Motivation Practices in Modern Companies - Literature review Example

 Motivation Practices in Modern Companies Introduction Workplace motivation encompasses the complete range of workplace tasks from how, who and the actual work to be performed. Employee engagement encompasses continuous commitment on normative and affective elements. This process remains a positive emotional association to employee’s work activities. All of the existing theories of motivation remain useful in the overall construction of outcomes fundamental to workplace situations. The ability to place the right employees in the precise positions and enable them attain maximum productivity and satisfaction remains the core of motivational practices in organizational settings (Podmoroff, 2005). Evidence shows that engaged employees would be inspired to go an extra mile beyond the scope of duty in achieving organizational goals. Therefore, employee engagement refers to the extent towards which employees may commit to someone or something in the organization. It also involves how employees work and how long they remain in the job because of their commitment. Literature Review Almaazmi and Solangi (n.d.) in their article sought to measure the effectiveness of motivational practices in a UAE based company with multicultural workforce. They recognize the fact that modern companies have embraced the need for a motivated workforce. They also developed a survey questionnaire that derives relationships from the common motivational theories. These theories include the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, three needs theory, reinforcement theory, designing motivating jobs and goal setting theory. They indicate that even though motivational practices would be costly, they remain essential for high productivity of firms. In this regard, it would be essential to establish the outcomes, increases in productivity, as well as high motivational levels associated with the incorporation of motivational practices. From their findings, motivation arises from the interaction between individuals and situations, and works well when individual needs remain compatible with organizational needs. Almaazmi and Solangi (n.d.) also recognize that motivational incentives differ from one person to another concerning personality trends, economic conditions, and cultural values of people. Most countries in the UAE exist as Arab countries and share similar religion, history, and language. An analysis of the Gallup poll findings shows that motivated employees become more productive customer focused, withstand job turn out related issues, profitable, and safer. Therefore, designing of development opportunities for every employee, setting appropriate strategies, generating all-inclusive communication strategies and creating a performance metric that promotes accountability increases employee engagement. It would be evident that increasing employee engagement positively affects business outcomes and investments. Lastly, engaged employees remain highly motivated and satisfied. Adair (2006) assesses the relationship between leadership and motivation. He indicates a fifty-fifty rule and eight key principles of motivation. Adair acknowledges that leadership encompasses more than motivation. He does not only evaluate leadership and motivation, but also develops the concept of group personality and group needs. The lack of harmonious relationships or unity among group members would affect individual needs and performance at work. Hence, an unhappy employee would not produce optimal contribution both at work and in the group. On the other hand, a sense of group identity and belongingness would arise from the attainment of a common objective. The recognition of individual needs within a group makes the group members feel worthwhile thereby contributing and producing better outcomes. This situation would result from the existence of a team spirit and good internal communication that provide a satisfactory environment. Functional leadership in the context of a working situation would contribute significantly to motivational practices in the event that leadership functions remain in agreement. These leadership functions consist of planning, initiating, controlling, supporting, informing and evaluating. Thus, leaders need to set objectives and plan in sharing decision making function. However, the extent to which decisions could be made depend on the attitudes, experience, and knowledge of group members. Moreover, the available time, personality of the leader, the nature of the task, philosophy of the organization and value system in the situation would determine the extent of decision-making. Evidence reveals that wise leaders would involve the group members in decision making as much as possible. Hence, the more members share in decision-making processes affecting their work relations, the more they would become motivated to participate in decision-making (Adair, 2006). Alternatively, action centered leadership mainly incorporates team, task and individual which remain as the three key forces in organizations and working groups. It would be worth noting that these three parts go through varying amounts of transformation, which remain unavoidable in any organizational situation. According to Adair (2006), action centered leadership comprises of leadership roles, the three circles model, how leadership should be shared and the team, task and individual needs. Furthermore, the approaches of quality, situation or contingency and group to leadership relate to action-centered leadership. In this regard, knowledge appears to be of paramount significance in situational approach for leadership, but does not entirely guarantee effective