Employee Motivation

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The grounded knowledge of various theory on motivation can help healthcare leaders make decisions that will yield better outcome when it comes to motivation. If a healthcare leader can’t motivate his organization, the moral of the organization which is supposed to be result oriented may fall short of the required standard.

Buchbinder, S., & Shanks, N. (2012). Management and Motivation. In Introduction to Health Care Management 2nd ed (p. 42). Canada: Michael Brown.

Employee equality, job security, and fair wages are considered some of the hygiene factors that exist in a workplace environment (O. Ferrell, Hirt, & L. Ferrell, 2009). Frederick Herzberg used these elements along with motivational factors to create a theory of motivation, known as Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory.

Herzberg, a pioneer in motivation theory, determined that there are two factors that motivate employees: high-order needs and low-order needs. Those high-order needs are met by intrinsic motivation, such as fulfilling our personal needs and growth: achievements, recognition, promotions, work itself, and responsibility. He refers to low-order needs as hygienic factors; those needs cannot motivate employees but can minimize dissatisfaction in the work-place. Hygienic factors include, pay, company guidelines, quality of supervision, working conditions, relationships with co-workers, and job security (Damij, 2015, p.2).

Motivating people that are working under management can be a difficult task at times. Everyone is unique, no people are exactly the same and each person needs something different to become motivated and with that the challenge comes in for the managers, finding the right motivator for the right employee. Knowing and caring about the employees needs will help managers know what type of rewards to offer as a way to motivate their employees. The success of any organization, especially health care organizations solely depends on the skills of managers and how they present the work environment for their employees. When employees are motivated they tend to be more satisfied with their jobs and will stay with the organization much longer as a result of their satisfaction.

Show how your selected organization applies the motivation theories to workplace productivity. Is it achieving the desired results?

Fredirick Herzberg 1959 created a two dimensional models of factors that influence people’s attitudes towards work. He was a psychologist interested in the correlation between employee attitude and workplace motivation. Herzberg concluded that factors such as organizational procedures, operational environments, interpersonal relations, and income are considered hygiene factors. He required finding out what made people feel fulfilled and unsatisfied when it came to the workplace. After spending uncountable hours interviewing employees about what made them feel both good and bad about their jobs, Herzberg developed a theory of workplace motivation called the two-factor theory. The two-factor theory is based on the assumption that there are two sets of factors that influence motivation in the workplace by either enhancing employee satisfaction or hindering it. The factors which make people satisfied with their jobs are different from those factors which make people dissatisfied are initiate by Herzberg’s studies of work motivation. The meaning of motivators in his theory is a sense of achievement meaning employees will know that

Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory states that both hygiene factors and motivators are factors that help motivate employees to work. According to Frederick Herzberg, a behavioral scientist who proposed this two-factory theory, there are job factors that are repercussions of satisfaction while there are other job factors that prevent dissatisfaction. Hygiene factors are those, which employees need for motivation to exist at their workplace. In other words, without hygiene factors, there is no employee satisfaction. As hygiene factors are not motivators themselves, workspace, break times, and the availability of parking need to be improved to prevent a decline in overall productivity.

One skill that managers and leaders must be able to exhibit is the ability to motivate their employees. Administrators in all fields must find ways to hire, retain, and motivate employees (Kroth, 2007). Workplace motivation is a result of a set of internal and external forces that cause an employee to choose an appropriate course of action and engage in certain behaviors (Newstrom, 2015). Motivation also requires discovering and understanding employee drives and needs, since it originates within an individual (Newstrom, 2015). The beginning stages of motivation stem from the manager and their behaviors, and also the employee and their drive. As we know, people tend to develop certain motivational drives as a product of the cultural environment in which they live (Newstrom, 2015). Engstrom Auto mirror plant began to face a recession in productivity and employee motivation, while also facing a downturn in the industrial field as well. The plant adopted the Scanlon Plan, the plan was originated by Joseph Scanlon in the 1930’s in order to help small, distressed companies (Beers & Collins, 2008). Problems began to develop at Engstrom when the company began to redesign product lines to incorporate new technology. The long production delays resulted in alienated customers, and the plant manager lacked the proper knowledge in regards to the new technology. The plant manager was let go and Ron Bent was hired to attempt a turnaround. Bent and Hayley had confidence in incentive

The Two-Factor Theory of motivation also known as the dual-factor theory or motivation-hygiene theory and it was developed by psychologist Frederick Herzberg in the 1950s.

According to Herzberg, the factors leading to job satisfaction are distinctly different from those that lead to job-dissatisfaction. Therefore, the managers who seek to eliminate factors that create job-dissatisfaction can bring about peace at the workplace but cannot motivate the employees. These factors are termed as hygiene factors comprising administration, supervision, working conditions, salary and wages etc. While absence of hygiene factors will lead to dissatisfaction, mere presence of these factors will not satisfy (i.e. motivate) the employees. In order to motivate the employees, managers must resort to ‘motivators’ (those factors that motivate the employees towards better performance) such as recognition, challenging assignment, responsibility, opportunities for growth and self-fulfillment etc.

Herzberg’s two-factor theory Psychologist Frederick Herzberg developed a ‘two-factor’ theory for motivation based on ‘motivators’ and ‘hygience factors’. Hygience factors are basic human needs at work. It do not motivate but failure to meet them causes dissatisfaction. The hygience factors

Human capital has emerged as the most critical firm asset, and the ability to attract motivate and retain capable employees is essential in organization’s innovation and quality improvement (Frye, 2004). These sentiments are supported by Jung and Hartog, (2007) who suggest that, one way for organizations to become more innovative is to capitalize on their employees’ ability to innovate. Jung and Hartog, continue to argue that employees can help to improve business performance through their ability to generate ideas and use these as building blocks for new and better products, services and work processes. Therefore, under new work conditions, to create value, every

There are six major employee motivation theories with respect to modern management (Psichogios, 2012). These are: