Workplace Morale, Motivation Theories - Essay Example

Workplace Morale I. Executive summary What does make people tick in a workplace? This question 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. Introduction 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. Such, it would be necessary to cite and expound the ideas of these classical theorists for us to better understand the motivational implements used by modern organisation whose concepts can be traced back to the ideas of these classical theorists. 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. Old as it is, Taylors piece rate payment is still existent today especially in the factories where employees are being paid by the number of units or pieces they produced. 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). This Human Relations idea of Elton Mayo at work has been institutionalised by modern business organisations with the creation of a specific department which is the Employee Relations that caters specifically to employees need. 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). Abraham Maslow’s motivation model was contained in his book Motivation and Personality. He described the five basic human motivations which are placed in a hierarchical order which progresses when one is satisfied in the hierarchy (Kermally 2005). Of the hierarchy, Maslow was amazed with the positive human capacity to transcend with the phenomenon of self-actualization. He knew that this construct of his suffered from methodological flaws but is convinced of its intuitive validity. He hailed the last trait of self-actualization as the pinnacle of human characteristic’s highest inner traits such as our capacity to love, spirituality, to create and to have compassion. Although this was not empirically verified by Maslow himself, this theory of his about motivation still stands today (Goodman 1968). 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. e. Douglas McGregor’s Theory of X and Theory of Y McGregor’s Theory X and Y articulated the manager’s ambivalent point of view about their employees. In theory X, McGregor posited that employees dislike work that they must be coerced to perform. In the same vein, theory X assumes that employees do not like responsibilities and is more interested in job security has very little ambition. Theory Y is the positive aspect where McGregor put forth that employees like work in as much as they like play and are committed and self-motivated to achieve the organisation’s goal. Theory Y also believes that employees like responsibilities and is also driven to succeed just like their managers (Kopelman et al 2008). For the theory to achieve optimal peformance from its employees, a balance has to be struck between theory X and Y. Using these theories in their extremes can be disastrous to an organisation for too much emphasis on theory X can lead to resentment, intentional low output and other hostile behavior from employees. Too much permissiveness or excessiveness of theory Y is also not healthy for business because it will lead to an increased request for concessions from employees for a declining productivity. f. Vroom’s Expectancy Theory Victor Vroom’s Expectancy theory of motivation is more popularly known in modern management as “carrot and yardstick” motivation. This motivational theory posits that employees performance is based on assumption that employees elect a certain behavior in an organisation with the expectation of maximising pleasure and minimising pain (Sloof and Praag 2008). According to this theory, employees generally elect a course of action that will yield the greatest reward for the employee. If the expectancy of a certain employee is predisposed to a belief that a certain job can be done, the theory posits that such employee will be more motivated to work. If the job requires a high level of performance whose result can be gratifying to the employee, it is expected that the employee will put a premium on doing a good job and will act accordingly. In the same vein, if an employee believes that low performance will have negative repercussion, the said employee will avoid such unpleasant experience by performing well. This motivational theory explains why rewards and incentives are given to employees who meets targets which is a common practice in motivating sales people even in todays’business organisations. This theory also explains why underperformers in organisations are being penalised. IV. Motivational implements at work These motivational theories are being implemented in the workplace in various forms and methods to keep the employees motivated to commit and perform. These motivational theories are being concretised in various forms and policy in the workplace whose main principle drivers can be traced back to these classical theorists of motivation. Among these popular motivational tools and implements used in modern business organisations are; a. Provision for employee benefits Benefits are the traditional tools that business enterprises use to keep their employees. Benefits such as “providing health insurance, life insurance and a retirement-savings can be said to be based on Taylor’s principle of motivating employees of paying or rewarding employees to motivate and keep them. b. Incentive through high profile socialisation Motivating employees do not have to incur cost as put forth by Mayo to contradict Taylor’s sole emphasis on pay as a motivator. For Mayo, employees can already be motivated by addressing their social needs and this does not have to cost anything. Modern business organisations still utiised this concept in the form of work life balance to motivate employees through socialisation (Milligan 1999). c. Fun at work This concept of fun at work is a derivative of McGregor’s Theory Y where it posits that employees love work as much as play. In the case of Google, they took this theory further by encouraging play at work which yielded positive results. Google believes that through play, it is able to create a flexible environment that encourages challenge through a fun and stimulating working environment (Lovewell, 2005). True enough, this concept of play and encouraged creativity has sprouted several products and services that Google was able to launch ranging from online advertising services applications, such as Gmail, Google Map to Google Plus (Lovewell 2005). V. Trendy workforce morale theory: autonomy versus pay It is important to note that despite all these workforce morale perspectives that is available to managers, business organisations are still asking the same question of what makes the people tick in order to enhance their productivity. Recent organisational theorists reiterated Herzberg’s assertion that extrinsic incentives such as fat paychecks, perks, plush offices and promotions or pay does not necessarily mean that people are better off that they will work harder and smarter. 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” which is basically autonomy (49). A study made by Dan Pink elaborated this idea where 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. These studies debunk the earlier notion about what is more important to the person’s psychological well being. It debunk the long held notion of Wilhelm Friedrich Taylor that the higher the pay, the better the person will work (Sarachek 192) and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that says biological need or pay comes and foremost in all the hierarchy of need that autonomy, which is the region of fulfilment, plays last in Maslow’s priority of well-being (193). Indeed money can only do so far. Just when we thought that it is good for our well-being that will make us do better, it does not in fact do that. Rather, we do better when we are left alone to do our thing as studies have shown. VI. Conclusion Motivational theories can be summarized as “pay them well and treat them well” (Capowski 1998) and lastly, leave them alone to do their own thing. Paying them well can be easy as it only involves paying them and addressing their economic needs. But paying alone is not enough to motivate employees to commit and perform better. Herzberg articulated the inadequacy of pay as a motivator that “it does not make employees to work harder and smarter”. Rather, it only motivates them to endure the grind of work for the sake of pay. “Treating employees well” to motivate them can be a challenge. “Treating employees well” does not only mean being nice to them but also involves an in depth understanding of the employees’ needs that would enable them to commit to the organisation’s objective and perform better to achieve such goals. This includes the social aspect as put forth by Mayo, job fulfillment as theorized by Herzberg and a delicate balancing act when to give and withhold as proposed by McGregor’s Theory X and Y. The intricacy of addressing the “treating them well” dimension in motivating employees can be gleaned by the several examples that companies have to employ just to keep their workforce committed and productive. Above all, giving employees the space or autonomy proved to enhance worker’s morale especially when the job needs creativity and cognitive skills at the least cost. This needs however trust and maturity on the side of the managers to give its best workers the autonomy to perform. Bibliography 1 Capowski, Genevieve (1998). Recruitment and retention 101. HR Focus 75(8): 16 2 Frasch, Kristen B. (2010). Pay Incentives Planned as Retention Tools. Human Resource Executive Online. Retrieved at < http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp?storyId=458753363>. 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