Research on Innovated Social Work Talents’ Motivation Strategy

开篇：润墨网以专业的文秘视角，为您筛选了一篇Research on Innovated Social Work Talents’ Motivation Strategy范文，如需获取更多写作素材，在线客服老师一对一协助。欢迎您的阅读与分享！

Abstract

social work talents have been widely concerned by our society and academia while more and more social problems have risen up under the background of constructing socialistic harmonious society. Hence, cultivating and motivating social work talents have become an extremely hot issue. Based on round analysis about the current situation of social work talents’ motivation, we synthetically use multiple human motivation strategies, and bring forward an approach of innovative motivation strategies’ combination which will fit the needs of social work talents.

INTRODUCTION

“Constructing a grand social work personnel which has rational structure and excellent quality is an urgent need for building a socialist harmonious society.” This constatation fully demonstrates that social work team expansion and professional talents cultivation gradually become an urgent and significant strategic task in the development process of comprehensive building a socialist harmonious society in China.

1. Development status of social work talents cultivation

Social work, generated in the western countries at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century, are activities that specialized helping others. In terms of the general classification, they mainly includes personal philanthropy, organized support and succor or various social activities chaired or participated by government or private associations.

In foreign countries, social work had long development history and formed relatively independent characteristics. It is not difficult to think that social work closely link with society, which makes social work become an important and integral part of each national system. Moreover, social work are the focus of people’s attention because they are non-profit. All kinds of social work not only target to solve the existing social problems, but take important responsibilities to the effective prevent various social issues. Social work are not non-theory, non-skills pro bono services, but responsible by the professional talents who possess the necessary knowledge and skills. Both social work tasks and their operation mode strongly emphasize the purpose and operability, which further optimizing the social work task subdivision.

In China, social work services have made some progresses both at the theoretical level and practical level. Social work academics defined them as service jobs that government and social organizations use the scientific method to help people solving their difficulties of life, coordinating interpersonal relationship, satisfying people’s basic material and spiritual needs and maintaining social stability. In other words, social work services are that society offering physical, mental and service help for individuals and groups who cannot carry out a normal social life by their own due to some outside, inside and other structural causes. At the same time, they are expecting these people to restore social life ability, improve their social interaction and the social life quality in order to promote social benign operation and coordinated development (Dong, 2007).

Based on our understanding about the social work, we can easily generalized that social work have several major characteristics such as practicality, cross-combination nature, and occupational nature. The practicality is the directly correspond between social work and social needs. All social work are expected to be able to reach the goals with direct social benefits of practical problem solving or problem preventing. Such work are not often rigidly adhere to professional content, but form a multidisciplinary cross-combined professional force. Meanwhile, social work have gradually got rid of former voluntary social service work mode which has always been simply understood by people, and have transformed to a work category which has feedback value. Correspondingly, talents who engaged in social work should have work abilities adapting with these characteristics before they can ensure various social work develop orderly and efficiently.

Currently, social work talents mainly distributed in the following community-based jobs: the first are the main business units of civil affairs department and other people’s organizations; The second are the specialized agency offering social service such as social welfare services, rescue and succor, special care and placement agencies and so on; The third are the community sector including streets and neighborhoods these two levels of organization; The fourth are a large number of private non-enterprise nature of units and nonprofit organizations (Gu & He, 2007). As a professional social worker, one should has specialized social work permit and the appropriate professional knowledge and skills, should comply with social work ethics and professional constraints, and take on some responsibilities in relevant professional organizations or associations. However, since our social work system is relatively complex, the social work development start late, and people are relatively lacking of awareness about this type of work, we have met the current difficulties in social work talents personnel construction: How to attract, develop appropriate social work talents, and then how to motivate and retain excellent social work talents.

