R., 2010. Organisational Behaviour. 1st ed. New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill Education Pte. Ltd.

Pool, S. and Pool, B., 2007. A management development model. Journal of Management Development, 26(4), pp.353-369. [online] Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/02621710710740101 [Accessed 11 August 2022].