Motivation in a Small Enterprise

Employee motivation is, or at least must be, one of the key issues for directors, managers and personnel managers. The leader must be able to find the sensitive strings of his subordinates, which can be motivated by influencing them to achieve high performance. The correct use of motivation encourages staff to make more efficient use of their knowledge, skills, and talents. In today's turbulent, often chaotic environment, commercial success depends on the employee's talent and effort. Despite the many existing theories and practices, some of the motivation of leaders today remains a mystical term. This is partly due to the fact that people are motivated by different things and techniques.

According to researcher Lindner (1998), motivated employees are needed in our rapidly changing workplaces to aid in the survival of organizations. Not only is it important to meet the needs of the consumer, it is equally important that to make sure that associates are taken care of and remain motivated. For this reason, Gibson, Ivancevich, Donnelly and Konopaske (2012) “states much of management’s time is spent addressing the motivation of their employees” (p. 125). According to the Encyclopedia of Small Business (2007), employee motivation is the level of energy, commitment, and creativity employees bring to their jobs; the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals (Lindner, 1988). Despite its obvious importance, employee motivation can be an elusive quest for managers due to the multiplicity of incentives that can influence employees to do their best work. The reality is that every employee has different ways to become motivated and the knowledge of how to motivate them is key to organizational success. It is imperative that employers get to know the personal needs and wants of their employees in order to establish tactics in which to motivate each of them. Once achieved, “managers are in a better position to encourage and reward employees to behave in effective ways” (Gibson et al, 2012, p.

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,

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.

Motivation is important to keep the employees committed towards their job responsibilities and dedicated towards the corporate wide objectives of their organization. It is one of the core functions performed by the Human Resource Department of an organization. There are different management techniques which can be used by organizations to motivate their employees. These techniques include monetary or financial rewards and non-monetary or non-financial rewards. Monetary rewards are the extrinsic factors of motivation. These rewards include salary, bonuses, periodic or performance based increments, cash rewards, discounted product or service packages, and other financial benefits. On the other hand, non-monetary rewards include all those intrinsic factors that do not involve money; for example performance appraisal, promotion to higher job positions, greater responsibilities, job rotation, etc. Both these types of rewards are given by organizations to motivate their employees and keep them committed towards their job responsibilities. The Literature is full of the researches carried out on different motivational factors and techniques which organizations from all over the world use in different situations. The purpose of this paper is to critically review some recent research studies which compare different motivational techniques and discuss their usefulness and efficacy for the business organizations.

Over the last several years, the issue of employee motivation inside the workplace has been increasingly brought to the forefront. The reason why is because, globalization has been having an effect on the ability of firms to compete (which is placing more pressure on them). To deal with these challenges, most organizations are relying on their employees. The results are that those employers who are able to use this resource will be able to make adjustments quickly. This is when the firm will be able to maintain their dominance in the marketplace.

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,

In the 1960s, LEWIN was one of the first to address employees’ motivation. According to him, motivation and skills must be combined to determine the level of performance. After him, there was a lot of research done about that subject; we then realized that motivation was very important to organizations. Motivation at work can therefore be defined as the employee 's willingness to do their job, the degree to which they are involved, their perseverance and continuity of their effort. Nowadays, companies are in a situation of hyper-competition, and profitability, profits and economies of scale have become major concerns. Human resources services are at the forefront. Indeed, they must succeed in conciliating satisfaction and profitability in

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.

In an organization, motivation involves ensuring the employees perform highly to achieve the organization's desired goals. Several motivational theories have been advanced as to explain workers' attitudes towards motivation. One such theory is Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory (Bauer & Erdogan, 2015). He posits that there are certain factors in the workplace that cause job satisfaction. These include the advancement of an employee’s career. He believed that workers were no longer just satisfied with the minimum basic salary but aimed to achieve more. Herzberg also found there are certain factors in the company that causes dissatisfaction for the employee. These include supervision, company policies, salaries and work conditions. If a business wants to motivate its employees, it should focus on satisfaction factors (Bauer & Erdogan,

The Maslow Need Hierarchy Theory has a made a significant contribution in the field of organisational behaviour and management in the area of employee motivation. The incorporation of the need theory into the work environment today could be as a result of the contributions made so far.

This report will explore the problem of motivation at the workplace. Human resource practitioners now consider motivation as the biggest challenge to the modern workplace. Numerous surveys done in the UK and elsewhere in the world suggest that only a fraction of total employees is happy with their job. This is problematic because employee output is dependent on their level of motivation. Demotivated workers impose a cost on the employer due lost productivity. In other words, companies can improve performance of their organization by investing in improving employee motivation at work. From a theoretical perspective, employees lose their motivation if their needs are not met. Maslow hierarchy of needs suggests that employees can be motivated by meeting their needs. This paper also examines

Employee motivation a powerful new model explores drivers of employee motivation, the levers the managers can pull to address them and the local strategies that can boost motivation despite organizational constraints. Finding of new research introduce a model that establishes the four basic emotional need people exhibit; they are the drive to acquire, bond, comprehend and defend. Also it exhort organizations take an holistic approach to satisfy employee’s emotional needs through its reward system, culture, management systems, and design of jobs. The potential benefit of a motivated workforce to an

Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology is devoted to the study of employee behavior in the workplace and understanding the issues facing organizations and employees in today’s complex and ever changing environment. Motivation refers to the set of forces that influence people to choose various behaviors among several alternatives available to them. An organization depends on the ability of management to provide a positive, fostering and motivating environment for its employees in order to increase profits, productivity and lower turnover rates of its employees. The purpose of this paper is to discuss and compare six academic journal articles and explore the behavior, job, and need based theories of motivation that can aid management in motivating and understanding their employees. Finding that delicate balance to can sometimes be elusive so effectively learning how to motivate by understanding, controlling and influencing factors to manipulate behavior and choices that are available to employees can produce the desired outcome.

An employee performance appraisal can act as motivation for an employee to improve his productivity. When an employee sees his goals clearly defined and is measured against the set goals and objectives, a need can be identified about the future strategies of employee motivation. In this review, I will look at and explore the multiple arguments of the management research articles. So, the question I must ask: is there a positive correlation between employee motivation and job performance?