Employee Motivation in Malaysia

There are as many different methods of motivating employees today as there are companies operating in the global business environment. Still, some strategies are prevalent across all organizations striving to improve employee motivation. The best employee motivation efforts will focus on what the employees deem to be important. It may be that employees within the same department of the same organization will have different motivators. Many organizations today find that flexibility in job design and reward systems has resulted in employees ' increased longevity with the company, improved productivity, and better morale.

Clearly defined goals as they relate to the organization can motivate employees through goal setting. Goals challenge to employees to make them want to explore new technology, ideas, and gain insight from a diverse workplace. Additionally, giving employees more responsibility will make them believe they have contributed with a sense of higher importance. Without motivation in the workplace, a business will suffer from the lack of efficiency from employees. Perhaps the most significant of increased employee motivation is that of increased productivity (staff@incentives.com, 2010). Therefore, it is important that employers give their employees an opportunity to work hard for their reward to obtain a high level of performance, which is an essential to the success of any business.

Employees are motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. In order for the reward system to be effective, it must encompass both sources of motivation. Studies have found that among employees surveyed, money was not the most important motivator, and in some instances managers have found money to have a de-motivating or negative effect on employees.  This research paper addresses the definition of rewards in the work environment context, the importance of rewarding employees for their job performance, motivators to employee performance such as extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, Herzberg’s two-factor theory in relation to rewarding employees, Hackman and Oldman model of job enrichment that

The key components to developing effective Reward Strategy is to ensure that there are clearly defined goals to meet business objectives, that the reward programme meets the needs of both the organisation and its employees, and to ensure that this is then supported by effective HR policies. In order to ensure these criteria are met there are a number of factors which influence how reward strategy is developed which include both internal factors within the organisation itself, as well as external factors outside the organisation.

A motivated workforce can be a significant success when employees are motivated to work at a higher levels of productivity. Also this means the whole organization is more effective at reaching it’s goals. Rewards can be a positive outcome when it comes to boosting your organizations self-confidence and higher employee satisfaction. Having a reward system can always be a good outcomes because this shows how much your workers are willing to work to achieving a goal in order to receive something in return. This not only gets things done but brings out another side of your organizations as a whole.

The success of any business depends on the productivity and satisfaction of its employees. Employees need to be motivated to work. Motivation can be defined as the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals. Motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic. For an individual to be motivated in a work situation there must be a need, which the individual would have to perceive a possibility of satisfying through some reward. Intrinsic motivation stems from motivations that are inherent and arise from performing the task of the job itself, which the individual gets a feeling of either positive or negative motivation as a result of

In the workforce, employees turns to be more involved in the successful results when they know that they will share in the rewards (Wilkinson, 1992). There have to be a well established incentives for better creation of ideas and efforts which would lead to increased business. Rewards allows employees to see themselves being valued and recognize their involvement in the business. Employees' morale and motivation is boosted and the staff progress on with higher level of creativity and

Motivation is defined by Engleberg and Wynn (2013, p. 42) as giving an individual a cause or reason to act. When working in groups, motivation is an essential skill for unifying and persuading group members to achieve objectives and overcoming obstacles (Engleberg & Wynn, 2013). The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of mGames, a gaming and mobile device developer, was motivated to act based on two categories of motivating factors (Engleberg & Wynn, 2013). Each of the categorical factors is associated with one of two reward employees for performance, extrinsic and intrinsic rewards (Engleberg & Wynn, 2013). Extrinsic rewards, influenced by the external environment factors such as a boss, usually result in monetary increases, fringe benefits, and special privileges (Engleberg & Wynn, 2013). Whereas intrinsic rewards are intangible, as they

People are motivated by different rewards and therefore, a manager must know each employee’s reason to why they are working at the organization (Ivancevich, Konopaske and Matteson, 2014). Even though there is no best theory of motivation as a manager you have to work even harder to try and understand all your personnel’s motivation (Ivancevich, Konopaske and Matteson, 2014). One aspect of the motivational construct is for certain, the best way to influence individual performance is to have a reward system (Ivancevich, Konopaske and Matteson, 2014). This reward system can also attract outside talent to come and work at the

Reward and recognition systems must be adaptable to the changes at the speed of the business, as well as adjust to the existing business climate. A good reward and recognition program should have the capacity to motivate employees while aligning its goals to those of the organization. This program would essentially involve creating a balance between the remuneration of employees and acknowledgement of a job well done while optimizing competitiveness and getting good return-on-pay-expenditure. It is imperative that a clearly or properly thought-out strategy is articulated reflecting the requirements and needs of the organization, as well as its population especially considering the cost of the reward and recognition programs in the

Reward Management (RM) has been defined as the distribution of monetary and non-monetary rewards to employees in an effort to align the interests of the employees, the organisation, and its shareholders (O’Neil, 1998). In addition O’Neil (1998) also suggests that a RM system can serve the purpose of attracting prospective job applicants, retaining valuable employees, motivating employees, ensuring legal requirements relating to direct and indirect rewards are not violated, assisting the company in achieving human resource and business objectives, and ultimately assisting the organisation in obtaining a competitive advantage.

So often we find that unsuccessful firms have staff that does not perform well according to their bad working conditions. The motivation factors include a sense of achievement, recognition, advancement, enjoyment of the work itself, the possibility of personal growth, and a sense of responsibility. Increasing job satisfaction and motivation and improving mental health, therefore, lead to increase productivity. Herzberg has called for attention to the need for increased understanding of the role of motivation in work organizations. He advanced a theory that was simple to understand and offered managers specific recommendations for actions to improve employee motivational levels. He also argued that money is not the most potent force on the job. According to this theory the most effective way to stimulate motivation is to improve the work itself. Herzberg argues that the most appropriate technique for building in motivation factors to enrich jobs. Job enrichment means expanding the critical functions and challenges of individual jobs (2/205). There are so many different ways to motivate employees. Employers can motivate their workers as individuals, groups, teams, or the organization as a whole. Motivation takes forms like offering rewards and employee recognition. Team-based reward systems have been raised as an issue in work management areas. Many employees prefer team-based reward systems to an individual approach. In a business journal in San Diego published an

that employees remain motivated if they are rewarded to achieve goals of a company. And when they are

Keeping employees motivated in addition to creating incentives and/or additional ways for employees to receive more compensation will create better performance overall within an organization. Contrary if company B gives their employees incentives to perform, without any motivational tactics they probably will not have as many top performances as company A, in addition the company may only seek short term rewards verses have long term success. Lack of motivation for employees within an organization, can cause long term damage for the company’s success. Different things motivate everyone; therefore there should be a system in place to keep employees motivated for the long term success of the company. In the MBM textbook under the concept of incentives, compensation, and motivation, there are a couple of different views of how it should be applied within an organization. We will discuss The Social Role of Profit, Personal Profit and Losses, and the way Market-Based Management view how incentives, compensation, and motivation should be applied and the things that effectively drive employees’ actions while at work.

Being rewarded and recognised for their work or contribution is what keeps an employee motivated to work towards achieving the organisational as well as personal goals. When the employees is motivated by rewards, they will have job satisfaction consequently increasing the productivity of the organisation. It necessitates the need of managers to pay more attention in understanding their employees and come up with suitable types of reward systems for the organisation so that the employees are intrinsically and extrinsically motivated all the time. The hypotheses that I put forward here is to support this statement that effective reward management is critical to