INTRODUCTION:

The Indian Pharmaceutical market is the 13^th leading in the form of value, 3^rd leading in the form of volume. In India, the major Pharmaceutical Hubs are in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad and Mumbai. India is the largest supplier of generic drugs which includes 20% of global exports. Indian Pharma industry is highly patchy. [1] The government of India had increased the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of Pharma industry. Only few Indian Pharma companies are existing in India. Most of the Pharma companies in India are controlled and operated by foreign companies due to cheap labour and low cost. [2]

Employment potential in Pharma Companies:

The pharma industry, like to engage their employees through performance based compensation policies and strategies that are designed to achieve the assigned targets. Employee’s salaries are also reviewed annually in which is to improve the employee’s potential. But in spite of all these benefits that are given to the employees, attrition is also high. Major reason for attrition is salary, targets, shift competition, growth of corporate hospitals and private nursing homes.

Role of Sales Representatives in Pharma Industry:

In today’s Pharma world, the extremely motivated sales force offers the considerable performance improvement. A subservient and rewarded sales force will maximize the revenues from the existing customers and methodically identifies and allows a pharma company to grow faster than its competitors. Such efforts are important in a situation where doctors have many prescribing options and more choice than before. So good motivational based incentive plan which is elastic to accommodate new product launches and handle difficult market is the need of the hour. It should be cost effective and competitive.

Motivation – Meaning:

Motivation refers to internal and external factors that inspire the aspiration and power among the people to be persistently involved and dedicated to the work, task and to have clear role definition and subject matter of the job to perform as per standards and to attain the goal. The term Motivation has been derived from the word’ Motive’. Motivation may be defined as inner status of our mind that promotes and guide them towards performance. It is always internal to us and is externalized through our performance. Fred Luthanas opined that Motivation process is based on psychological stimulus and also physiological expectation of employees that induce their behavior towards stated goal. [4]

Sales Force Performance of Motivation:

The sales force effectiveness drove its Hiring, compensation, size, territory, structure and alignment. These are the dimensions of phrases that management should concern to improve the motivation. The real challenge of motivation is to fine tune the HR systems that address the various personnel and sales improvement among the pharmaceutical sales force. Effective managerial practices which affect directly the sales force of pharma industry. They are training, promotions, compensation, coaching, managerial supervision and better communication.[3] Thus Motivational strategies are essential for a Pharma salesperson which is vital segment of the organization and business. Therefore, his role will add value to the business.

Importance of Motivation for Performance and Commitment:

Since the industrial growth and revolution, the model of Fredrick Taylor concludes that employees have numerous ways to develop their performance and potentialities which drive them towards motivation and morale. Motivating the employees is a delicate and purposeful challenge which evolves in shaping and gaining new knowledge of business. [5]

Exhibit I:

Intrinsic Motivation:

There are six ways in which employee’s performance can be improved through intrinsic motivation.

1.Telling as a Strategy of Intrinsic Motivation:

Employees without goals will be aimless. Their performance should be measurable with some standards to evaluate their performance. They should clearly define the level of expectation and performance standards as expected by the organization. The employees are expected to perform from that dimension and to align their individual goals towards organizational goals and the evaluation should be based on their performance.

2. Feedback and Review of Performance:

Employees should be given chance to engage in the work by giving the feedbacks on specific incidence or events from which the company can step forward. Feedback should be specific and precise. Feedbacks help in making progress.

3. Correct the Employees in a Closed Environment:

In all situations, motivation through negative reinforcement should be avoided and make it more positive in such a way that induce all employees.

4. Develop Participative Culture:

Employees should develop a perception of trust and participative culture.

5. Honour the Employee’s Performance:

Company should celebrate an employee of the month which motivates them drastically. It should be of standard practice in any organization to recognize positive and trends within the business.

6. Targets, Goals and Rewards should be Attainable:

All ‘super performance’ or top performing employee in an organization should be awarded with annual bonus trip and incentives. Organization should setup a series of smaller rewards throughout the year in order to their excellent performance.

Extrinsic Motivation:

Employees when they get motivated through external forces are termed as extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is a reward based on external consequences resulting from performing the activities like rewards and punishments. Below are some of the examples of extrinsic motivational methods.

·Bonuses

·Additional responsibilities and position power.

·Benefit packages

·Employee of the month or star performer.

Importance of Motivation and the Evolution of Performance and Commitment:

Motivation is concerned as the art of inducement to be productive and effective which indirectly train the employees for better performance. This is complicated issue in an organization since; everyone will get motivated by the same rewards. Sales managers need to work upon adapting the motivational factors to the individuals. [6] Rather than the financial aids as a motivation, sales representatives get highly motivated by Non-financial rewards. The non financial rewards such as achievements, career advancement, interesting and competing job, add on responsibility and recognition are the effective motivational factors for sales representatives which play an important role and stronger impact on performance. Earlier, 50% of sales reps are motivated through financial factors but in current scenario it is not so. [7]

Exhibit II:

Contemporary methods for motivation:

In order to motivate their representatives pharma companies uses some contemporary, hybrid strategic motivational factors. [8] They are,

·Talent Resource training and development methods

·Top management support

·Career planning, succession planning and development

·Performance appraisal of potential opportunities and incentives

·Incentive compensation of benefits of a motivators

·Participative culture

·Decentralization

·Autonomy

1.Talent Resource training and development:

If the companies give their representatives training it will result in higher profit and improved sales. It gives better quality of work. And it gives them the personal growth by developing their knowledge and skills.

