SOURCE: IELTS READING CAMBRIDGE

Motivating Employees under Adverse Condition

THE CHALLENGE

It is a great deal easier to motivate employees in a growing organisation than a declining one. When

organisations are expanding and adding personnel, promotional opportunities, pay rises, and the

excitement of being associated with a dynamic organisation

create Slings of optimism. Management is able ta use the growth to entice and encourage employees.

When an organisation is shrinking, the best and most mobile workers are prone to leave voluntarily.

Unfortunately, they are the ones the organisation can least afford to lose- those with me highest skills and

experience. The minor employees remain because their job options are limited.

Morale also surfers during decline. People fear they may be the next to be made redundant. Productivity

often suffers, as employees spend their time sharing rumours and providing one another with moral

support rather than focusing on their jobs. For those whose jobs are secure, pay increases are rarely

possible. Pay cuts, unheard of during times of growth, may even be imposed. The challenge to

management is how to motivate employees under such retrenchment conditions. The ways of meeting this

challenge can be broadly divided into six Key Points, which are outlined below.

KEY POINT ONE

There is an abundance of evidence to support the motivational benefits that result from carefully matching

people to jobs. For example, if the job is running a small business or an autonomous unit within a larger

business, high achievers should be sought. However, if the job to be filled is a managerial post in a large

bureaucratic organisation, a candidate who has a high need for power and a low need for affiliation

should be selected. Accordingly, high achievers should not be put into jobs that are inconsistent with their

needs. High achievers will do best when the job provides moderately challenging goals and where there is

independence and feedback. However, it should be remembered that not everybody is motivated by jobs
that are high in independence, variety and responsibility.

KEY POINT TWO

i Ensure the reward system is fair

The literature on goal-setting theory suggests that managers should ensure that all employees have

specific goals and receive comments on how well they are doing in those goals. For those with high

achievement needs, typically a minority in any organisation, the existence of external goals is less

important because high achievers are already internally motivated. The next factor to be determined is

whether the goals should be assigned by a manager or collectively set in conjunction with the employees.

The answer to that depends on perceptions the culture, however, goals should be assigned. If participation

and the culture are incongruous, employees are likely to perceive the participation process as

manipulative and be negatively affected by it.

KEY POINT THREE ii Match rewards to individuals

Regardless of whether goals are achievable or well within management's perceptions of the employee's

ability, if employees see them as unachievable they will reduce their effort. Managers must be sure,

therefore, that employees feel confident that their efforts can lead to performance goals. For managers,

this means that employees must have the capability of doing the job and must regard the appraisal process

as valid.

KEY POINT FOUR iii Ensure targets are realistic

Since employees have different needs, what acts as a reinforcement far one may not for another.

Managers could use their knowledge of each employee to personalise the rewards over which they have
control. Some of the more obvious rewards that managers allocate include pay, promotions, autonomy,

job scope and depth, and the opportunity lo participate in goal-setting and decision-making.

KEY POINT FIVE

Managers need to make rewards contingent on performance. To reward factors other than performance

will only reinforce those other factors. Key rewards such as pay increases and promotions or

advancements should be allocated for the attainment of the employee's specific goals. Consistent with

maximising the impact of rewards, managers should look for ways to increase their visibility. Eliminating

the secrecy surrounding pay by openly communicating everyone's remuneration, publicising performance

bonuses and allocating annual salary increases in a lump sum rather than spreading them out over an

entire year are examples of actions that will make rewards more visible and potentially more motivating.

KEY POINT SIX

The way rewards ore distributed should be transparent so that employees perceive that rewards or

outcomes are equitable and equal to the inputs given. On a simplistic level, experience, abilities, effort

and other obvious inputs should explain differences in pay, responsibility and other obvious outcomes.

