The Importance of Employee Motivation in Employee Retention - Dissertation Example

However, experienced and qualified employees who leave an organization take with them knowledge and expertise gained from the organization which has a negative impact on customer relations. Coupled with the fact that, hiring and training new employees to fill those positions is time-consuming and costly, organizations should consider effective strategies to retain their high-performing employees.

Today’s contemporary world is characterized by globalization, advances in technology and changes in demographics. All these factors have a significant impact on organizations today, unlike in previous years. For instance, the pool of human capital in the labour market is characterized by Generation Y, whose needs and job considerations are very different from previous generations. Each generation has unique characteristics that reflect in the workplace, and in organizations today, many employees fall into the Generation X and Y categories. For these generations, they look to more than title or salary, but factor in job satisfaction, work-life balance and lifestyle, and organizations find greater challenges to retain these employees. In consideration of this, managers should identify the means and strategies to improve employee retention which is can be made possible through employee motivation.

Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines motive as “a need or desire that causes a person to act”. To motivate therefore means “to provide with a motive” and motivation is “the act or process of motivating”. Bartol and Martin express motivation as a power that reinforces an individual’s conduct, directs behaviour and prompts the inclination to continue (313). Motivation is triggered by a physiological or psychological want that arouses behaviour aimed at achieving certain goals (Chowdhury, 239).  

Robbins defined motivation as the "willingness to exert high levels of effort toward organizational goals, conditioned by the effort's ability to satisfy some individual need" (26). In this case, the term need refers to an inner state that considers the achievement of certain outcomes as attractive. Unmet needs create anxiety within an individual that impels them to act in certain ways to satisfy the needs. In the same way, it can be assumed that employees who are motivated are in a state of anxiety or tension, and to reduce this, they put the effort into their work to achieve certain outcomes. The greater the anxiety or tension, the more effort exerted. Theories on motivation have different views on where the energy originates from and on the particular needs that drive an individual to act in certain ways so as to fulfil them. The general idea in most of these theories though, is that motivation involves a will to act, a capacity to take action and intent to meet certain goals.

Employee motivation highly influences employee performance and effectiveness. In organizations, managers implement policies on employee motivation to facilitate effective organizational productivity (Manzoor, 3). According to Rutherford, motivation is crucial to the success of an organization since motivated employees are constantly searching for means to improve their work practices in response to personal goals and objectives that drive such individuals to meet, thus organizations should provide the impetus for motivation to their employees (qtd in Van Nostre and Reinhold, 74).