INTRODUCTION
How many times have you started excitedly and enthusiastically a driving learning program, a fitness program, a weight loss, challenge or foreign language learning course to stop after a while? How many times have you tried to fix your daily routine, change your study schedule or start a certain project, but you failed due to lack of motivation?
These circumstances reflect the impact of motivation on our work and academic performance. Motivation is often misunderstood. Motivation is not the result of a certain goal achieved, but it is the ingredient and input towards the achievement of a specific goal. Motivation is an inner driving force which pushes individuals to accomplish certain goals. Motivation is a blend of certain drivers. The factors that cause motivation in people could be the rewards attached to the accomplishment of certain goals and tasks, motivation could come for encouragement from friends and family, it could come from having identified a viable opportunity, it could come from the challenges which trigger people to perform beyond their stamina and control, it could be caused by the determination, supportive team members and peers and a healthy work and family environment.
SThe Management Principles is a book written by the Berrin Erdogan, Talya Bauer and Carpenter defined the motivation as a thing that develops goal-directed behavior in the individual that mean intention of a person to achieve his goals is known as motivation. When a person is referred to be motivated, it means that person is putting maximum efforts to achieve the desired goal. The only motivation is not sufficient to accomplish certain goals. Other factors like Ability or Skills of a person and resources available to achieve a certain goal also have good weight. In the Planning – Organizing – Leading – Controlling framework, motivation comes under the umbrella of Leading. Under leading function employees are motivated by the group leader, task leader or manager by assigning different incentives to the short-term goals so that employees put all their efforts to earn that reward and overall organizational goals could be achieved (Carpenter, Bauer and Erdogan).
It is observed that a motivated person works hard to achieve her or his goals. Aspiration is a factor with which motivation becomes strong because it makes it clear to the person that what are his or her goals and how he or she will achieve these goals. In this way, inner strength and confidence is triggered by the motivation with the help of which an individual can turn his or her vision into reality. The important thing regarding motivation is that it helps in achieving both the short-term and long-term personal and professional goals. Motivation leads to success in any field or work. When a person has a clear and sound vision, effective strategy for achieving that vision and strong abilities and skills, then it is considered that motivation is present.
INTRINSIC MOTIVATION OR EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION OR PERHAPS BOTH
These are the two different forms of motivation. Because of the fact in every person in this world is not the same as others, this is the reason that some people have intrinsic motivation, and some people have extrinsic motivation. Some may lack intrinsic motivation, and some might be lacking extrinsic motivation. Having understood these two general motivation types, we can categorize the employees and apply the most suitable and appropriate type of motivation for them.
Intrinsic motivation comes from within. It could be called self-directed motivation where you don’t need any external stimuli to affect you, but the motivational stimuli come from within and trigger the person to achieve the specified goal. Individuals have desires to perform certain tasks. Some of the desired have the highest motivational power and can intrinsically motivate individuals. Some examples are:
- Curiosity: Every individual has the desire to be in the known.
- Independence: Every individual wants to have a unique identity.
- Acceptance: Every individual with their decisions wants to be accepted by society and
- Social Status: Every individual has the desire to feel important.
- Power: Every individual has the desire to influence others and exercise authority.
- Honor: Every individual wants to feel respected and privileged.
- Social Contact: Every individual desires to have social interactions and contacts.
Extrinsic motivation comes from the external stimuli in the environment. It simply means that one’s desire to achieve a certain goal is directed and controlled by an outside source. It is external, and the most renowned factor from which extrinsic motivation comes is “Compensation”- money (Cherry). Some other examples include:
- Consequences and Punishment
- Organized activities and resources
- Input in managerial decision making
- Praise and Recognition
- Bonuses and Benefit packages
- Incentives and Financial Rewards
- Promotions and Career growth
According to some of the researchers it has been evaluated that it is often difficult to differentiate and categorize motion as extrinsic or intrinsic. The important thing is how could it be found when any employees want to gain a higher level of benefits and rewards? It would be critical if the extrinsic reward influenced an employee, but he realized that it was an intrinsic value when going through the process to gain it. It makes us believe that motivation to an employee can also come from a combination of both Intrinsic and Extrinsic factors.
EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION
In today’s globalized world running a business is a very difficult job. Organizational performance, revenues, market shares and organizational growth in the industry are influenced by many internal (organizational) and external (environment) factors. To cope with the challenging environment and survive in intense global business competition, all the factors related to employee motivation and satisfaction should be managed efficiently. Organizational Profitability maximization, which is the main goal of businesses, comes from managing employees efficiently and effectively as they are the main assets of the organization. If employees are not satisfied and motivated enough their performance would decline, and it would affect the overall performance of the organization as a whole.
Employee motivation is one of the most important aspects of Motivation. The motivation of employees is done by every manager under the umbrella of “Leadership” function amongst four management functions along with other managerial tasks and duties. A manager has to act as a leader, guide and motivator to his subordinates. The belief of manager regarding the strengths of the employee, the personal goals of employee, clear and regular communication, giving employees respect and encouraging them, giving rewards, giving employees’ feedback and training are some of the important factors due to which the motivation of employees is encouraged (Srivastava).
The motivational pie chart reflects that the most important motivating factor for employees Money with 40%, then Praise and Recognition and Work-Life balance, with 15%, Sense of influence is on third with 12%, Opportunity for growth lies in fourth with 10%, and job security is the least important factor with 8% only.
According to research, motivated employees prove to be more productive than non-motivated employees. If the employee is motivated, he or she will put all his efforts in accomplishing the organizational goals which will enhance the performance of the employee and job satisfaction as well. If an employee is not motivated, it will lead to job dissatisfaction and poor performance, which will affect the overall performance of the company. Therefore, it is important to make sure that the organization is investing and working on motivational tools which could be used to enhance the motivation of employees so they can deliver their best performance and earn rewards. The level of the out produced by the employees is the factor with the help of which the performance of an employee is measured by the manager.
It is significant to note that when extra benefits and value are given to the employee then it increases the level of motivation, which eventually enhances the overall performance of the employee. In the context of increasing the happiness and motivation of employees, the companies are giving different benefits to employees like company’s cars, availability of childcare, subsidized plans of the meal, facilities of exercise, profit sharing, life insurance, and healthcare facilities.
The figure above shows that “Job satisfaction” and “Employee satisfaction- regarding performance” are a dependent variable which is influenced be some independent variable, including Turnover and absenteeism, compensation and participation, teamwork and appraisal and motivation and training. All of these factors can have both positive and negative influences. For example, the most important independent variable Training and motivation can have a positive influence on employees, job satisfaction and performance if employee goes through training so that he acquires certain skill set necessary to perform the job and has motivation that could be either intrinsic or extrinsic like praise from managers, bonus or need for recognition then he will put all his efforts to achieve desired objectives, hence increased performance which leads to job satisfaction.
In case the employee doesn’t go through on the job and off the job training and lacks certain abilities and skills to perform the task his motivation would be low which would lead to job dissatisfaction and poor performance. In a nutshell, the figure depicts that motivation is a key factor in increasing the performance and satisfaction of a job for employees (Nabi, Syduzzaman and Munir).
MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES – HERE ARE SOME WAYS.
To help employees become motivated so that they can accomplish assigned goals and objectives, they should be given adequate resources required to accomplish those tasks otherwise, without the resources they would not be able to do so and that would be a waste of energy and time, they should have certain expertise, skills, and abilities that match to the goal. For example, if employee A has a good set of skill and employee B has a poor set of skills, then the short-term goal which requires certain good skills to accomplish it should be given to Employee A rather than employee B. So, the skill set, and the goal assigned to the employee should somehow match. Apart from that, employees should be given opportunities to showcase their talent by allowing them to handle different tasks and involved in functional level decision making so that they feel privileged and part of the organization, their job satisfaction increases, hence they are motivated to excel in their careers. Rewards and bonuses should be tied to goals that employees have to achieve so that they put efforts to grab them.
Some of the interesting statistics taken from the source, “Gratify” reveal the inverse relation between employee absenteeism and motivation and a connection between employee motivation and incentives.
Absenteeism of employee
- In call centers, it is noted that the percentage of absent employees is 10%. According to the opinion of 34% of employees that they are not appreciated due to which they are sick.
Motivation of employee
- According to the study conducted on 1000 employees in the S., it is observed that about 63% of the employees were arguing that their managers do not appreciate them.
- It is noted that a 60% increase in the engagement of employees could be achieved when managers recognize the contribution of employees.
The realm of control of employees over roles and responsibilities can be increased by giving authority of decision making and more responsibility to the employees. It is important to provide better facilities for employees to increase the performance of employees. It is important when employees have no better resources than a feeling of frustration raised in the employees, which eventually convert the focus of employee forms accomplishing the tasks effectively.
When more opportunities and tools are given to the employees than it is noted that employees like to take challenges. Perpetual development of the skills of employees of the companies can increase the motivation of employees. The motivation and knowledge of employees are increasing by the companies by licensing and accreditation programs which are considered as an effective and popular way to increase motivation in employees (Greatify.Co).
The Future of Wellness at Work
According to a source published by Global Wellness Institute, originally published in “The Future of Wellness at Work” 2016, the world’s 3.2 billion workers (employees) are increasingly unwell. According to the research one of the aspects of increasing unwell of workers was, “they were stressed, unhappy and even unsafe at work.” In that category, 38% of the workers suffered from excessive pressure on the job, 24% were actively disengaged at work. Due to these de-motivating factors, there were 2.3 million annual work-related deaths and 313 million annual work-related accidents. These figures are huge, and these facts reflect that how de-motivation can cause negative psychological, physical and behavioral effects that could even lead to deaths and accidents due to stress.
Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi conducted the study regarding the importance of a company’s culture is increasing motivation. The results presented above revealed that the processes and structure design of the company are factors on which the motivation of employees depends. Some of the important aspects of the processes of the company include the performance review process, adaptive governance process, the process of compensation, leadership, resource and workforce planning, organizational identity and role design process. It is observed that when these processes are well designed then there is high motivation in employees and vice versa. The chart reveals that while we think leadership is the most crucial factor leading to motivation, other processes like role design, career ladders, and organizational identity could have a much bigger impact.
The level and extent to which the total motivation of an employee is affected by each process are represented by gray bars. In the graph, it could be noted that the identity of the organization on a total motivation score scale varies by 65 points. It is observed that in total motivation scores the score of badly proposed organizational identity is low (-30) while in contrast to it in the total motivation score, the well proposed organizational identity is high (50). In this way, it is very important that there should be 15 points higher score in the company in contrast to competitors (McGregor and Doshi).
CONCLUSION
It is concluded that for the achievement of personal and professional goals, motivation has great importance. Motivation is an inner driving force that encourages the person to work hard. There are different factors that help in improving the motivation of employees in an organization, for example, good working environment and skills development opportunities. Intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation ties are two forms of motivation, but it is concluded that most people do not have these forms at one time. The motivated staff of the company is described as more productive in contrast to non-motivated staff.
Work Cited
Carpenter, Mason, Talya Bauer and Berrin Erdogan. “The Principles of Management. Mason Carpenter, Talya Bauer, and Berrin Erdogan.” Doc Player. 23 Nov 2016. Web. 6 November 2018. https://docplayer.net/24971793-The-principles-of-management-mason-carpenter-talya-bauer-and-berrin-erdogan.html.
Cherry, Kendra. “Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation: What’s the Difference?” Very Well Mind. 19 October 2018. Web. 6 November 2018. https://www.verywellmind.com/differences-between-extrinsic-and-intrinsic-motivation-2795384.
Greatify.Co. “Statistics regarding employee motivation.” Greatify.Co. 2016. Web. 6 November 2018. http://www.greatify.co/media/statistics-employee-motivation/.
McGregor, Lindsay and Neel Doshi. “How Company Culture Shapes Employee Motivation.” HBR. 25 November 2015. Web. 7 November 2018. https://hbr.org/2015/11/how-company-culture-shapes-employee-motivation.
Nabi, Md Nurun, Md Syduzzaman and Md Shayekh Munir. “The Impact of Human Resource Management Practices on Job Performances: A Case Study of Dhaka Bank Pvt. Ltd., Bangladesh.” Human Resource Management Research 6.2 (2016): 45-54.
Srivastava, Ritika.” Impact of employee motivation on job performance.” People Matters. 27 November 2016. Web. 7 November 2018. https://www.peoplematters.in/article/
performance-management/impact-of-employee-motivation-on-job-performance-14553?utm_source=peoplematters&utm_medium
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