Importance of motivation on the workforce - Case Study Example

? I. Introduction If there is one management concept that continued to baffle management theorist until today is the concept about motivation. Experts are always on the lookout on how to optimize the productivity of people on how to make them perform well because the competitiveness of a business organization depends on its greatest asset – its workforce. Thus, motivating them how to perform better is a never ending process. Questions like what does make people tick in a workplace does not cease to end and always had preoccuppied both organisational theories and managers since running a business becomes a formal discipline inquiry. This question is not only to satisfy a certain curiosity in a business organisation but in fact has economic relevance because a workforce with high morale has a higher output and productivity. This paper would venture into the various theories and approaches to enhance workforce morale from the classical theorists such as Taylor until present perspective on workforce morale. II. Importance of motivation In any business enterprise, the human resource are always considered as the most important asset. Their performance can spell a difference between a business’ failure or success especially in today’s very competitive environment (Guld 2007). Business organisations with a committed and motivated workforce does not only have higher productivity but also ensure the viability of the business in the long-run. Such, it is critical that businesses should motivate its workforce not only for them to commit and perform but also to keep them in the organisation. Keeping valuable employees motivated in an organisation is not only intended to make them commit and perform but also to keep them over the long haul (Frasch 2010). There are many implements used by business organisations to motivate their employees. The most common notion about motivation is to shower them with fat paychecks but this proved to be inadequate in keeping employees motivated (Herzberg 1987). As what organisational theorists have reported, committing employees to perform towards a common goal involves an interplay of various factors that involves not only remuneration, but also the social and psychological dimensions of work that keep employees motivated and thus, productive. Several business organisations even went as far as integrating play with work not only to keep their employees committed and productive, but also to induce creativity in the workplace which proved to be beneficial to a company’s diversification drive such as the case of Google (Lovewell 2005). III. Motivation theories and examples The idea of the necessity to motivate employees to encourage commitment and performance among employees was first conceived by management classical theorists such as Taylor, Maslow, Mayo, McGregor, Vroom and Herzberg. While modern management and organisational theorists will argue that their concepts of motivating employees to commit and perform are inadequate, it cannot be denied that these classical theorists provided the basic building blocks of the know-how to motivate employees. From a simple idea of Taylor that adequate remuneration motivates employees, it later expanded to include the other dimension of human needs and aspects with the aim of fulfilling these needs that would enable employees to commit to the organisation.. The classical theorists of motivation a. Frederick Winslow Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management Taylor first conceived the idea that workers are mainly motivated solely by wage. He posited that management has to possess the control and knowledge of the methods of production so that it would have a greater control of achieving efficiency in an organisation that includes motivating its workforce (Jaffe 2008). For Taylor, the breaking up functions into small quantifiable tasks is necessary to make the time-piece rate pay possible that will encourage employees to work harder if they can see that they are being paid with more work (Taylor 1911). This theory assumed that employees are more motivated with more pay and confined motivation to solely addressing the economic needs of a business organisation’s employees. b. Elton Mayo Mayo expanded Taylor’s idea of motivating employees by including their social needs that also has to be satisfied while at work (Sarachek 1968). For Elton Mayo, employees are not only motivated by satifying their economic needs but also their needs to interact with fellow employees. Perhaps it was Mayo who first conceived the relational aspect of the workplace when he instituted Human Relations which emphasized the humane treatment of people at work (Smith 1987). c. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Of all the management theorist about motivation, perhaps Abraham Maslow is the most popular with his theory of hierarchy of needs. His theory of motivation is based on mechanical progression of transcendence where each stage of motivation has to be satisfied first before one can advance to the next level that also needs to be satisfied (Hoffman 1992). The five levels of motivation of Abraham Maslow are physiological need, safety need, social need, esteem need and self-actualization need. d. Frederick Herzberg Herzberg first asserted his argument about employee motivation by making a critique on management’s traditional understanding on how to motivate employees. In his assertion, he pointed out that extrinsic incentives such as fat paychecks, perks, plush offices and promotions or pay does not necessarily mean that people will work harder and smarter as put forth by Taylor. According to Herzberg, what it does however is stimulate people to endure the grind of work and will only likely to perform until they get the next promotion or pay raise. For Herzberg, what really makes people tick are “intrinsic rewards such as interesting, challenging work and the opportunity to achieve and grow into greater responsibility” (2003 pg. 49). In an organisational setting, this can be done through “job enrichment” whereby employees are provided with responsibilities where they have the opportunity to psychologically grow and have the fulfillment that they did a terrific job with an interesting work. IV. Conclusion Of all these theories, modern research found Herzberg’s assertion to be most effective. People are not solely motivated by wage but by the kind of work they do. This actually makes sense. In my personal experience, I met teachers who are so brilliant who can have a lucrative job elsewhere but chose to teach because they love the vocation of teaching. This may not makes sense to people who are pay oriented such as those who has the thinking of Taylor that would wonder why would a person chose a job which does not pay well when there are other jobs that pays very well. Herzberg fully explained it that people are more motivated if they like what they are doing. This is supported by a recent experiment by Dan Pink. In his experiment, he illustrated that giving monetary rewards or any reward of any kind do not always work. According to Pink, reward is great in motivating people for mechanical and repetitive jobs but it does not work when the job requires even the slightest hint of cognitive skill such as teaching or working in an academe (RSA). In fact, it can even be a demotivator because in his study, the productivity of performers plummeted when the reward system was introduced. Also, the performance of average and poor performers almost did not change with the reward system. This baffled the researchers so they replicated the condition of the research and it still showed the same result, rewards are horrible for workforce morale that require cognitive thinking (Pink 2011). Dan Pink explained the rationale behind the seeming “unresponsive” behaviors of workers to reward with jobs that involves thinking. It is because they value more autonomy, mastery and involvement and when monetary consideration comes in to value their work, it sullies their performance. According to Pink, to properly motivate them, just pay them enough where they do not have to worry about their finances and provide them the autonomy to do a good work. Works Cited Guld, Michael. “Recruitment: number two priority”. Supervision 68(12): 19-21. 2007 Herzberg, Frederick I. 'One more time: How do you motivate employees?  Harvard Business Review, 1987. (65):30, 48-61. Hoffman, E. “The Last Interview of Abraham Maslow”. Psychology Today, 1992. 25(1): 68-89. Jaffe, David & DeDreu, Carsten K. W. “The Psychology of Conflict and Conflict Management Organisations”, Erlbaum Pysch Press, Hoboken, ISBN: 9781410618795, 2007 "RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us - YouTube." YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Oct. 2013. . Read More