Motivational Strategies for an Organization's Staff

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.

In any workplace, workers are no doubt the essential mainstay that holds any business or corporation together. Employees achieve important tasks to help the company’s long term vision and goals to be successful and efficient. A business can’t be successful without a proper management that is why it is important for employees to enjoy going to work and they also have maintain a positive attitude while being productive and completing tasks. Motivation is what gives a person the purpose to perform or behave in a certain way with the desire or willingness to gain something. There are two types of motivations, motivation that comes from a person and motivation that comes from materially goals. It is very necessary that employers keep their employees motivated and encourage them to perform above expectations.

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.

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.

A successful motivational program recognizes these factors and combines awards, recognition, and peer pressure. To even further maximize full potential, managers should personalize these incentives based on the employee’s interests, hobbies, and recreational activities (Boe, 2011). This is consistent with the ERG theory developed by Clayton

Health care organizations in recent decades have found they must do more with fewer resources, in particular fewer human resources. Economic instability in the United States coupled with governmental changes in health care reimbursement structures have compelled considerable reductions in force in health care organizations and in some instances elimination of services previously provided. In this economic environment, dedicated and motivated employees in health care facilities are the most valuable resources of the organization. However, for employees to be valuable to the organization they must be engaged in the goals,

It is very important to learn how to motivate employees, employees are one of the most important tools for any business, they are the ones that have a direct contact with customers. As we go over the chapter we learn that in order to motivate employees’ money is not the best option. We can motivate employee make the feel valuable, understanding their personal needs, thank them for their job performances, recognizing their improvements, respect them, etc. If an employee is happy at his job environment their performance will be the best, and management doesn’t have to be over them all the

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

Since a common goal of business is to achieve sustained high level of performance, it is important for companies to pay close attention to its employee’s mindset, and conduct the best way to motivate them. There are several factors that can affect employee performance such as goal setting, possible opportunities, working condition and reward system (Whetten & Cameron, 2005, p. 24).

Work. Some love it, some hate it, others see it as an escape from reality, and still others view it as passing time, but everyone works to provide for our families and ourselves. Whether rich or poor, work is something that everyone will experience sometime during his or her lifespan. Motivation plays a key role in one’s opinion on work. In this struggling economy, organizations are asking how to motivate employees, as many have had to restructure and develop ways to maximize its resources. Using different motivational techniques together in the workplace can improve overall moral, improve employee job satisfaction, and quite possibly increase performance.

The motivational strategies developed by most companies refer to financial motivation, but also to other types of compensation and benefits that can stimulate employees' work improvements (McNamara, 2010). Such compensation and benefits usually refer to bonuses, paid vacations, public acknowledgement of results, paid subscriptions to health and fitness clubs, training programs intended to improve employees' skills, and others. There are numerous types of compensation and benefits that can be addressed, but the motivational strategy must develop

The purpose of this paper is to explain the importance of staffing within an organization. Every organization has a need for some sort of staffing process no matter what size or type of business they are. “Staffing is a critical organizational function concerned with the acquisition, deployment, and retention of the organization’s workforce.” (Heneman, Judge, & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2014)

When running a business, one would have to hire employees who perform well and product and or quality is of the same caliber. The key to an employee performance is motivation. The expression, you can lead a horse to water but you cannot force it to drink water, can be seen within the human race.

Motivational programs provided to employees can prove to be very useful tools to increase motivation from the employees, reduce employee turnover and help to maintain skilled and talented personnel. Strategies used to influence employee loyalty can be intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is explained as one's personal incentive to engage in an activity for a feeling of personal satisfaction and accomplishment without expectation of external rewards or recognition. Whereas, extrinsic motivation is defined as using external incentives such as prizes, money or rewards to motivate an individual to complete a task or engage in an activity.

Motivating the workforce is something many firms struggle with; defining what factors motivate individuals is something that requires personal knowledge and understanding of all employees. Ultimately one may ask why motivation is important to a workforce, “motivation can be seen as a source of positive energy influencing people’s lives” therefore discovering what motivates a workforce is a necessity to have highly success workforce (Hauser, 2014). Identifying the motivational needs of a workforce enables leadership to tailor factors like recognition, and inspiration to meet the demands of their employees. However, the identification of these factors is not simply a means of filling out a simple questionnaire or leadership making an assessment of an individual, truly knowing the member is required in order to properly motivate them.