Motivation in the workplace

Introduction

Motivation is the psychological forces that direct the amount of effort workers puts into a job and their persistence when they encounter challenges in the work (SHRM, 2010). Work motivation helps to focus workers performance to the demands of their job. This process helps to give them energy to perform, makes them maintain a positive attitude about their job, or to be enthusiastic. It is responsible for development of mental efforts that makes workers capable of applying their skills and knowledge. In the absence of motivation, not even the most knowledgeable or skilled worker would be willing to perform either a new task or continue on routine ones. By being motivated, workers are able to put cognitive efforts in their work to improve the quantity and quality of its outcome (Clark, 2003). According to Banks (1997) unmotivated employees arrive late in their work and are the first to leave, they do not meet deadlines, but instead they give their least effort to meet the goals of their work and spend most of their leisure time complaining about their work. On the other hand, their motivated peers give more than is required in a job. They are punctual, are happy to face new tasks, and are hardworking (6). This topic has received a lot of thought from researchers and this paper explores some of the issues that come out.

Best human resource motivation

In their research, Kodjo & Dai 2010 identified ten factors that improve employee motivation, sequentially arranged as per employee consideration of their value. These are employees considering work as interesting, attractive wages, managerial appreciation of work done, security of their work, good place of work conditions, career development, feeling of being in on things, being considered as part of the company, tactful discipline and being assisted when they have personal matters. In their ranking money does not come as the best cause of motivation. Some of these factors also came out in a different research that aimed at categorizing differences in motivation between generation X and Y. generation X had two different reasons that made them feel motivated to work. That is, having more time for their family, and being able to make a difference. As for Generation Y, the connection to work environment and feeling that their work contributes to bring change, are enough motivation (McGinley et al, 2009, 83). They further argued harnessing some of the shared motivations could help to make the workplace better. Research indicated that employee from both generations like to venture into new challenges and take pleasure in learning new ideas.

On the other hand, Huffman and Goette 2005 consider affect in the workplace as the source of motivation. They argue that both cognitive motivations and affective ones must come into play for an employee to be motivated. In explaining how the affective motivation works they argued that as long as an employee has not achieved a personal goal, or his economic incentive target, motivation will be high, but once the goal has been, achieved performance will lower.

What motivates employees?

A lot of literature indicates that employees generally expect certain things about their work. Sirota 2010 summarized them in three main goals. His first goal is equity, where employees expect fairness in employment condition. That is having safe work environment, get job security, and acceptable compensation and have their family and personal needs considered. Kodjo & Dai 2010 research, also discussed some of these factors such as job security, and consideration of personal matters. The second goal is Achievement. This highlights personal pleasure in the job one is doing. That is being recognized for what one has achieved and taking pride in the accomplishment of the organization. The final goal is that of solidarity, which indicates that an employee expects to be in a good working environment where other employees are cooperative, welcoming, and interesting (Sirota, 2002).

To get optimum employee performance and engagement human resource managers must foster recognition, trust, and acknowledgment in the workplace (SHRM, 2010, 9). Houran and Kefgen (nd) add to this by saying that private sector employees are looking to monetary remuneration, respect and attention (SHRM, 2010, 2). For the successes of any organization, motivation strategy must involve more than one approach. It must include looking at the organization and enabling environment. Reducing factors that encourages unfavorable behavior, as opposed to using new types of incentives, can be of more value (UNDP, 2006).

Terez 2007 argues that looking at motivation from a standpoint would be long and that any effort must look at it from a continuum that involves other things like satisfaction, engagement, and flow. Satisfaction is the minimum requirement that at the very least employee should be satisfied in their work. Motivation on the other hand links satisfaction with engagement, where engagement involves people being committed to their tasks. Finally, there is flow, which means that people become so engaged in their work that they feel like part of it.

Conclusion

Researchers have examined various things that people considers to motivate them. Some have even gone ahead to rank them in the order of preference and to reexamine variations between generations. However, what has come out is that there is no one factor acting alone, whether extrinsic or intrinsic that can be responsible for motivating employees. Rather a number of them must be well coordinated to improve workers performance.

References

Banks, L. (1997). What Is Motivation. In Motivation in the Workplace: Inspiring Your Employees (6-14). Virginia, Coastal Training Technolgies Corp.

Clark, R. E. (2003). Fostering the Work Motivation of Individuals and Teams. Performance Improvement, 42(3), 21-29.

Goette, L., and Huffman D. (2005) Affect as a Source of Motivation in the Workplace: A new Model of Labor Supply, and New Field Evidence on Income Targeting and the Goal Gradient. IZA Discussion Paper, 1890, 1-40.

Houran, J., and Kefgen K. (nd). Money and Employee Motivation. 20/20skills.com, 1-9.

Kodjo, E. J., and Dai C. (2010). Human Resource Motivation in a Workplace A case Study of a Utility Company in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 1(12), 151-159.

McGinley, J., Weese T., Thompson J., and Leahy K. (). Intelligence Community Assessment Generational Differences in Workplace Motivation. American Intelligence Journal, 29(1), 80-87.

Sirota, D. (2002). Human Motivation in the Workplace: What Workers Want. Retrieved from http://www.sirota.com/pdfs/Human_Motivation_in_the_Workplace_What_Workers_Want.pdf

Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). (2010). Motivation in Today’s Workplace: the Link to Performance. Retrieved from http://www.shrm.org/Research/Articles/Articles/Documents/10-0235%20Research%20Quarterly-Q2-FNL.pdf

Terez, T. (2007). Working White Paper: Making Sense of Motivation. Workplace Solutions, Inc. retrieved from http://www.betterworkplacenow.com/Motivation-TomTerez.pdf

Wignaraja Kanni (Eds.). (2006).Proceeding from UNDP ‘06: conference paper No. 8 on Incentive Systems: Incentives, Motivation, and Development Performance. Retrieved from http://lencd.com/data/docs/233-Concept%20Note_Incentive%20Systems.pdf.