Motivation in the Workplace Essay

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.

Motivation is derived from an internal force that provides an individual the opportunity to achieve their needs or goals. People are motivated by a variety of things and often have different motivating factors. Employers should be mindful of individual motivating factors when attempting to motivate staff to increase performance. While some people may be motivated by money, many are motivated by things like: recognition, promotion, and increased responsibility. Once an employer has identified motivating factors they are able to analyze a variety of motivational theories to design and implement a program that will motivate employees to go above and beyond what is expected of them.

Herzberg’s two factor theory of motivation at the workplace shows the difference between two factors of motivation. The two factors being satisfiers, which are the main causes for job satisfaction (motivation), from hygiene factors which are the main causes for job dissatisfaction (demotivation to stay in the job). Examples of motivating factors are achievement, recognition, responsibility and the work itself. Hygiene factors include: working conditions, salary, relationship with colleagues, supervision, etc. An organisation needs to influence satisfiers through performance management using range of tools such as: job descriptions, supervision, performance appraisals, continuous development/training, rewards and career development.

All employees analyze their environment and strive to be recognized and rewarded for their hard work and dedication they put into the company, in a word they are seeking justice. Justice can be defined as a person receiving what they feel they are entitled to and if they do not receive what they deserve the situation may board on injustice. Unfortunately in today’s society justice and appreciation are not given out to all those deserving (Pinder, 1998). A major problem to address is how to keep the motivation level high in a company when the employees do not feel appreciated.

With this being said, motivation is very complex and is continuously fluctuating over time (Maslow, 1954). Getting employees optimally motivated is very difficult, due to the various components that go into motivation. However, when an employee is positively motivated, they will be able to accomplish any task set in front of them.

We can define motivation as the desire and willingness to do something and the inner force that helps individuals achieve their goals. Understanding what motivates employees and what employers can do to motivate their employees has been the focus of research for many years. This is mainly because motivated employees can provide an organisation with a distinctive advantage and a competitive edge and by being more productive they can help the organisation thrive and survive. In a public service organisation such as West North West Homes we would expect staff to be motivated partly by the desire to have a positive impact on others. Someone working within a sales team

According to the expectancy theory of motivation, in the workplace an employee’s willingness to work is dependent upon the end result of working and how important the end result is to the employee. An employee will be more compelled to put forth more effort if it is believed that the consequence of doing so will be a positive performance evaluation. The employee must believe that by achieving a positive performance evaluation, an incentive will be achieved. The incentive, whether it is monetary or advancement, must benefit the employee (Robbins, 2012).

The relationship between motivation and performance management is important as they work simultaneously with each other. Motivation is the key to an individual's degree of willingness to exert and maintain their efforts towards the organisational goals. Motivation levels are likely to have an effect on performance. If an individual has high motivation, it is likely to increase their performance. However this may not always be the case. Motivation is about the factors, which links into how organisation uses performance management to get better results from their staff by strategically encouraging the performance within its business. If employees are highly motivated they will perform better, and will co-operate collectively to improve the standards which would lead to a sense of achievement creating greater motivation.

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

Motivation is the force that makes us do things, whether accomplishing personal goals or completing tasks at work. Most people are motivated as a result of their individual needs being satisfied, which gives them the inspiration to perform specific behaviors for which they receive rewards (Kinicki & Williams, 2011). These needs vary from person to person, as everybody has specific needs to be satisfied. When we consider factors that determine the motivation of employees, many of us think of a high salary. This answer is correct for the reason that some employees will be motivated by money, but mostly wrong for the reason that it does not satisfy other needs to a lasting degree (Bizhelp24, 2010). This supports the idea that human

In the book “DRIVE - the surprising truth about what motivates us”, Daniel Pink says that people will not do a better job if they’re offered a reward. They will do a better job if given the opportunity to work on their own time, be creative and do good. He states, “The secret to high performance and satisfaction is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, learn and create new things and to do better by ourselves and our world”. He speaks about a whole new way that companies should look at human motivation. The book discusses three main components of motivation- autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy describes how people want to be

Motivation in the workplace is one of the major concerns that managers face when trying to encourage their employees to work harder and do what is expected of them on a day-to-day basis. According to Organizational Behavior by John R. Schermerhorn, James G. Hunt and Richard N. Osborn the definition of motivation is "the individual forces that account for the direction, level, and persistence of a person's effort expended at work." They go on to say that "motivation is a key concern in firms across the globe." Through the years there have been several theories as to what motivates employees to do their best at work. In order to better understand these theories we will apply them to a fictitious organization that has the following

"Work" is a positive thing for many people. To some people, it may be described as a place to escape from the kids, or even a time consumption thing for a single or retired person, but most importantly it is what we do in order to provide for our families and ourselves. Work is something that we all will experience at one time or another during our lives.

(P2.4) Motivation refers to the willingness of individuals to perform certain tasks or actions and because when workers are motivated they strive more to improve and develop their skills to do a better job for their next task that are given to them. Here are the motivational techniques that can resolve to motivate employees to perform better:

Motivation at work stimulates the interest of a person in an activity. Motivation at works is very complex because there are multiple motives operating at the same time. Goals motivate and guide workers' behaviors. Specific goals are better than general goals and little difficulty is better than easy goals. The degree of expectancy determines how much effort is put forth, people will work hard if they expect the effort will pay off. Increased job enrichment which includes more control at work and a high number of tasks to perform leads to high motivation. Stress on the job reduces motivation and productivity. The specific needs to achieve and