Benefits of a Motivated Staff

Motivation is having a reason or reasons to act/behave in a particular way. It creates “drive” in people whether it is in pursuit of a goal, or the need to complete an activity. It produces enthusiasm and a willingness to achieve in both a work environment and in your personal life. Motivation can be increased and decreased in line with the incentives on offer.

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.

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

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

Social needs acquired by such employees include love, acceptance and belonging. They must feel accepted and a sense of worthiness before they can work up to fulfilling other, more difficult needs. The esteem level on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is the need for appreciation and respect. After the other levels of needs have been fulfilled, the esteem needs begin to play a prominent role in motivating behaviour. Theory Y employees will be motivated to gain respect in their organisation by achieving company objectives and by showing management their skills and abilities. The top need desired by such employees is self-actualisation. Maslow himself said;

Osland, et al. (2007) provide a good introduction to three basic motivational content theories. The first theory is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that proposes man is motivated by a lack in the one or more of the five common needs. The needs that Maslow identifies are physiological, safety, social belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Maslow believed that one fills needs from the most basic (like food and water) to the highest level (self-actualization). Maslow’s ideas are easy to relate to and attempt to provide an all-inclusive approach to the concept of motivation; however, there is little evidence to support the idea that man cannot have self-actualization without the other more basic needs first satisfied. The second content theory Osland, et al. discuss is McCelland’s learned needs. McCelland states that man is motivated by one of three things: achievement, power, or affiliation – or a mixture of the three. Each of these needs can possess a negative or positive connotation or implementation, but it is argued that people motivated by affiliation make better leaders. The third theory presented is McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y. McGregor asserts that Theory X people or employees are inherently lazy and must be controlled and forced to act, whereas Theory Y people are self-controlled, motivated, and ambitious.

In organizations all across the world you will find management working diligently to enhance or maintain productivity. There are many things that can affect productivity, some that are within our control and some that are not. Employee motivation is something that can directly affect an organizations production. It is no secret that un-motivated employees equates to un-productive workers, but how can we combat this? In order to better understand this concept we will look at the definition of employee motivation, some of the motivation theories and some motivation techniques that could be useful in our organizations.

However, motivating people successfully is not easy and takes time, thought and care (Forsyth 2000 p. 3). To make the matter of motivating a workforce even more complex, different people are motivated by different aspects as everyone has different experiences, interests, concepts and values (Hageman 1992). This is especially true for different generations (Barford and Hester 2011). Consequently, employers need to find a system that will engage all employees. Abel-Lanier (2016 p. 4) states that “today’s leaders must familiarize

Motivation is giving somebody a reason or incentive to do something. It can be intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is focused by an awareness or satisfaction in the task itself and usually occurs within the person rather than relying on external force. Extrinsic motivation is from outside the individual. Some common extrinsic motivators are rewards or punishments like evaluations or money, pressure, and threat of reprimand. The key to an organization’s success is the motivation of the staff. It is clear

The higher-level needs of esteem and self-actualization are continuing needs in that they are never completely satisfied. As such, it is these higher-level needs through which employees can best be motivated.

By understanding what motivates individual employees, employers and managers will be able to better grasp why people perform the way they do

Motivation is often something intuitively understood but not always easy to precisely define. One early definition of motivation was formulated by Vroom (1964, cited in Van Eerde and Thierry, p. 576) in which he defined it as a psychological process controlling choices made by people that cause the arousal, direction, and persistence of voluntary actions that are goal directed. However, a more applicable definition of motivation to the workplace describes it as “the degree to which an individual wants and tries hard to do well at a particular task or job” (Mitchell, 1982, p. 82). A more general and recent definition was put forth by Waddell et al (2008) in which they sum up motivation as the

* Esteem needs: the managers can appreciate and reward employees on accomplishing and exceeding their targets. The management can give the deserved employee higher job rank / position in the organization.

‘Motivation’ is derived from the Latin term ‘movere’ that means ‘to move’. Thus, motivation is a process that starts with a physiological or psychological deficiency or need that activates a behaviour or a drive that is aimed at a goal or incentive (Luthans). Broadly speaking, motivation is willingness to exert high levels of efforts towards organizational goals, conditioned by the efforts’ ability to satisfy some individual needs (Robbins). Need means some internal state that make certain outcomes appear attractive. An unsatisfied need creates tension that stimulates drives within the individual. These drives generate a search behaviour to find particular goals, that if attained,

With so many competing theories there is no generally accepted definition of motivation however, they all focus on factors that can energize, direct, sustain, or stop human behavior to achieve a desired objective (Gibson, et al., 2009; Robbins & Coulter, 2007). Understanding the motivation of employees is extremely important to managers and supervisors, especially in today’s industries with limited budgets and inability to reward workers financially (Sirota, Mischkind, & Meltzer, 2006). Well-motivated employees can lead to the result of higher productivity; higher performance and it can also help to improve the work quality and profits across all the departments. There are many theorists have complied their own conclusions and consequently a wide variety of motivational theory has been produced.