The problem, however, is complicated by the existence of dozens of inputs and outcomes and by the Fact

that employee groups place different degrees of importance on them. For instance, a study comparing

clerical and production workers identified nearly twenty inputs and outcomes. The clerical workers

considered factors such as quality of work performed and job knowledge near the top of their list, but

these were at the bottom of the production workers' list. Similarly, production workers thought that the

most important inputs were intelligence and personal involvement with task accomplishment, two factors

that were quite low in the importance ratings of the clerks. There were also important, though less

dramatic, differences on the outcome side. For example, production workers rated advancement very

highly, whereas clerical workers rated advancement in the lower third of their list. Such findings suggest
that one person's equity is another's inequity, so an ideal should probably weigh different inputs and

outcomes according to employee group.

Questions 14-18

Reading Passage 149 contains six Key Points.

Choose the correct heading for Key Points TWO to SIX .from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

______________________________________________________

List of Headings

i Ensure the reward system is fair

ii Match rewards to individuals

iii Ensure targets are realistic

iv Link rewards to achievement

v Encourage managers to take more responsibility

vi Recognise changes in employees' performance over time

vii Establish targets and give feedback

viii Ensure employees are suited to their jobs

______________________________________________________

Example Answer

Key Point One vii

14 Key Point Two

15 Key Point Three

17 Key Point Five

18 Key Point Six

SOURCE: IELTS READING ACTUAL TEST

A Wonder Plant

The wonder plant with an uncertain future: more than a billion people rely on bamboo for either their

shelter or income, while many endangered species depend on it for their survival. Despite its apparent

abundance, a new report says that species of bamboo may be under serious threat.

Every year, during the rainy season, the mountain gorillas of Central Africa migrate to the foothills and

lower slopes of the Virunga Mountains to graze on bamboo. For the 650 or so that remain in the wild, it’s

a vital food source. Although there are almost 150 types of plant, as well as various insects and other

invertebrates, bamboo accounts for up to 90 percent of their diet at this time of year. Without it, says Ian

Redmond, chairman of the Ape Alliance, their chances of survival would be reduced significantly.

Gorillas aren’t the only locals keen on bamboo. For the people who live close to the Virungas, it’s a

valuable and versatile raw material used for building houses and making household items such as mats

and baskets. But in the past 100 years or so, resources have come under increasing pressure as

populations have exploded and large areas of bamboo forest have been cleared to make way for farms and

commercial plantations.

Sadly, this isn’t an isolated story. All over the world, the ranges of many bamboo species appear to be

shrinking, endangering the people and animals that depend upon them. But despite bamboo’s importance,
we know surprisingly little about it. A recent report published by the UN Environment Programme

(UNEP) and the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) has revealed just how profound

is our ignorance of global bamboo resources, particularly in relation to conservation. There are almost

1,600 recognized species of bamboo, but the report concentrated on the 1,200 or so woody varieties

distinguished by the strong stems, or culms, that most people associate with this versatile plant. Of these,

only 38 ‘priority species’ identified for their commercial value have been the subject of any real scientific

research, and this has focused mostly on matters relating to their viability as a commodity. This problem

isn’t confined to bamboo. Compared to the work carried out on animals, the science of assessing the

conservation status of plants is still in its infancy. “People have only started looking hard at this during

the past 10-15 years, and only now are they getting a handle on how to go about it systematically,” says

Dr. Valerie Kapos, one of the report’s authors and a senior adviser in forest ecology and conservation to

the UNEP.

Bamboo is a type of grass. It comes in a wide variety of forms, ranging in height from 30 centimeters to

more than 40 meters. It is also the world’s fastest-growing woody plant; some species can grow more

than a meter in a day. Bamboo’s ecological role extends beyond providing food and habitat for animals.

Bamboo tends to grow in stands made up of groups of individual plants that grow from root systems

known as rhizomes. Its extensive rhizome systems, which tie in the top layers of the soil, are crucial in

preventing soil erosion. And there is growing evidence that bamboo plays an important part in

determining forest structure and dynamics. “Bamboo’s pattern of mass flowering and mass death leaves

behind large areas of dry biomass that attract wildfire,” says Kapos. “When these burn, they create

patches of open ground within the forest far bigger than would be left by a fallen tree.”Patchiness helps to

preserve diversity because certain plant species do better during the early stages of regeneration when

there are gaps in the canopy.