leadership. Therefore, leaders ought to possess partially general and specialist or technical knowledge. This knowledge would lead to motivation and an understanding of people. Lastly, knowledge on creative thinking, decision making and problem solving could guide the group in the decision making process. Similarly, Thomas (2009) in his writings provides insights and ways for motivating employees in present day organizations. He critically shows how intrinsic motivation acts as a drive to employee engagement. According to Thomas, employee engagement makes employees capable of managing themselves by applying their intelligence to in selecting the best way of accomplishing their objectives. Employee engagement also makes employees commit themselves to a significant purpose. In this regard, employees would monitor their tasks in ensuring that they reflect competence, progress in work and initiate any necessary adjustments. Self-management as an outcome of motivation results in a benefit in modern organizations. Motivation arises from sustained and energized intrinsic rewards, which include a sense of progress, choice, competence, and meaningfulness. Apart from enhancing self-management, intrinsic rewards of motivation have significant impacts on innovation, retention, and development among other key results. From this analysis, it would be evident that employees must have a passion for their work and derive satisfaction from it. The introduction and adoption of motivational practices by organization led to the elimination of the compliance era. The compliance era became marked by extrinsic rewards such as salaries, perks, bonuses, cash awards, benefits and commissions. Conversely, today’s organizations remain marked by intrinsic rewards that sustain employee’s self-management concerning commitment and initiative. Hence, intrinsic rewards originate directly from the tasks of the employee. Worth noting would be the fact that knowledge of purpose at work enables workers to make intelligent decisions on which tasks they should perform and how to execute them (Thomas, 2009). The ability of organizations to assist their employees in balancing family and work conflicts would consequently make employees to become valuable inhabitants of the organization. This would in turn lead to higher productivity, customer satisfaction, and profitability. On the other hand, employees would experience an improved overall wellbeing, in addition to loyalty and higher levels of fulfillment in a supportive organization. Nonetheless, not all rewards or benefits could yield the same level of benefit to the employment relationships within different organizations. The presence of an employer of choice strategy on benefits program would be positively correlated with people’s desires to remain employed or get employment by an employer (Little & Little, 2006). An employer of choice ranking program would be positively correlated with the recognition of applications from prospective employees and profitability. Moreover, this ranking program would be positively correlated with the number of applications for every job vacancy or opportunity. As a result, this ranking program would positively correlate with prospective job applicant motivation in applying or seeking for a job opportunity in that organization. Furthermore, these rankings remains negatively linked to turnover rates to both the organization and competitors with an employer of choice program. Organizational citizenship behavior results from organizational commitment and attitudes of job fulfillment. Work involvement bears a direct relationship with job performance and organizational citizen behaviors. Diverse groups of employees have varying drivers of motivation in achieving employee engagement. A clear understanding of the choices available to employees would produce best output. In addition, the ability for them to be entrusted with an elongated task at the workplace within a given period usually brings out the best performance in their work output. Because of this, engaged employees become more productive and creative as well as change other employees’ work outcomes. In addition, engaged employees become seekers in initiating change, challenge their status quo and remain practically critical in their work. Employees make choices to which extent they would be engaged and how they would behave in any given work situation. Moreover, they make work more pleasant for other employees and customers besides enjoying their work too. This consequently makes organizations to recognize that engaged employees add value to productivity, profitability, customer satisfaction, long-term value for stakeholder and retention. Hence, as organizations move in the direction of attaining a world-class position, they significantly set free the organizations prospective for fast growth while eliminating or reducing undesirable impacts of non-motivated employees (Smythe, 2007). In the same manner, data collected by Gallup and maintained by them have statistical relationships. Thus, employee engagement augments and remains related to existing knowledge. Consequently, a construct would not be required where employee engagement produces outcomes similar to that of organizational commitment, work involvement, or work satisfaction. The construct of employee engagement remains a multilayered and multidimensional element that captures employee motivation. The application of this construct may then be utilized to the benefit of employees and the organization. Increases in knowledge on how high performance may be achieved at workplace exist embraced by many modern organizations (Little & Little, 2006). Positively empowering leadership affects the psychological