Currently, social work talents mainly distributed in the following kinds of social work: the first are the main operating divisions of civil affairs department; The second are the specialized agencies offering social service such as social welfare services, rescue and succor, special care and placement agencies and so on; The third are the community sectors including two levels, street and neighborhood organizations; The fourth are a large number of private non-enterprise units and nonprofit organizations (Gu & He, 2007). As a professional social worker, one should has specialized social work permit and the appropriate professional knowledge and skills, should comply with social work ethics and professional constraints, and should take on some responsibilities in relevant professional organizations or associations. However, since our social work system is relatively complex, the social work development start late, and people are relatively lacking of awareness about this type of work, we have met the current difficulties in social work talents personnel construction: How to attract, develop appropriate social work talents, and then how to motivate and retain excellent social work talents.

Based on the current situation, the problems coming from the process of social work talents cultivation and development mainly reflect in the following aspects:

In the first place, superficial awareness. Social work are gradually been recognized by people along with the social transition from a planned economy to market economy in China, but many people still regard social work as activities which are administrative, non-professional, lacking of independence, lacking of complete industry regulations and management mode. In fact, the reality we faced is that social mobility has become a major operation mode of modern society under the constantly breaking down of the regional concept trend. Many social contradictions and defects caused by social mobility urgently need to be effectively solved by social work talents personnel with expertise. Moreover, social work greatly emphasize on practice, which makes most people subjectively think that social work are lacking of theoretical foundation, and they are just a simple repetition of operational activities or other combination of professional skills without unique value. These reasons lead people unwilling or less willing to participate into the society work initiatively or been forced. Failing to build a social identity environment and not widely being accepted with work value make social work talents taking a huge working pressure. To some extent, these factors become important reasons for social work talents loss. Therefore, how to enhance the social work public awareness is a big part of social work talents motivation.

In the second place, position awareness confusion. Social work gradually become one of primary responsibilities of the Government with the continuous deepening of the service-oriented government transformation(Dongshan Li, p.10-14) and the whole country has growing surge demand for social work categories and participants. Social workers exists in every corner from the countries social work management agencies to the small social services unit for example neighborhood committees. But people cannot often figure out the specific functions and the obligation of social work. For instance, for people working in the management committee of residents, how to reflect their services value, how to avoid the role of government, which in other words, how to deal with the relationship between them and customer and to what extent they should be responsible for social workers, etc. become the difficult problems faced by them. Position division confusion, on one hand makes many social problems are difficult been classified and dealt with, and on the other hand it also makes social work talents involving in problems solving lack of motivation and innovation passion.

Thirdly, salary system disorder. Under current social work management system, social workers lack of sound assessment index system which result in the existing payroll cannot play an effective motivation effect on social workers. According to the social work talents management experience of Hong Kong and other areas, the assessment is primarily based on the results of service performance and the salary could be far higher than other ordinary staff. However, inland social work salary system is still in the early stages of development, it has not been formed as a scientific and rational differentiated system which has different levels of salary motivation mode for different levels of social work talents. Thus, it results in job burnout and enthusiasm frustration for many social workers after long time. Obviously, this is one of the most critical steps for current social work talents motivation and retention.

Fourthly, lacking of training mechanisms. Several major characteristics of social work emphasize on the subjects’ diverse cross-combination and professional development needs. From the perspective of basic cultivation of the social work talents, although there are more than 200 schools all around the country currently that have set up relevant specialty for social work and they have ability to cultivate more than ten thousand people annually, the imperfections of teaching quality, management system and other aspects have led to significant differences between the cultivating results and expected results. On the other hand, social training for social work talents follows up very slowly, which often just stays at the stage of vocational skills training but not been able to form a sound professional qualification mode. It is worth to mention that because of social work concept was originally formed in the social operation management of western countries, it has to face the localization adaptation problem when been introduced to China society for operating. Social work concept localization adaptation largely depends on whether the professional training could be able to closely link up with the concept.

