Boosting Employee Moral and Productivity in the Workplace Essay

According to Maslow’s Needs theory, based on the fact that a person is justified as long as he still has not reached a certain level of satisfaction, has a better understanding of the fact that human motivation leads to a broad spectrum of their needs we could say that in order to motivate people, the manager has to give employees the opportunity to meet the needs in a way that together lead to the organization's objectives.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs was introduced in the mid-1940’s by Abraham Maslow; it is one of the most popular theories of work motivation to this day. the theory was originally used specifically in a psychological setting, but was made more popular by Douglas McGregor in the late 1960’s and began to be used by not only psychologists but managers as well (Steers & Porter, 1983). The hierarchy is based on the fact that human beings have needs, Maslow took these needs and separated them into five categories: physiological needs, safety, belongingness or social needs,

At the for profit college, the upper management is experiencing an issue with their employee’s morale. Because there are government regulations that do not allow for traditional sales bonuses be given to employees, they need to find a way to offer their employees, who do everything they can to get as many enrollments as possible (just like any other sales company), go without any type of incentive program. This paper will outline the project that upper management and executives have decided to use for an incentive program. This will help improve employee morale, enrollment and profit for the organization.

Tuechetti, C. (2013, August 7). Employee incentive programs to boost morale on a budget. The News & Observer Publishing Company. Retrieved February 12, 2016, from http://www.newsobserver.com/

Motivation is the key to the success to any organization. “Human relation thinkers see the terms motivation and behavior as closely related because human behavior occurs as a result of motivation” (Razik & Swanson, 2010, p. 108). Motivating people to work harder, give of themselves 100%, encouraging the employees to not only work harder, but smarter to develop ways of doing things better can be one of the hardest jobs of an organization (Razik & Swanson, 2010). In this essay I will describe several motivational theories Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,

Psychologist Abraham Maslow established a theory of motivation to justify how people in diverse organizations behave. His human requirements theory states that humans are never completely satisfied; that they crave satisfaction and those requirements can be classified into a hierarchy based upon importance. The lowest level of importance includes peoples’ desire to satisfy their physical needs, such as hunger and thirst. Following the lowest level, individuals need basic security and stability. After physical and safety needs are satisfied, individuals have the desire to gain acceptance into a group and to establish meaningful relationships. Once this need is somewhat fulfilled, one will strive for self-confidence and personal achievement. Lastly, an individual must realize their potential or they will become dissatisfied and discontent. This theory assists managers to motivate subordinates in a diverse workplace by ensuring low-level needs are met first. Then, management will be able to pursue supervising employees as they complete more multifaceted tasks. An effective manager influences employees positively by creating a safe work environment, providing the necessary tools and resources and involving employees in decision-making processes (Maslow, 1943, 1954).

Human Resources is dependent on the success, happiness, and contentment of employees that keep the business on course. Motivation is one of the best ways to push employees forward while making sure everyone is in a comfortable position in their job. Motivational theories just attempt to explain what motivates or makes people act the way that they do. The goal of understanding these theories and their outcomes is to ensure a better performance from each employee, and to give each of those employees the best situation they can have in the workplace. Visionaries such as Abraham Maslow, Frederick Herzberg, and Henry A. Landsberger also brought forward new ways of management and ways to handle internal situations that changed the landscape of human resources as a whole. Motivational theories instituted in the workplace have a commonly positive effect on both employees and management, showing that it is important to strive for proven motivational practices.

Two prominent theories – Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory and Herzberg’s dual-factor motivational theory have been widely cited in the management literature. Though very straightforward and simple Maslow’s theory reveals a fundamental structure of human motivation. Many researchers have developed motivational theories, which provide guiding frameworks to understand the retention issues of employees such as Maslow, 1943. From lower to higher levels, employees seek to satisfy five levels of needs from their jobs. They are the physiological, safety and social needs at the bottom, and the needs for self-esteem and self-actualization at the top (Maslow, 1943).

Employee need to be motivated and encouraged, appreciate their hardworking attitude. Understanding which theory best fits for employee helps high performance and retention of the employee in any business. What is motivation? motivation is a process of an individual behaviour is influenced to behave differently by meeting their psychological needs, although these psychological needs are quite different and employee satisfaction comes differently, but there is no doubt employee share same sentiments. All Tesco employees have a personal development plan that based on three 360 feedback process that designed to provide a meaningful feedback to all employees and help them to reach their potential capability. According to Abraham Maslow who argued human are motivated by five essential needs as indicated the above hierarchy of needs. Tesco provides the basic needs to its employees by paying a good remuneration and nice

Critically evaluate Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as way of understanding employee motivation in contemporary Chinese business

Critically evaluate Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as way of understanding employee motivation in contemporary Chinese business.

Per Maslow, these needs which are the run of motivation for an employee to work are arranged in a hierarchical order of increasing importance. This order is “prepotency”. It means satisfied need no longer remains a motivator and only the next greater needs can motivate an employee to perform further. This was later analyzed due to there is no certainty that these needs are consider as a motivation hierarchical order as recommended, therefore

Author explained that there are lot of disappointments and depression factors that cause the employees to be less effective in their jobs and that will lead to decrease their performance and such as conducting or sticking to a specific timetable or using the academic or the correct educational equipments. To add more, Peterson and Quintanilla (2003) did some studies and showed that there is a linkage between motivation and socialization and some social work values and norms play an important role too in applying the organizational applications of the motivation of the intrinsic factors and they are related to two theories such as namely cognitive evaluation theory and job characteristic theory. Furthermore, according to Lord (2002), he said that there are two important factors which related to motivation such and they are productivity and retention. Also Herzberg (1968) did some arguments which can end the cause of dissatisfaction and it won't be appear in the satisfaction field. And satisfaction level or motivation level can be appear only if there is a use of motivation. Also according to Maslow 1970, he said that there are popular needs which the human can't live without and this theory is very important to understand more about the motivation. This theory was named the hierarchy needs includes the most five basic levels of needs which lead the human to be satisfied. These factors of the motivation

(Businessballs, n.a.) But before reviewing the reward systems affecting the contract, we must know what motivates an employee and what an employer must aim to provide in order to maintain a mutually beneficial psychological contract. Maslow explains this through his ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ model.

The need for organizations to adapt to growing competitive markets has determined the emergence of new ways to motivate their human capital in a global context, an organization seeking to survive, must focus on achieving a reasonable level of commitment and solidarity among its employees. Compensation is the gratification that employees receive in exchange for their work. It is the element that allows the company to attract and retain the human resources and the employee meet their material needs, security and ego or status and varying compensation schemes acquire increasing importance in organizations.