The Importance Of Motivation In The Workplace

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.

What is motivation? As manager’s, motivation is one of the most vital and crucial assets to possess in managing a business. This drive is a critical tool to use in the work place and determine the success or failure of an organization. Motivation is a driving force that initiates and directs behavior. In other words, motivation is an internal energy that drives an individual to do something in order to achieve a certain goal. Therefore, creating a motivating environment in the workplace will lead to happy employees. Creating a work environment like this, managers can expect low staff turnovers, improved productivity, happy customers, and better financial performance. Therefore, the input of motivation use towards employees determines the output efficiency of the company. However, everyone involved in an organization is motivated differently. Everybody has their own individual needs in regards to motivation. Depending on how motivated a person is, determines the effort that individual puts into the work and therefore, how productive they are.

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate and review three journal articles by John Honore (2009), James Lindner (1998), and an article by Fred Herrera (2002). All three articles discussed the topic of employee motivation in the workplace. The authors examined several motivational theories and put forward their ideas on the concepts and application of motivational techniques. The authors’ work provides insight into the psychology of motivation and the different factors and theories that affect it. My conclusion is in line with the authors’, motivated employees are needed for the organisational survival and just like our constantly changing environment and each individual is different, motivational techniques need to be continuously explored and developed.

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.

Motivation can be defined in many ways. In the oxford dictionary Motivation is explained as a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way. There are so many ways of motivating people as I have discovered by all the motivation theories that have been thought by people all over the world. Some of the theories are very different to each other as lots of people have different opinions. For manager it is so important they understand how motivation works as they want to get the best work out of their employees. If the managers can’t motivate their employees there work commitment will not be great and this could have very bad effects for the business. The two theories that I will discuss are the reversal theory and the vrooms

Motivation is the desire to behave in a particular way or the willingness to do something. Motivating within a workplace or an organization is defined as “psychological processes that cause the arousal, direction, and persistence of voluntary actions that are goal directed”. Organizations depend on their employees and managers to work towards their mission and goals. In order to achieve the common goals organizations incorporate motivational factors which promotes and meets the expectations as well as the needs of employees. Also, to promote learning and productivity, organizations initiate motivation among employees. Organizations face the dilemma of sustaining employees due to lack of motivation because employees wrestles to balance work life and their personal life. Organizations try to develop motivational strategies that help increase productivity and performance, and has a significant effect or impact on the management and on the employees. Google is one such organization which is known for its motivational factors of different forms. However, there are advantages and disadvantages of motivation. There are also ways in which attempts to motivation incorporated within an organization can go wrong. Therefore, organizations need to learn the importance of motivation and its effect on productivity. Organizations also need to sustain job satisfaction of employees by adjusting the job design and the job task.

What is motivation? Motivation is defined as “an individual’s willingness to respond to the organization’s requirements in short run.” (P.71 Dixon, 1998) For the purposes of this research paper, I find the most fitting definition of motivation is to define it as “the force that Energizes, Directs, and Sustains behavior.” (uri.com, 2014) Motivation is imperative to productivity. A highly motivated staff often leads to high productivity from the workforce.

To be or not to be motivated is much of an individual’s choice. Many factors make individual motived, but it is always a central problem for leaders and managers to well use those factors to get their employee motivated. Unmotivated employees are likely to spend little or no effort in their jobs, having very low productivity, and do not willing to stay with the organization if possible. On the other hand, motived employees are likely to work persistent, creative and productive. If managers can motive their employees, both and organization and the employees benefit from the fact.

Motivation is one of the most important aspects of an effective organization. The saying, “happy wife happy life,” can help explain the importance of motivation and its outcomes in a comedic approach. If the “happy wife” is thought as “happy employees,” then the results would produce a more enjoyable and productive organization. This analogy is a way to think about how important the happiness of others can affect the big picture. Creating an environment and culture that is internally and externally motivating helps workers strive toward a desired outcome. Motivation in the workplace makes employees work harder, extensively, and diligently at their job with aspiration rather than disgust. Motivating performance in an organization forces the worker to have the “want” mentality to be the best or produce the best results.

A manager’s objective must be to help construct an organization with employees that motivate and inspire each other. Employees’ motivation are important. Motivation affects employee’s performance, which affects the company’s overall success. It leads to greater work performance. Motivation is important because it creates the drive for employees to perform their responsibilities and achieve their organizational goals. “It is the psychological catalyst employees and owners require to reach the goal” (McKay, 2014). In order for managers to create a strategic motivational plan, managers need to have a better understanding of what motivates their employees.

The meaning of motivation has been defined as follows: the psychological process that gives behavior purpose and direction (Kreitner, 1995); the internal drive to satisfy an unsatisfied need (Higgins, 1994); the will to achieve (Bedeian, 1993); and an inclination to act in a purposive manner to achieve specific needs (Buford, Bedeian, & Linder, 1995). What motivates people can vary from person to person. For example, one person may be motivated by monetary rewards or extrinsic factors, while others are motivated by recognition and achievement or intrinsic factors (Linder, 1998). Motivation plays a vital role in an agency’s management. The key factor is to identify the method of each employee’s motivation and work on that to increase job satisfaction and decrease job burnout. A successful leader will need to understand different motivational theories and must be able to determine which strategy or combination of strategies works best to motivate each member of their team.

To date, numerous studies have been conducted and formulated quite profound theories about motivation, how it can enrich any work environment existing economic activity, including the implicit costs of materials and not included as an element of human management approach organizations, in parallel, these works are based on present as individual study unit cut-practiced in a vacuum exposure as a collective dynamic mechanism, ie how different people - which have elements of different interest - could come to share the same motivational ingredient despite their individual differences, as well as people management strategy that could consolidate a scenario of genuine willingness to be motivated collectively.

One of the most important assets of any organization is its human resources. Human resources play an important role in organization’s performance and success. So motivating employees is considered by organizations as crucial to retain the employees and drive them to perform better. Motivated employees tend to be gore effective in fulfilling their job responsibilities. Baack (2012) notes that the exiting literature on motivation seeks to develop an understanding of the nature of motivation, how to increase motivation level in employees and improve employee performance; thus, in turn, improve overall performance of the organization. Motivation helps employees to feel encouraged to perform effectively and thus, contribute towards

Secondly, work effort or motivation is also an important effect to job performance. Motivation refers to the employees’ willingness to perform, how much responsibility the employees perform their job, how much effort they put in work in order to explains why some people feel happy with their jobs while others feel unhappy so they leave their jobs or stay on but complaint or not come to work properly (according to Elliot, Andrew J; Covington, Martin, 2001). For example, a student spends double time to study because she wants to get a better grade. In other hand, the motivation is to get the better grade; this student’s behaviour is to spend more time to study. Furthermore, motivation is the process of individual’s intensity, direction and persistence in order to toward goals. Intensity means how hard, how long and how much a person tries and puts their efforts in their jobs. Direction is toward the organization’s benefits. However, if the useless effort is transferred in direction, high intensity is not guarantee of favourable job-performance. Therefore, the quality of effort is as important as intensity of effort. Finally, persistence that means how long a person can maintain effort is important as a motivated person stays with a task long enough to achieve his or her goal.

Generally, in all companies and other organizations employees play an important role in their work place. Each company tries to motivate their stuff in order to improve their working process more effectively and efficiency. It is commonly believed that motivated workers add their contributecompany to be productive. We are going to point out the best two motivating ways below.