Motivation, Pay Satisfaction, and Job Satisfaction of Front-Line Employees - Article Example

Name Instructor Course Date Motivation, Pay Satisfaction, and Job Satisfaction of Front-Line Employees Introduction Having highly motivated, satisfied and committed employees is critical to the success of an organization. Having employees who are highly motivated and satisfied in the jobs usually result in increased productivity, commitment and low absenteeism and turnover. However, human resource managers adopt different techniques to induce motivation on the employees. Pay-for-performance plans are one of the techniques that most managers use to motivate workers (Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai 161). In this article, the researchers investigated the link between both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, pay and job satisfactions at a retail business that adopts a pay-for-performance plan. This paper starts with a brief summary of the article, “Motivation, pay satisfaction, and job satisfaction of front-line employees” by Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai. This is followed by a detailed analysis of the points raised and the research findings. Finally the paper will make recommendations and conclusion. Summary Pay-for-performance is an employee incentive scheme in which an employee is remunerated and offered benefits according to their performance. The author notes that many companies have embraced this reward scheme. The author attribute this to the fact that most employers believe that using pay-per-performance have a high motivational effect on the employees to increase their efforts and commitment to the company goals. According to Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai incentive schemes are primarily awarded to employees to improve the extrinsic motivation by meeting the needs of employees directly through pay and bonuses (161). The authors argue that the link between pay-for-performance plans and extrinsic motivation is widely documented and discussed in agency theory. Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai define extrinsic motivation as the value that people place on rewards that are external in nature, such as promotion and bonuses (161). In agency theory, the primary reason for offering incentives is to induce extrinsic motivation. This is supported by the expectancy theory that holds that providing attractive incentives motivate employees to increase their performance and efforts. Despite the fact that literatures have supported the theory that pay issues place a huge role in companies, Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai note in the article that there is no precise advice offered in the literatures regarding the most appropriate and circumstances under which to use a particular incentive system to induce motivation in employees (162). However, from the research conducted in the retailer that uses pay-for-performance system, the authors indeed confirmed the complementary character of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In this respect, Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai observed that intrinsic motivation had a positive relationship with pay and job satisfaction (162). At the same time, the researchers noted that extrinsic motivation had a negative relationship with job satisfaction and had no link with pay satisfaction. From the analysis, the researchers observed that pay fairness is very important as those workers that perceived their pay not to be fair went to the extent of comparing what they get with their colleagues or felt that what they were being paid did not commensurate with their efforts. Analysis Having highly motivated satisfied and commitment workforces are important in any organization. In this article, the authors have recognized that motivation and job satisfaction by employees is very critical to an organization. Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai noted that when employees are highly motivated, this results in increased effort and productivity of employees (163). By contrast, when workers are not motivated, this can be detrimental to an organization as it results in lack of willingness of employees to put more efforts in their jobs and can result in increased rates of absenteeism and turnover. The same applies to job satisfaction which the authors argue go hand in hand. According to Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai, when employees are satisfied in their job and with the employer, they tend to increase their efforts towards ensuring the achievement of the goals of the company (163). Additionally, the authors argue that satisfied employees see no need of leaving an employer, thereby resulting in low turnover, which is beneficial to an employer. This is because it minimizes disruption of company operations and the cost of having to recruit new staff to take the position of the employee that has left. However, human resource managers use a variety of strategies to motive and increase the satisfaction level of employees. According to Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai, most modern companies use pay-for-performance as a technique not just for rewarding employees for their contribution to the business, but also to motivate hardworking employees (164). The increased adoption of pay-for-performance as an incentive scheme is attributed to the perceived benefits that are derived from this method. It has been noted that most companies use pay-for-performance plan because most high performing employees are normally attracted to work for firms that are committed to pay-for-performance plans and the fact that this incentive schemes enables self selection of low performance out of the firm. Secondly, the article indicates that most employers adopt pay-for-performance because of the motivational and satisfaction effect it has on employees. Regarding motivation, Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai found that intrinsic motivation had a positive relationship with pay and job satisfaction (166). Intrinsic motivation includes motivating factors that originate from within an individual and includes achievement, the work itself and recognition among others. It is true that employees are motivated by intrinsic motivators, such as achievement, and recognition which is positively related to pay and job satisfaction. Normally, when employees feel that their efforts are appreciated by an employer, they feel motivated to increase their efforts. As such, by providing none monetary rewards, such as recognition, this increases the satisfaction level of an employee. This has been supported by both Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory and Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory (Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai 167). Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory maintains that the needs of people are satisfied in succession starting with the lower level needs. Maslow noted that, when an individual’s lower level needs are satisfied, people seek the satisfaction of higher level needs such that the continued fulfillment of lower level needs no longer have motivational effect, but are instead motivated by the satisfaction of higher level needs. Intrinsic motivators such as achievement and recognition fall under Maslow’s esteem needs that whose satisfaction has motivational effects for employees seeking their fulfillment (Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai 169). Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory also holds that these intrinsic motivators’ increases employees’ job satisfaction because they satisfy workers’ esteem needs. Therefore, the researchers’ observation that intrinsic motivators are positively related to job and pay satisfaction is confirmed. However, the researchers also observed that extrinsic motivators were negatively related to pay and job satisfaction. Extrinsic motivation is the value that employees place on external rewards, such as promotion and bonuses (Stringer, Didham and Theivananthampillai 171). This finding, however, is surprise considering that, in line with the expectancy theory, extrinsic motivation would be expected to have a positive relationship with pay and job satisfaction. This is because expectancy theory holds that linking an employee’s incentives to performance has the effect of motivating a worker to increase his performance and effort. Therefore, the negative correlation between extrinsic motivation and job satisfaction is a surprise. Conclusion & Recommendations Having highly motivated and satisfied employees is important. However, as described above, pay-for-performance is a growing method that companies adopt for motivating their employees. The paper has demonstrated that only intrinsic motivation is positively related to pay and job satisfaction while extrinsic motivation is negatively related pay and job satisfaction, a finding that has been a surprise. Nevertheless, as much as pay-for-performance has been shown to have a motivational and job satisfaction effect on employees, it is highly recommended that pay fairness be observed be observed by HR managers when designing a pay-for-performance plan. This is because if pay fairness is not observed, then this could have a demotivating effect on employees who might feel that their colleagues are rewarded highly than them. Work Cited Stringer, Carolyn, Jeni Didham and Paul Theivananthampillai. Motivation, Pay Satisfaction, and Job Satisfaction of Front-Line Employees. Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, 8. 2 (2011): 161 – 179. Print. Read More