However, bamboo’s most immediate significance lies in its economic value. Modern processing

techniques mean that it can be used in a variety of ways, for example, as flooring and laminates. One of

the fastest growing bamboo products is paper - 25 percent of paper produced in India is made from

bamboo fiber, and in Brazil, 100,000 hectares of bamboos are grown for its production. Of course,

bamboo’s main function has always been in domestic applications, and as a locally traded commodity, it’s

worth about $4.5 billion annually. Because of its versatility, flexibility and strength (its tensile strength

compares to that of some steel), it has traditionally been used in construction. Today, more than one

billion people worldwide live in bamboo houses. Bamboo is often the only readily available raw material

for people in many developing countries, says Chris Stapleton, a research associate at the Royal Botanic

Gardens. “Bamboo can be harvested from forest areas or grown quickly elsewhere, and then converted

simply without expensive machinery or facilities,” he says. “In this way, it contributes substantially to

poverty alleviation and wealth creation.”

Given bamboo’s value in economic and ecological terms, the picture painted by the UNEP report is all

the more worrying. But keen horticulturists will spot an apparent contradiction here. Those who’ve

followed the recent vogue for cultivating exotic species in their gardens will point out that if it isn’t kept

in check, bamboo can cause real problems. “In a lot of places, the people who live with bamboo don’t

perceive it as being endangered in any way,” says Kapos. “In fact, a lot of bamboo species are actually

very invasive if they’ve been introduced.” So why are so many species endangered? There are two

separate issues here, says Ray Townsend, vice president of the British Bamboo Society and arboretum

manager at the Royal Botanic Gardens. “Some plants are threatened because they can’t survive in the

habitat - they aren’t strong enough or there aren’t enough of them, perhaps. But bamboo can take care of

itself - it is strong enough to survive if left alone. What is under threat is its habitat.”It is the physical

disturbance that is the threat to bamboo, says Kapos. “When forest goes, it is converted into something
else: there isn’t anywhere for forest plants such as bamboo to grow if you create a cattle pasture.”

Around the world, bamboo species are routinely protected as part of forest eco-systems in national parks

and reserves, but there is next to nothing that protects bamboo in the wild for its own sake. However,

some small steps are being taken to address this situation. The UNEP-INBAR report will help

conservationists to establish effective measures aimed at protecting valuable wild bamboo species.

Townsend, too, sees the UNEP report as an important step forward in promoting the cause of bamboo

conservation. “Until now, bamboo has been perceived as a second-class plant. When you talk about

places such as the Amazon, everyone always thinks about the hardwoods. Of course, these are significant,

but there is a tendency to overlook the plants they are associated with, which are often bamboo species. In

many ways, it is the most important plant known to man. I can’t think of another plant that is used so

much and is so commercially important in so many countries.”He believes that the most important first

step is to get scientists into the field. “We need to go out there, look at these plants and see how they

survive and then use that information to conserve them for the future.”

Questions 1-7

Reading Passage 267 has six sections A-F.

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-F in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet

NB. You may use any letter more than once.

2. Commercial products of bamboo

3. Limited extent of existing research

4. A human development that destroyed large areas of bamboo

5. How bamboos are put to a variety of uses

6. An explanation of how bamboo can help the survival of a range of plants

7. The methods used to study bamboo

Questions 8-11

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions or deeds below.

Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 8-11 on your answer sheet.

NB. you may use any letter more than once.

A. Ian Redmond

B. Valerie Kapos

C. Ray Townsend

D. Chris Stapleton

8. Destroying bamboo jeopardizes to wildlife.

9. People have very confined knowledge of bamboo.

10. Some people do not think that bamboo is endangered.

11. Bamboo has loads of commercial potentials.

Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each

answer.

Write your answers in boxes 12-13 on your answer sheet

12. What environmental problem does the unique root system of bamboo prevent?

13. Which bamboo product is experiencing market expansion?