Table of Contents
According to Stephen P Robbins Motivation, it can be defined as the willingness to exert high levels of effort towards their business goals.
Motivation is the inner drive that pushes a person and determines their behavior toward goals. Motivation is an important component in Human Resource Management (HRM). Motivation in HRM can be defined as what an employee desire to be able to do their best at a job or the exert the employee performs assigned tasks to their maximum effort or ability. The important feature of the motivation is that the behavior is goal-directed.
Employee Motivation
Motivation is an essential function of managers that are needed to be able to motivate employees within the workplace and to keep them motivated. Motivating is where managers need to understand the motives that push a person to achieve their goals and objectives and be able to satisfy those needs. Managers must understand the requirements on how to motivate employees properly where it involves their needs, wants, demands, and wishes of employees.
127 our experts are availableright now
When employees are motivated and inspired, they will be able to be fully involved in companies’ activities and work to their maximum potential. This can assist a company to achieve its goals and attain results swiftly, efficiently, and effectively. Motivating people to keep moving in a direction where they can achieve a result. The managers need to motivate their employees on the regular routine to ensure that the employees can obtain the business’s goals and objectives.
Motivating employees is important as it can help the business to survive because motivated employees are more effective and efficient in the workplace and allow for higher output in the organization. If employees are motivated there are different benefits as a result. Such as the employee is more committed towards their tasks assigned and puts in their best efforts. When employees remain motivated it can improve employee satisfaction where it can lead to growth for the company. Motivation can aid the worker in reaching their personal goals and can assist in the self-development of the worker. Once that worker sees the results of their goals, they realize that their determinations were worth it and will further motivate them to continue at a high level.
The Hawthorne experiments (the Human Relations Movement) that were demonstrated in the 1930s.
The Hawthorne experiment founded that money is not the only factor for motivating workers. Another factor can the work environment, management styles, and structures that may be a determining factor. Managers can motivate their employees with factors either be external or internal factors that promote needs and energy in employees to stay interested and committed to their job, role, or to try to attain a goal. Managers can motivate their employees with different types of rewards. The following can be the most common effective methods of motivating employees are appreciation letters, paid time off from work, self-respect, flexible work schedule and lunch hours, and performance review meetings with employees to encourage employees.
Different methods can be used to motivate employees for employee satisfaction:
Rewards can be used to motivate workers for good work performances. People believe that good job performance can lead to the accomplishment of the company’s goal, which can lead to fulfilling their individual goals or needs.
Employees can be motivated through more challenging Jobs. The organization can use job enrichment. This means structuring motivators such as creating opportunities for achievement into the job by making the job more interesting and challenging. The company can also form natural workgroups, establishing client relationships, and implement open feedback channels.
Merit Pay (raise in salary) is based on employee performance. It is a continuing increase rather than a once payment such as a bonus.
Using Spot Awards can motivate employees because it is based on a good performance and is awarded instantly to the employee.
With skill-based pay, the organization looks at the employees’ range, depth, and types of skills and knowledge they can use rather than for what job they are doing. In order to attract the employee’s sense of self-efficacy, the employer can implement a skill-based pay system to recognize the employee’s efforts with the benefit that it is a formal recognition and motivate the employee to do a challenging job with high standards well.
Recognition can help to satisfy the need of the employee to have achieved and to be recognized for their achievement in their area of job.
To empower the employees by involving them in the decision-making process and to give them authority, tools, and information to be able to excel at their job.
By empowering employees, they have more self-confidence to perform jobs effectively and enable the employees to perform their full potential. Positive reinforcement improves the employee’s behavior, mindset, and attitudes towards their job or the organization.
Positive reinforcement can include socially (peer approval or approval or praise from the boss), intrinsic (the satisfaction of accomplishing challenging tasks), or tangible (bonuses or merit raises).
According to Frederick Hertzberg’s two-factor theory, that is also called the Motivation-Hygiene Theory or the dual-factor theory in 1959. He is an American psychologist, who was interested in people’s motivation and job satisfaction.
He conducted his research on a group of employees and asked about their experiences at work. The result was surprising because of how the group answered their questions and how different the answers were from good experiences and their bad experiences. Based on how people answered the questions, he developed the theory on people’s job satisfaction is influenced by two kinds of factors.
Factors for satisfaction (motivators / satisfiers) and factors for dissatisfaction (hygiene factors / dissatisfiers).Motivators/ Satisfiers include performance, recognition, job status, responsibility and opportunities for growth(personal growth), and advancement of the employee in the company.