Fifthly, career planning lagging. Current social work talents training system mainly focuses on how social work talents are arranged to various social jobs effectively and correspondingly to put the whole system into practice, while lacking of personal career development planning and design for them, which might lead to career growth bottlenecks or even been forced them to temporarily quit after certain number of years work.

2. The talent s motivation theory and application strategy

Social work theory is an operability theory which relate to sociology, psychology, economics and management science, and integrate and apply the theories of these disciplines into practice. Therefore, we must also integrate the essence of these four disciplines and find out the most reasonable strategy combination and matching optimization from a variety of motivation strategies theoretical perspectives for social work talents motivation issues.

People simply summarize motivation theory as: it is a development mode that necessity gives rise to motivation and motivation determines the behavior. On one hand, people have live, work and other needs and on the other hand, they have differences in demand for salary, knowledge, reputation and so on. Thomason pointed out that human resource management and development strategies should be comprehensively applied for the public organizations operation and management motivations that should be treated properly using a market-oriented perspective (Thomason, 1990). In other words, the talents motivations and trainings need making a comprehensive view of their career development, combing with the reality of social background, planning and implementing effectively with the perspective of development. Although the motivations regard as satisfying certain needs of the individual, at the meantime it is also important to promote the talents to achieve organizational goals ultimately through their subjective efforts. Motivation is one kind of mode of human resource management, of which implementation project and strength should be derived from the extent of the target needs, and the organizational goals are the final direction of motivation.

For individual employees, the non-monetary motivation strategy based on the needs of employees emphasizes on according to the motivation processes, which are adopting demand recognition, demand reinforcement and demand maintenance, to reach the goal of throughout motivating employees (Yang Wang, 2005). In fact, this motivation strategy exactly accords with organization personnel selection mode that participants first adapt themselves the environment, then make the two-way choice, and finally reach in-depth development in order to achieve the goal that individual intention is consistent with the real role behavior (Xinghua Ye, 2003). In terms of the specific operation, it should firstly make clear positioning about motivation objects through empathy, dynamic anchoring and so on, and then strengthen motivation from the recognition and promise, career planning, training and development, decentralization and authorization, reputation cultivation and so forth, and finally achieve the sustaining and long-term nature of motivation through constructing the work surrounding environment and overall cultural atmosphere.

According to the interaction matching principle between the individual and the task, the motivation strategy based on the work quality structure is of the opinion that people will be influenced by a variety of factors in their work environment such as fair remuneration, comfortable environment, the task itself, interpersonal relationship, and future development etc. Therefore, it should correspondingly take advantage of joint using various methods and techniques as salary motivation, relationship motivation, work motivation, emotional motivation and so forth before it could really putting the goal of talents motivation in place (Hui, & he, 2005). The work quality structure requires people pay all-round attention to that whether the talents' work environment fully satisfy their own needs. In a sense, the motivation thought based on the work quality structure is exactly a motivation mode that to seek an effective balance between the external and internal demand, and to achieve a goal matches the individual and the environment.

From the perspective of the entire organization system, the high performance work system gives us another innovative idea about overall motivation, which is, in dealing with employees motivation problem, we should more emphasize the complementary matching between each work composition module such as interconnecting the salary motivation, training and development, employee involvement, open selection, flexible work and so on, in order to reach employees' skills continuous improvement and work morale maintaining stability. In high performance system, various functional modules interlink as well as restrict to each other, and talents motivation is reflected in various modules of the system, which makes professional talents are able to experience value realization and external recognition in every corner of the work, thus finally construct the long-term organization motivation mechanism.