empowerment of employees, which in turn influences both creative employee engagement and intrinsic motivation. Creative employee engagement and intrinsic motivation usually have a positive influence on creativity. The association between psychological empowerment or motivation and empowering leadership may be moderated by the identification of an empowerment role within an organization. On the other hand, the association between creative employee engagement and psychological empowerment results from a leader’s encouragement of creativity on employees. Remuneration would likely be another key overall motivator. However, remuneration may not be an equally significant motivator to all individuals or in all situations of work in different organizations. Commitment to employee engagement encompasses the day-to-day work activities, the organization, manager, and team. Rational commitment involves the extent to which employees believe in the existence of financial, professional, or developmental self-interest among the managers, organizations, or teams. On the other hand, the extent to which employees value, believe, and enjoy their engagement at the workplace constitutes emotional commitment. The discretionary performance and intention of an employee to leave work comprise the outcomes of commitment. There exist potential employee engagement parameters concerning mangers, team, organization, and day-to-day work activities. Managerial parameters may include listening carefully to views and opinions, trusting employees in the jobs they do, encouraging employee development, handling crises appropriately, and placing employee’s interests first. Making employee development, a priority and the provision of necessary resources and tools constitute team parameters to employee development among other parameters (Corporate Leadership Council, 2004). Day to day and organizational parameters may consist of task variety, safe work place and an opportunity to participate in what an employee does best. In addition, differential treatment of poor and best performers, recognition, and equity, a culture of flexibility and diversity, and sharing of decision-making process also act as organizational parameters. All these parameters contribute to significant outcomes in motivating employees at the workplace. The resultant motivating factors consist of health, leave, retirement and work life benefits. For instance, flexible work schedule, employee assistance programs, pension, paid vacation or duty offs and health benefits plan would be examples of such motivating factors in employee development. Research also indicates that senior executive teams who show commitment and remain open to their employee’s input receive intensified effort in return arising from their employees’ motivation (Corporate Leadership Council, 2004). Associating remuneration to performance bears the greatest impact on flexible work performance whereas total compensation with overall satisfaction would be considerably influential in motivating employees. The impact of these associations comes from clearly conveying benefits information to employees. A culture of integrity, information sharing, and innovation, as well as quality development plans and effective mentorship, helps employees to feel personal, emotional, and rational connected to the organization. Hence, employee commitment should be managed along with other essential performance drivers. Most notably would be the provision of information to and the recruitment of high quality talent, experiences, and resources they need towards performing at their best. Modern motivational theories view the employee as active in information gathering rather than as passive respondents to external or internal stimuli. Employees do not exist as perfectly rational beings in collecting and using information. However, employees become influenced by social information in the manner of attributions involving other employees’ intentions. Both past and present approaches to motivation remain based on the proposition that increasing in the amount of effort and time individuals dedicates to work would result in higher levels of employee performance. Additionally, this would lead to increased productivity of the organization. In recent years, personality features have become more essential in the study of motivational practices. The goal setting theory evolved into a comprehensive and mature approach on work motivation. It bases its foundation on the notion of a goal as a motivating factor. Specific and difficult goals usually lead to higher work performance in the event that an employee accepts the goals. Self-efficacy, therefore, results from the mastery of experiences, social persuasion, physiological states, or modeling (Landy & Conte, 2009). Maslow, McGregor, and Herzberg believed that the main purpose of any organization would be to initiate needs necessary for employees to delight in a meaningful while at the workplace. In this regard, the content of work remains as the primary sources of satisfaction and motivation. The probability that employees with high growth needs would experience a meaningful work situation increases if their work makes available task significance, skill variety, and task identity. Jobs that offer autonomy enable employees to experience responsibility over their work. Conversely, equity theory indicates that employees evaluate sources of information in relation to personal relevance while also using other similar attributes for comparison. However, equity theory, which deals with money, states that employees assess the ratio of their output relative to their inputs in comparison of others. According to Latham history, research, theory, and practice provide a