Employee motivation - Essay Example

Employee Motivation There are a wide variety of personalities of worker out there. No matter what their work ethic, they require incentives in orderto work to the best of their abilities. In the 1960’s, there were two types of worker that were established: theory X workers and theory Y workers (Theory X and Theory Y, 2010). Theory X workers are naturally lazy and need help in performing essential work tasks. For these people, work is considered to be a chore rather than a pleasure. Organizations that rely upon the notion of theory X are more likely to be rigid and hierarchical.

This is because the workers feel safe in an environment that is tightly controlled by management. On the other hand, theory Y workers are self-motivated to perform their job responsibilities to the best of their abilities. For these workers, their work is simply an extension of themselves. If they perform poorly in the workplace, then they feel that it reflects badly on them as a person. In business organizations that contain many employees of this type, very little instruction is required from top management because the employees are naturally motivated to perform their tasks and use creative thinking to do so.

No matter which type of employees an organization deals with, there needs to be incentives offered that will encourage employees to strive to do their best. An individual goal for an employee could be a bonus depending on how many sales they make in a month. For employees who are not involved in the sales department, this could be translated as how many units of production they do. The added figure to their salaries would be a small percentage based on their work output. Another way could be to offer a promotion if they meet certain company goals.

This could be by assigning them to be a manager of a new franchise or factory. Quite naturally, this would result in an increase of pay. For the organization as a whole, the employees can receive a rise in salary based on the total output of the firm. This encourages employees to work well together because it will affect everyone if there is conflict in the workplace. For organizations with a diverse group of employees, the advantage is two-fold: the employees are handsomely compensated for their work, while the total output of the firm increases due to there being less conflict among employees.

However, there would need to be an appropriate measure to judge whether some employees are not performing as they should. Any group-based reward system needs to have checks and balances so that no one is receiving free rewards. Another way to reward employees as a group is to offer them stock options in the company (“Employee stock ownership plans can reward employees, increase productivity,” 2011). An added benefit of this is that it encourages employees to stick with the company in the long term because the performance of the company will affect their stocks.

Employees who receive stock options would have a certain amount of time to purchase the stocks at a particular price.References“Employee stock ownership plans can reward employees, increase productivity.” (2011). Incentive Industry News, LoyaltyWorks. Retrieved from http://www.loyaltyworks.com/incentiveindustrynews/incentive-programs/employee- stock-ownership-plans-can-reward-employees-increase-productivity/“Theory X and Theory Y.” (2010). Management, NetMBA. Retrieved from http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/mcgregor/