3. Social work talents innovative motivation strategy

Synthesizing the above various thought about talents motivation strategies from the different perspectives with combining with social work background characteristics, in other words, on one hand, closely connecting with the government work, and on the other hand, possessing unique self-independence and flexibility, valuing work ethic of "people-oriented" and "help and self-help" and so forth, we boldly jumped out from former simple personal material motivation framework mode, and selected the individual-overall system matching multi-angle motivation method that are more suitable for extensive and long-term nature of social work. Some following very useful social work talents innovative motivation strategy were concluded:

Constructing excellent social work cultural environment: Up to the present of social work development in China, it has not really been separated from the original job classification system, but the entire society has significantly showed the demand for social work. Because of its social diagnosis and treat, assistance and developing effect greatly promote the social harmony, stability and healthy development. Therefore, the process of social work professionalization is the inevitable trend of social development. However, the relevant talents who engaged in social work not only need their own efforts, but also urgent require to get the enthusiastic response from the society especially from the government. They should actively advocate the core concept of social work of "people-oriented" and "help and self-help" and construct excellent social work growth environment jointly. Only by constructing a positive social work involving atmosphere and achieving society's full recognition and trust for this occupation before social work could talents motivate themselves constantly and achieve job performance in an encouraging growth environment. In other words, social work culture construction is a moral incentive for all social work talents that admit the value of their contribution to society and recognize their social services status, and it will help social work talents to achieve their life goals. In a sense, these non-material incentives can even more stimulate social work talents' working enthusiasm and innovation inspiration, and then strengthen the sustainable development of whole society. What deserves to be highlighted is that a generally accepted social culture is essential for the development of social work history because of social work has a strong sociality.

Improving job position function design and work planning: Explicit career position setting is an important prerequisite for the social work professionalization development, and also is the breakthrough point for stimulating work enthusiasm of social work talents. In accordance with the experience of the western social work history, the definition of social work has transformed from the original one that helping those who need help in our society to a new one that different social work require different expertise, and thus respond to different social needs. Obviously, the continuous clarity of social work division makes the knowledge and ability of social work talents become more professional. Social work talents often confuse their own specialty under the current unclear social work division and function definition, which result in that they might not exert their own expertise and unable to command their own future development, and finally lead to lacking of sufficient confidence to engage in social work due to its uncertainty. Therefore, the explicit social work job position definition is an important part of the talents motivation strategy. Of course, the job positions definition we are talking about does not mean that every social work talent only engages in a single work category in lifetime, but focus more on a stage of steady state, which is in a certain period of time, social work talents should make clear about their struggling goals, the direction of solving social problems, and the work results which can be expected and so on. The long-term talents cultivation requires social work talents career planning as assistance. Establishing their own efforts benchmark and making clear about future development direction will strengthen and enrich the power of social work talents. Furthermore, along with that social work in China is attracting more and more attention, making social work talents clear about their work value and future work expectations will form better organization and cooperation, as well as create new pattern of social work career history.

Conclusion

Social work is a multi-disciplinary and comprehensive occupational category, thus a comprehensive motivation way should be taken for social work talents. We should not only select salary motivation and other the material means, but also should pay further attention to other management practices matched with the salary motivation such as assessment, training and other talent motivation strategies in order to realize collaborative motivating. In terms of China’s social work talents cultivation and motivation, we should first admit that the basic development status of social work, determine the future development trend, and then cultivate the universal social awareness and public support for culture starting from the social work environment construction. Breaking through the ordinary motivation forms and strength limitations; Combining with social work interdisciplinary and practical application characteristics; Selecting infinitive motivating ways; Introducing motivation mode which combined the material motivating and skills upgrading and the knowledge accumulation; Realizing synchronous improvement of personal value and overall ability in order to satisfy social work talents’ demand for self-realization and value enhancement.

All in all, social work talents cultivation and motivation are an important part of the social work profession systems, and are also the basic means to promote the specialization development and process. We should comply with and refine the personal multidimensional motivation, assist with environmental impact motivation, and finally realize the overall improvement of social work talents personnel quality and the sustainable development of the social work.

References

Chuanhong Liu (2006). Job design method selection based on motivation. Market Modernization, 6.

Dong, Y. (2007). Constructing a large social work personnel for building a harmonious society. Theory Front, 2, 26-27.