unique behavioral framework for employee motivation in organizational settings (Latham, 2007). Motivation remains manifested in three dimensions of behavior namely persistence, attention, and effort. These three factors encompass the measurement for most motivational theories under the constructs of expectancies, self-efficacy, and personality. In this regard, motivation would be manifest by what the employee attends to, how much the employee performs on it and the time taken for the task or activity. However, contemporary motivational theories exist as multidimensional in nature and emphasize on contextual factors of the workplace situation. The process-oriented determinants of motivation vary intervening variables and mediators. Therefore, the use of implicit measures of motivation would better evaluate any underlying constructs for controversial, socially unpopular, and sensitive subject matter (Kanfer et al., 2008). Contemporary measurement issues in motivation involve the level at which measurement becomes administered, fluctuations, the choice of a measurement method and forms of biases. The statistical analysis of theories and motivational measures influence the statistical approach used. Cross-sectional statistical approaches assess variations between employees at a given period. On the other hand, longitudinal approaches consider lack of independence among employees following repeated observations. Unequal measurement of situation for each employee, the spacing of measurements, missing data and timing remain as essential factors to be considered when carrying out longitudinal analysis of motivation. Another measure that could be applied in measuring motivation levels includes the use of linear models (Kanfer et al., 2008). In order to attain better measurement of motivation, it would be necessary for employers to develop appropriate measures on implicit procedures. For instance, the use of implicit attitude test would be appropriate for assessing methods designed for social and cognitive motivation or psychology. However, in assessing motivation, it would be worth noting that all goals differ in their time span and scope and that these goals remain established in relation to other goals and issues of priority. It remains easy for individuals to assess the direct effects of employees and situations on employee outcomes and unit differences of these outcomes as well as their interactive effects. Various dimensions of motivation theories facilitate various methods as well as various statistical analyses for motivation. Hence, it would be necessary to assess the construct reliability and validity of the measures in ensuring that they remain consistent with the operational and theoretical description of the concepts. Conclusion Motivation at the workplace remains associated with improved productivity of the organization, decreased turnout, absenteeism and burnout, and improved service delivery and customer care. Several performance programs remain based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, for instance the employee of the month program. Herzberg’s motivational factors namely recognition, achievement, advancement, growth, and responsibility correlate to practices and policies, compensation, job security, coworkers and supervision respectively. According to Herzberg, all hygiene factors need to be achieved for motivational factors to remain satisfying. Continuous research on employee engagement and motivation need to be conducted in order better to capture and understand its contributions to individual and organizational performance. Lack of knowledge on the utilization of talents in the creation of a favorable organizational climate for employee’s development would limit the scope and potential of employee engagement in attaining motivation. Intrinsic outcomes of motivation show how meaningful, interesting, and challenging work could be whereas extrinsic rewards of motivation relate to the conditions at work, security and remuneration. Hence, effective motivation with an understanding and a shift of the mindset that an individual could not make any person do anything. Finally, the creation of the right set of conditions for motivating employees in a favorable work situation remains to be the fundamental element of motivation in achieving employee engagement. References Adair, J. (2006). Leadership and Motivation: The Fifty-Fifty Rule and the Eight Key Principals of Motivating Others. London, GBR: Kogan Page Publishers. Almaazmi, Y. A. & Solangi, M. Y. (n.d.). Measuring Effectiveness of Motivational Practices in Modern Companies: Theory and Practice. Council, C. L. (2004). Driving Performance and Retention through Employee Engagement. Research Summary. Corporate Executive Board. 7-43. Kanfer, R, Chen, G, & Pritchard, R. D. (Eds.). (2008). Work Motivation: Past, Present and Future. New York, NY: Routledge. Landy, F. J., & Conte, J. M. (2009). Work in the 21st Century: An Introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology. John Willey and Sons. Latham, G. P. (2007). Work Motivation: History, Theory, Research and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Little, B., & Little, P. (2006). Employee engagement: Conceptual issues. Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications and Conflict, 10(1), 110-118. Podmoroff, D. (2005). 365 Ways to Motivate and Reward Your Employees Everyday: With Little or no Money. Ocala, Florida: Atlantic Publishing Company. Smythe, J. (2007). Turning Hierarchy Upside Down to Drive Performance. Abingdon, GBR: Gower Publishing Limited. Thomas, K. W. (2009). Intrinsic Motivation at Work: What Really Drives Employee Engagement (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Read More