2. Top management support:

The concept of top management support development plays major roles in sales representative’s motivation. It helps them to handle the problems of the company and they are capable of facing the increasing the competitions. They must be trained as executive in such a way that they can adjust to socio-economic forces and external environmental impact.

3. Career planning, succession planning and development:

Career planning simply means that the process by which one selects career goals and objectives. From the companies’ point of view, it means helping the employees to plan their career in terms of their capacities, potentialities within the context of organization's needs. This career planning and development helps the pharma industry to attract and retain their sales representatives. This will reduce the labour turnover and absenteeism. And also it helps in encouraging their representatives to fulfil their aspiration of challenging career.

4. Performance appraisal of potential opportunities:

Performance appraisal is also an important factor for motivating sales representatives. This is of both traditional and modern methods. This provides valuable information for personal decision such as pay increases, promotion, transfers etc., it helps the company to judge the effectiveness of the organization and align individual goals. It gives positive work environment to the sales representatives and increases the profitability. This increases the confidence level of the representatives and grievances, stress level can be reduced.

5. Incentive compensation of benefits of motivators:

In a country like India wage incentives are an important tool for motivating representatives. This helps them to improve their financial stability and their quality of work can be improved. This increases their credibility and improves loyalty, commitment and foster industrial relation. [9]

Exhibit III:

Impact of Motivation

Pharma Industries facing tremendous competitive pressure both internally and externally. Pharma companies are struggling to discover new drug technologies and tools to market their product. There are some common barriers internally and externally which impede the organizational effectiveness. They are Process barriers, organizational effective barriers and technological barriers. The motivation identification is the important organizational barrier. If it is not properly identified, the impact will be tremendous and costlier to the organization. The external pressure, technological imbalances in the market also impact the performance of Pharma sales people. [10] The previous studies about the internal pressures in pharma industry, out of the nine motivating factors, the five factors in which the sales representatives are easily get motivated. They are internal work environment, flexible timing and scope of development, career perspective and less work pressure. The study says that the above average selling performance is happening only through rewards and awards. [11]

Role and responsibilities of the sales person in Pharma Industry:

Medical or sales representative is the one who communicate the information about their company’s medicinal products to the doctors. They ensure the market availability. They also communicate the development and growth prospects, and will play a major role in health care industry.

Exhibit IV

Sustainable behavioural enhancement and performance of the sales representatives:

The motivation of employees (ie.) both intrinsic and extrinsic plays a vital role in development of sustainable growth, consistency in performance, implication of changed behavioural. The sustainable behaviour change due to motivation is essential in changed global business scenario. [12]

Exhibit IV

Role of demographics in motivational dimensions:

The demographic factors like age, Gender, Educational Qualification, job tenure also impact the motivation of the sales representatives. For each age group the target and incentives must differ. Their perception towards motivation also differs, which need to be identified in order to have the better performance among the employees due to motivational strategies. Employees with different work experience expect different level of benefits, incentives and perquisitions for the non-financial motivation. [13]

Motivational strategies for various generations:

Traditional approaches of motivations do not vary with generations. They don’t categorise to generations called gen X and gen Y but now it is important to understand about multi generational workforce and their preference towards motivational methods.

GEN X:

People who were born between the mid 1960’s and 1980’s are offspring of the baby boomers and called as Gen X. It can be motivated through growth opportunities, priorities choices, mentoring and challenging pay.

GEN Y:

The people who have born mid to late 1970’s and late 1990’s are called trophy kids. These gen y people are also known as over scheduled generations. Gen Y people will be motivated through Multitasking, competitive task, collaborative strategies, varied organisational structure, Technology, challenges, relationship building and positive reinforcement. [14]

Exhibit V

Motivational mechanism in the era of globalization and changed business scenario:

Impact of globalization is inevitable in pharma industry. Due to globalization, the following changes take place in employee minds, which also impacted the employee of pharma sector. They are;

·Global man power sourcing

·Social media impact

·Availability

·Global competition and market growth

·Technological growth and innovations

·Technology enhanced process

·Political and economic forces impact or external environmental process.

At this scenario, the role of motivation should be dynamic and strategic perspective. Challenges are for Pharma sector also it faces the difficulty of identifying the right motivational mix to motivate their employee.

Exhibit VI

CONCLUSION:

To conclude with the pharma sector that contributes more for economic environment should motivate their representatives or employees to attain their desired goal. It should be positively influenced by the Top management in order to innovate, productive and satisfying employees. Proper strategies must be used to find out top talents and opportunities to work as a team.

REFERENCES:

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Received on 09.09.2016 Modified on 09.12.2016

Research J. Pharm. and Tech. 2017; 10(1): 70-74.

DOI: 10.5958/0974-360X.2017.00017.8