preview

The Admnistrator of the Highway Department Essay

Best Essays

The administrator of the highway department was given a task to find a way to fill more potholes. This program to fill more potholes would decrease the number of complaints in the city and the number of damages to the residents’ cars. To do this, the Highway Administrator implemented a goal-setting program, in hopes this would encourage the workers to fill more potholes. This program sets a standard for each crew to fill a certain amount of potholes per day, no matter the location of where the crew was working. The results will then be posted for all of the crews to observe and compare. As an incentive to fill as many potholes as possible, the crew who filled the largest amount of potholes each week was given a reward. I personally believe …show more content…

The standard set by the highway administrator were that each crew was to fill 20% more potholes than they usually fill on a daily basis. This aspect of the goal is extremely efficient and specific which gives the workers a clear idea of what they need to do at work. If the goal were to simply “fill more potholes than you normally fill” than each crew could fill one more pothole than they normally do and still meet the goal but this would probably not get the work done as fast and it needs to be. This goal is also a clear standard because of the different working conditions each crew operates in. Asking each crew to fill 5 more potholes than normal might prove to be easy for one crew and extremely hard for another, depending on the conditions. Each crew was also given a step-by-step sheet on how to properly fill each pothole. This will make each fill last longer, therefore, making less work for the future.
The feedback that accompanies each goal comes at the end of each week. Feedback is objective information about performance. Motivational feedback serves as a reward and the highway administrator clearly understands that since he is using rewards to drive his employees’ productivity. (Hogue, 2004) Each week, the highway administrator will post performance data on a board for all of the other crews to view. Since there are only rewards and no harsh consequences, this creates friendly competition for each crew. The crew who has the most potholes

Get Access