Dongli Xu (2006). research on knowledge-based employee motivation strategy. Metallurgical Economic and Management, 6, 28-29.

Dongshan Li. Harmonious society calls for social work talents. Talent Development, 10-14.

Hui, Q. S., He, H. (2005). Research on motivation strategy based on the quality of work life (QWL) structure. Productivity Research, 7, 176-178.

James Combs, Yongmei Liu (2006). How much do high-performance work pratices matter? A meta-analysis of their effects on organizational performance. Personnel Psychology, 59, 501-528.

Jianjian Gu, Haibing He (2007). Strengthen the construction of social work personnel. Party & Government Forum, 25-28.

Jinbo Jiao (2011). The multi-dimensional analysis of the education mode of the social work program. Meitan Higher Education, 24(6), 78-80.

Jin-e Fan, Mingchen Han, Ou Li (2006). Research on social work talents practice ability deficiency. Journal of Jilin TV & Radio University, 1, 13-18.

Jun Wen. Occupational and professional social workers construction. New Capital, 86-89.

Luguang Lü (2001). Analysis on China’s urban social work talents demand status _case study of Anhui Province. Academic Forum, 214-219.

Martin Graham P, Phelps Kay, Katbamna Savita (2004). Social Policy & Administration, 38(5), 470-487.

Michael Riley, Yvonne Guerrier (2006). Human resource policy in social work management: a response to enforced market orientation. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 4(2), 481-491.

Quangui Xu (2007). Strengthen the construction of social work personnel. Talent Development, 18-19.

Russell Pamela A, Lankford Michael W, Grinnell Jr. Richard M.. (1981). A Management evaluation scale for social workers. Journal of Psychology, 107(1), 127-130.

Shihai Chen, Defang Xiao (2006). Exploration social work professional talents training mode in western area universities. Journal of Yibin University, 11, 111-112.

Steinman Michael, Welch Susan, Comer John (1973). Public Personnel Management, 2(4), 267.

Ter Heine, Egbert J. H., Felling, Albert J. A., Gubbels, Jan W. (1983). The Prediction of Role Behavior of Dutch Social Workers. Journal of Social Psychology, 120(2), 293.

Thomason, E. F. (1990) Human Resource Strategies in the Health Sector. Journal of Human Resource Management, 1(6).

Tingba Huang (2006). Basic ways for cultivating social work personnel. Political and Ideological Work Research Trends, 23, 19-20.

Tingba Huang (2007). Significance and ways of strengthening the construction of social work personnel. Party Construction Research, 33-34.

Wei Chen (2006). The theory and practice of social work teaching. China University Teaching, 12, 19-22.

Xia Zhao (2006). Thinking of occupational and professional social workers. Group of Economic Research, 12, 267-268.

Xifeng Zhu (2006). Phased development of Shanghai professionalization of social work construction. Social Work, 10, 44-46.

Xinghua Ye (2003). A talent areas urgent need to develop- professional social work. Sociology, 2, 33-42.

Xinping Guan, Issues about social work talents team construction. Chinese Society Guide, 20-21.

Xinyi Song (2006). Social work career step into the specification development. Shanghai Standardization, 10, 23-25.

Yan li, Dongbo Jia (2003). Motivation strategies application on human resource management. Journal of Chengdu College of Education, 11, 7-9.

Yang Wang (2005). Non-monetary motivation strategies analysis based on the needs of employees. Human Resource Development of China, 5, 94-96.

Yu Lu (2005). Motivation strategies based on the new concept of high-tech enterprises talent. Human Resources Development, 4, 20-21.

Yuanzhi Xu, Weiping Wang, Guoxiang Wang, Weihua Tan (2007). Explorations and practice on educational mode of social work specialty in Fujian Medical University. Journal of Fujian Medical University(Social Science Edition), 7(2), 55-59.

Zhaoming Gui (2007). Cultivating social work personnel meeting the needs of building a harmonious society’s. Chinese Talents, 1-2.