Motivation is necessary for employees to grow and stay satisfied with their jobs and their current employer. Motivation is a driving factor that leads people to work harder, produce higher quality work, and contributing to the factor of overall satisfaction, which leads to better employee retention. Everyone is unique, with their own set of unique values and ideas. To be successful in instilling motivation within a company there has to be multiple strategies in place to reach each individual.
A psychologist in the 1950s named Fredrick Herzberg set out to determine the effect of attitude on motivation within the workplace. Herzberg ask employees to describe situations where they felt really good, and really bad, about their job duties.
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The sections below show the results on the different studies that were conducted on employee responses towards the pay and other motivational interventions.
Results of Major Studies of Self-Reported Pay Importance.
1. Herzberg, Mausner, Peterson, and Capwell (1957) researched 16 studies that showed that pay and salary ranked sixth in importance to the employees studied.
2. Lawler (1971) researched 49 studies showing that pay and salary ranked third.
3. Jurgensen (1978) collected rankings of importance from more than 50,000 employees over a 30-year period and determined that the pay and salary was ranked fifth in importance to men, and seventh in importance to women.
4. Towers Perrin (2003) surveyed 35,000 U.S. employees and found that the importance of pay varies by objective. Competitive base pay ranked second and pay raises based on individual performance ranked eighth for attracting employees. Competitive base pay ranked sixth in retaining employees.
Results of Major Studies of Behavioral Responses to Pay and Other Motivational Intervention.
1. Locke, Feren, McCaleb, Shaw, and Denny (1980) found that individual pay incentives increased productivity by an average of 30%, while employee participation programs increased productivity by less than 1%.
2. Guzzo, Jette, and Katzell (1985) showed that monetary incentives had the largest effect on productivity of all interventions. The pay
“Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life”(Levitt and Dubner 12). Levitt and Dubner once mentioned in their book “Freakonomics”. According to Oxford dictionary, incentives are something tends to incite to action or greater effort, as a reward offered for increased productivity (“incentives”). In business field, incentives are something given by bosses to encourage their employees to endeavour in bringing benefits to their business. For a simple example, the employee who hits the monthly or year sales target will get cash or prizes as incentives. Apparently, these incentives are something that motivates employees maintains their great performance and also to motivate other employee, whoever wants to get the incentives, work harder.
Herzberg doesn?t believe in the giving of bonuses in order to increase productivity. Herzberg states that ?Hunger, a basic biological drive makes it necessary to earn money, and then money becomes a specific drive? (Herzberg, 1991, p.16). This means that once employees start being rewarded with money they won?t be able to work without it. Another firm believer of this is Kohn who states, ?When reward systems fail don?t blame the program, look at the promise behind it.? (1993, p.54). Kohns article describes incentives, as only bringing temporary compliance and once the rewards run out people will revert back to their old behaviours.
carefully planned out and considered, the total closure or failure of the organization could be at hand in the near future. In our modern age, employers know that salary is not the only factor that should be considered and that salary alone will not lead to better or more highly profitable workers alone. This is why compensation planning is important and why pay should have some connection between performance and compensation. This is why the human resources department should consider many monetary and non-monetary factors when considering how to properly compensate and motivate employees (Dessler, 2013).
The biggest problem to a manager is managing employees. This is because employers often do not know how to handle their employees. An effective manager knows that motivation is a difficult skill to acquire. So over the years, many theorist have studied motivation in order to
A recent survey conducted by Mercer Consulting Firm found that salary is the reward component most profoundly appreciated by employees; however, just 55 percent are happy with what they earn. When employees believe, they are being paid short of what
With the constant change in today’s business world, to have a competitive advantage makes it difficult for employers to attract and retain the most talented employees. Identifying the company’s compensation strategy ensures the organization offers the right pay and manages the pay increases to retain top talents. When we hear the word compensation we think about compensating an employee for their work performed, but there
When making compensation decisions, whether it is internal or external, comparisons must be considered. However, employers must carefully balance pay structures, because internal and external comparisons may not converge. Therefore, employers may differ in the way they place priorities on internal and/or external comparison data when they are developing pay structures.
After conducting a study of information gathered from their human resources ConAgra, discovered that salary is not one of the top items when it comes to job satisfaction, as a matter of fact compensation was not even among the top 10 items. Their discovery is comparable to
There are five major components of job satisfaction, one being monetary benefits (Ghillyer 2010). According to Ghillyer (2012) an employee’s behavior towards their pay may affect their work performance. The issue that arises with employee motivation is that management is unable to satisfy all (Ghillyer 2010). This becomes an even larger problem when employees being joining unions, resigning and being frequently absent (Ghillyer 2010).
This would not only be advantageous for the employer but also the employee since it would result in higher wages. Due to this, the worker’s level of motivation and drive to do better would escalate leading to overall productivity of the organization (Salimath and Jones, 2011, p.88).
Some organizations are unwilling to show their reward systems and pay policies (Lawler, 1995). Many Human Resources professionals believe gender pay gaps to be resolvable through the monitoring of pay levels and communication (Report on Salary Surveys).Greater pay transparency has been a great benefit to the board, employees and managers as they now know what is happening across the business and they are able to confidently justify their actions (Commission Policy Report).All market-related supplements are recorded and reviewed separately from basic salary to ensure openness and transparency. Regular research market rates within the various labor markets in which they operate is undertaken improving transparency would also help to improve talent development, as employees would be able to see what they could earn if they wanted to move to another division and upgrade their skill set. (Commission Policy Report).
Human Resources is dependent on the success, happiness, and contentment of employees that keep the business on course. Motivation is one of the best ways to push employees forward while making sure everyone is in a comfortable position in their job. Motivational theories just attempt to explain what motivates or makes people act the way that they do. The goal of understanding these theories and their outcomes is to ensure a better performance from each employee, and to give each of those employees the best situation they can have in the workplace. Visionaries such as Abraham Maslow, Frederick Herzberg, and Henry A. Landsberger also brought forward new ways of management and ways to handle internal situations that changed the landscape of human resources as a whole. Motivational theories instituted in the workplace have a commonly positive effect on both employees and management, showing that it is important to strive for proven motivational practices.
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.
An incentive pay program can reward employees who continue to produce superior work or encourage employees who already produce good work to best. Sometimes, use an incentive system when employees are lack of enthusiasm of getting down to work and improving things. If everyone in the same job classification gets the same pay, there is no real incentive to do an outstanding job (French, 1990). Various incentive plans used to motivate all employees such as production staff, sales staff, administrative staff and managerial and professional staff on an individual basis. To be improved employee work performance, the incentive pay programs need to be fairly matched with the employees’ expectation. Properly designed and maintained incentive pay program has the potential to increase employees’ productivity and work performance.