Internal and External Factors that Influence Employee Behavior

1. Assalam wbt dan Hai,

    Karangan yang saya hantar untuk assignment Human Resource Management. Tidak semestinya betul tapi boleh guna sebagai rujukan sahaja.

   Identify the major internal and external factors that influence employee behavior. Given an example of behavioral attitude that is due to these factors.   

 

Employee behavior is a result of factors that influence the ways employees respond to their work, leadership and customers. Employer is to identify internal and external factors that affect the employees’ behavior to understand why employee is committed and motivated. Employee behavior depends on a mixture of internal and external factor. Internal factors are those within the company’s direct control such as leadership, work culture and company policies. External factors meanwhile are not directly controlled by company like the employee’s personal life circumstances and the economy factor.

One of the internal factors is leadership. Managers and leaders play an important role in influencing the behavior of individuals at workplace. Leaders has to set a direction or goals for employees.  In majority of the cases, it has been observed that employees do not like going to work because of the leaders. The leaders must ready to lead and stand by with the employees, to guide and help employees in every day operations, and become the inspiration of the employees. The leaders also must always ready to lend their ears whenever problems occurred, need to acknowledge the hard work of employees and ensure no employee is overburdened. Sometimes managers and leaders should allow employee to take some decisions on their own to give sense of responsibility towards work. These quality leaders influence the employees’ behaviors to perceive the leadership. The set organization will mirror what leadership does. Therefore, good leadership motivates employees to be productive, independent and motivated.

Next point of internal factors is work culture. A workplace is a place where employees spend one-third of their lives, working for hours to meet needs and expectation from company. Naturally, employees need to feel comfortable and secure at workplace for them to stay happy and positive. There has to be life-work balance which means the sense of balance will improve job satisfaction among employees. Company may hire talented leaders that whom willingly to encourage employees to understand the purpose behind the work they are producing and offer consistent praise and recognition to the employees when they deliver better work performance. Other than that, company may promote workplace wellness like host a Zumba class every week and fitness club. The good work culture is indicated when high involvement in activities organized by company. For example, when company is organizing charity fund work on Saturday and most of employees willingly and excited to participate. Therefore, good work culture motivates people to be accountability, adaptability, teamwork and humility.

Besides, the internal factor is company’s policies. Company policies are guideline and rules of conduct within an organization to outlining the responsibilities of both employers and employees. Good company policies have reasons to setting expectations, keeping management accountable, ensuring of compliance with the law, helping defend against legal claims and assisting with fair treatment of employees. A clear code of conduct can help employees to understand company expectation in performance and behavior. The policies might include specific rules related to conduct, dress code, confidentiality, internet usage and so on. Even though misunderstanding still can occur, at least employees have something to refer to guide them again to reach company goals. From policies, it states most important parts which is discipline and employee conduct. With complete access to the rules and regulations in the workplace, employers can enforce disciplinary action when appropriate if something occurred. Other than that, policies also stated attendance, leaves and time-off policies. For example, having a standard of taking leave procedure will help employees to be punctual and regular in attendance. Therefore, good company policies motivate employees to be dependability, confidence and trustworthy.

Now we move to the external factor that impact to the attitude behavioral of employees. One the external factors is employees’ family life or personal life. The family provides emotional support to an individual and plays major role to form behavioral of individual. If there is a conflict in the family life, he can feel anxious about why he has the such issues and over thinking on how to resolve them. The employees may behave irrationally at workplace especially those who have lower self-esteem. Lower self-esteem employees become psychologically more distressed over their family problem. They tend to sit still alone, not mingle around and sit until night in the workplace to minimize contact with family. By understanding how family problems might affect the work culture and performance, company can engage in more effective of welfare program such as to sponsor family therapist seminars to help employees to recognize their family issues. From here, they can overcome the issue properly and minimize impact on their work performance. Therefore, employees’ personal life might affect the irrational behaviors like inability to concentrate, indecisiveness and low motivation if they don’t try not to bring their personal problems at workplace.

On the other hand, is economic factor as external factor. Economy plays a crucial role in our everyday lives. How much money to spend, what the needs and what is the requirements, and how much money to save this month will always make employees to decide every day. When economy is good, employee tend to spend or invest more money. But when economy is bad, company might be downsized, acquisition and close business, which later impact to the individual economic specifically. Bad economy tends to promote higher expectations from employer while forgetting to concern employees’ physical and mental health. It implicates unethical behavior of unhealthy competition among employees and later produce poor work culture. However, while economy is good, company has many opportunities to develop good work culture, promotes work life balance and reward the employees to motivate them. Therefore, the economy is directly having impact on the behavioral attitude of employees.

In conclusions, behavioral attitudes of employees are depending on internal and external factors. Employer is the main role to ensure that any distressful in work place is managed sensibly. Moreover, the importance of being the employer proactively ensure the diligent employees ought to be appreciated and must not go unnoticed. Then only it shall not lead to unnecessary pressure on employees. Once again, the wise organization mirrors the good behavioral attitudes of employees.

 

(1019 words)