The Important Role of Employee Motivation

A question often asked by first-line supervisors and managers is “How do we motivate our employees?” Effectively motivating employees to achieve a desired outcome is one of the most important functions as a supervisor or manager. There is evidence to show organizations are facing challenges retaining employees due to limited opportunities for advancement and the current competitive labor market. It does not appear things will get any better in the future. The loss of employees represents a loss of skills, knowledge, and experiences and can create a significant economic impact and cost to corporations as well as impacting the needs of customers. Managers who can motivate employees assist the organization by

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.

Employees should always be motivated; this attracts talent, opens up new channels for innovation and creativity and brings in a sense of satisfaction among them which helps the growth and development of the organization.

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.

First, I’ve learned in this course that motivation in employees can be separated into two concepts: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from internal rewards inherent to a task or activity in itself, such as the enjoyment one gets by accomplishing a big project or goal. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation comes from an outside source of reward such as pay, promotions or bonuses. For a company to succeed in motivating their employees they will have to assess these values.

Bauer and Erdrogen (2009) define motivation as “the desire to achieve a goal or a certain performance level, leading to goal–directed behavior” (p.97). McConnell (2006) argues that true motivation is self motivation. Today, health care organizations place a lot of emphasis on production and performance. However, motivating employees is a common challenge faced by health care managers and Bauer and Erdrogen (2009) state it is also one of the factors that greatly affect performance. McConnell (2006) states that managers cannot motivate employee; however, they can provide an environment that encourages employees to motivate themselves. Most employees are motivated; however, health care managers are constantly trying various efforts in their

Motivation in the work place has always been a problem for employers. It is a key element in keeping the employees driven to do good work or finish tasks on time. There are several methods of motivation that help employees stay with an organization. Motivation varies from person to person. Different methods of motivation drive people differently. Webster’s dictionary says motivation is something inside people that drives them to action. In other words it is the willingness to work at a level of effort. It is a day to day struggle for managers, supervisors, employers to keep its employees motivated not only finish the job at hand with perfection in mind but also to keep employees for as long as possible. “Motivation comes from

Motivation plays an important role in an organization’s management. It is because a motivated employee can help the organization to increase the productivity. Not only that, a motivated employee is more cooperative, supportive and be punctual to work. Therefore, an organization should make sure that all of their employees are motivated in order to make the company to be more successful and achieve their goals and targets each year.

The key to a successful organization in many ways is motivation. It is one of the most difficult tasks that a manager faces because everyone is different. The methods that are used to motivate employees must be tailored to fit each one. Every organization should have motivation plans in placed to show how they value employees. Some of the most

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.

Human capital has emerged as the most critical firm asset, and the ability to attract motivate and retain capable employees is essential in organization’s innovation and quality improvement (Frye, 2004). These sentiments are supported by Jung and Hartog, (2007) who suggest that, one way for organizations to become more innovative is to capitalize on their employees’ ability to innovate. Jung and Hartog, continue to argue that employees can help to improve business performance through their ability to generate ideas and use these as building blocks for new and better products, services and work processes. Therefore, under new work conditions, to create value, every

Motivation of employees plays a crucial factor in determining their performance with regard to productivity and engagement in their respective duties. Actually, employees who are adequately motivated tend to enhance their performance, be more productive, feel more satisfied, and be more engaged in their work. Managers should take responsibility to enhance their employees in order to enhance their contributions to the organization or company resulting in increased productivity. The significance of employee motivation to organizational productivity is linked to the widely accepted belief that motivation is the basic driver of human behavior. The significance of motivation in driving human behavior has contributed to the development of various theories of motivation, which are mostly applied in real life organizations or businesses. The application of these theories has considerable effects on organizational productivity, employee turnover, and employee satisfaction.

Achievement and positive employee confidence in the workplace. Employee satisfaction, while normally a positive in your organization, can also be a disappointment if ordinary employees continue because they are satisfied with your work environment.

Modern management aims at using and manipulating mathematical models to better understand the inter-relationship between employees and the employers in all aspects (Certo & Certo, 2013). The primary goal of modern management theories is to ensure the interrelationship between these factors is maximised for the benefit of the organisation. Motivation, from a general perspective, is the intrinsic drive that leads a person to take a certain course of action. Employee motivation entails all factors which drive an employee to perform tasks related to work in a more efficient and satisfactory manner. In as much as motivation is an intrinsic force, motivation might be brought about by external factors. These factors vary from physical factors, biological factors, intellectual factors, emotional factors and social factors.