What Does Motivate Employees And Whether Money Is A Key Driver

According to Maslow’s Needs theory, based on the fact that a person is justified as long as he still has not reached a certain level of satisfaction, has a better understanding of the fact that human motivation leads to a broad spectrum of their needs we could say that in order to motivate people, the manager has to give employees the opportunity to meet the needs in a way that together lead to the organization's objectives.

Assignment 1: 8600 - 310 – Understanding How to Motivate People in the work place

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.

Abraham Maslow developed a Hierarchy of Needs (appendix 3) which is used to understand human motivation, management training and personal development. This hierarchy is used to determine the responsibility of employers to provide a workplace environment that encourages and enables employees to fulfil their own unique potential.

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.

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

There are very many factors that motivate employees to do outstanding work in their jobs. Though most of them are non-monetary factors like participative decision making, work teams, challenging jobs, goals in life or in the company, power and other factors. Most of the employees that emerge in their workplace, either in a small cubicle or a mega office have got some drive that enable them to perform in their work, but the key question is, is money is the key motivation in their workplace? In this essay both sides will be argued in order to find the answer to this (Robbins, Odendaal & Roodt, 2003).

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

To appreciate what motivates employees in the work place what must first be considered is what motivation actually is. Once this is understood then employers can look at where money comes into to play and how or whether it may be used as a tool in motivating employees. So what is motivation? Motivation consists of the “biological, emotional, social and cotgnitive forces” Cherry, K, (2016) Motivation: Psychological Factors That Guide Behaviour. Very Well. 16 June. Available Online: [https://www.verywell.com/what-is-motivation-2795378] that stimulate a behaviour or more simply why one carries out an action. At the centre of this essay will be Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943, 1954)) and its application to other theories of motivation such as those of Herzberg, Mayo and Warner.

Money is the biggest motivator for many employees. Money inspires most employees. Money plays a vital part in motivation. Management makes use of financial incentives for example wages and salaries, bonus, retirement benefits, health insurance, medical reimbursement, etc. to motivate employees. However, these motive may not always be motivating. In most cases, management may have to increase the financial motivation to keep the employees with the organization. This can be appreciated from the practice of making wages and salaries competitive between various enterprises so as to attract and maintain a good workforce. Money is a real motivating factor when the psychological and security needs of the employees have not been sufficiently met. Money plays an importance role in satisfying these requirements. Therefore, management can use financial incentives for motivation. Money helps in achieving the social needs of the employees to some extent because money is usually seen as a basis of status, respect and power. Money is also a significant means of getting a minimum standard of living. Reuters (2012) also stated that 31.4 percent of Americans aged from 65 to 69 were still working in the year 2010, compared to the year 1990 with a lower

Motivating the work force can be difficult to achieve and maintain due to all employees are not motived by the same thing. As Ken Sundheim (2013) points out some individuals are motivated by money and time off, while other are motivated by praise and recognition. Motivation is the tool that managers use to energize, direct, and sustain human behavior in the work place (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin & Cardy, 2016).

In organization many question if the motivation techniques of yesterday are still good for today’s growing organization. Nelson (1996) states that most motivational techniques are essentially the same as in pervious years, people always want more but never seem to be satisfied with what they have. It is part of human nature to have a stable economy, high standard of living, and a low unemployment rate. It seems that it is not easy for an organization to motivate employees today. According to research the basic physical needs of the employees today does not have much impact in motivation, but there are other factors that have a tremendous impact. These are recognition, respect, involvement, advancement, and interesting and meaningful work (Nelson, 1996). Many employees believe that management is unable to motivate them simply because most managers do not have the techniques on how to start motivating them.

It is difficult to satisfy individual demands because everyone would move to the next more advanced platform of the hierarchical pyramid that Maslow created frequently once the prior need is met, especially in modern society. Meanwhile, when setting Maslow’s model into the business to understand the motivation behind employees’ behaviours, it is not amazing to find that there are also have similar five levels of needs which including wages, safety, social belongingness, self-esteem and finally self-actualization. Maslow and Stephens (2000) have posited out that individuals will not spend an inordinate amount of time to think about their salaries if they are fairly paid. After being paid adequate salary, employee seeks safety physically and mentally on the jobs. And then the stage of needs moves to the third level subsequently-seeking social

One of the first authors that dealt with the sources of motivation was Frederick Taylor who focussed on the overall productivity of an organisation. He linked this productivity to the effort an employee puts into their work which in turn is dependent on monetary rewards (Taylor, 1911). This theory was established in the context of the industrial age and thus is outdated for today’s analysis but it still provides a basic assumption which is often referred to by other authors. The total neglecting of a worker’s intrinsic motivators is a starting point for discussion for authors that conducted research in that area after Taylor.