Hygiene factors/dissatisfiers the basics of work which include salary, working environment, the relationship between colleagues, physical workplace, and the relationship between supervisor and employee. For example, the Hilton Hotel uses Herzberg’s motivational theory. This theory states that the employees can only be motivated by fulfilling their needs and reaching job satisfaction level (Human Resource Planning for Hotel Hilton Assignment, n.d). These needs and satisfaction can only be achieved by using the reward system (Herzberg.et.al, 2011).
The rewards system encourages employees to be more productive and to increase the employee’s performance and by that, the company will benefit from increased production and satisfied employees.
The managers that are following Herzberg’s theory provides more job enhancements for their employees.
The relationships between employee motivation and employee performance.
Motivation is a factor that affects both human behavior and performance. Personnel performance plans done on a regular base which includes discussions of compensation, reward plans training opportunities can be to the benefit of both the employer and the employee to keep both updated and communication channels open to ensure motivated well-informed employees. Motivation is considered as one of the important factors for effective job performance. Meaning elements of employee job performance are motivation and employee skills. In the organization motivated employees that have a high job, participation is considered important elements.
There are different benefits of having strong employment relations and the business will reap a lot of the benefits:
Employee Productivity
Increases because a pleasant atmosphere is created within the work environment. Having a pleasant atmosphere in the workplace can increases employee motivation and also improved employee morale.
Employee Loyalty
By creating a pleasant work environment influences the employee’s loyalty towards the business. This encourages a loyal workforce. Another benefit is that when the employee turnover is low it ensures that the employer has a trained and skilled set of employees.
Conflict Reduction
The Less conflict there is will results in the employees will be able to concentrate more on their tasks and be more productive.
Embracing Equality
It is important for managers to not play favoritism between employees. The workplace needs to embrace equality to be able to create a fair and that all employees know that they are equal. If all employees feel like they are equal, they will perform better make more effort.
At University Teknologi MARA Terengganu (UiTMT) (2015) attempted to measure the impact of motivation on job performance among non-academic staff members. A group of 169 members was selected from the departments in UiTMT. They founded that a person’s needs, their own preferences, and the surrounding workplace all related to job performance.
The study done by University Teknologi MARA Terengganu (UiTMT) identified that there is a link/relationship between employee motivation and job performance among non-academic members in UiTMT. This study suggested and discovered that employee motivations can be an asset in the level of job performance among the non-academic staff in UiTMT.
Employee motivation is the willingness of a person to want to satisfy their needs. A person’s needs can include basic needs (survival of a person, their safety, social interacting, esteem, and self-actualization). By achieving the workers’ needs, it will lead to that the employee will perform better and employee job performance will improve.
According to Chaudhary and Sharma (2012), a study shows that employee motivation has a direct effect on gainfulness and development. Motivated employees will carry the employer’s goals to the highest level possible and perform their duties with pride.
To increase work effectiveness and performance, it is important to address several issues, including increasing motivation among employees, making them feel satisfied with their job, and increasing their-job related wellbeing in general (Bogdanova & Naunivska, 2008).
Motivation and job performance are inseparably connected because everyone has something that motivates them to do a job or a task.
Managers conduct job performance management where they track or follow the actions of the workers. Managers observe and seek a connection between the effort the employee puts in their work or tasks through what the employee achieves. For example, making sales calls, and what the employee’s sales outcome is compared to universal standards in the industry.
This is where Victor Vrooms (1964) expectancy motivation theory comes in. Victor Vroom’s expectancy theory splits the employee’s efforts (comes from motivation), performance, and the result of the employee.
This theory presumes that employee behavior comes from conscious decisions. Vroom’s theory recognized that employee’s performance is based on the employees’ own elements, for example, their personality, abilities, knowledge, and experience.
Several factors influence the employee’s performance and are based on individual factors such as personality, skills, knowledge, experience, and abilities. He stated that effort, performance, and motivation are linked in a person’s motivation. Vroom’s theory has three different factors Expectancy, Instrumentality, and Valence that he uses.
Conclusion
The motivation of employees is a joint task of management and human resource officers and should be standardized throughout the company to ensure equality amongst the employees.
It should also be understood that an employee that is only at work for the monthly salary will not be motivated enough to walk the extra mile and could be a burden for the rest of the team. Therefore, those employees should be coached to be well-motivated employees.
