Employment Motivation - Essay Example

Employment Motivation

Introduction

Employee motivation is a prerequisite for every organization striving to improve performance, productivity and morale among workers. In most times, employee motivation has been focused on the tangible resources that organizations have and provide to their employees as an appreciation of the good work and performance. Firstly, a better understanding of employee motivation provides an insight of what is the best approach to motivating employees as Spector (482) defines this construct as the level of commitment, energy as well as the creativity that employees bring to their jobs. Thus, to improve energy, commitment, and creativity, most of the organizations have designed their appraisal systems to include monetary rewards as tokens for improving morale. However, an organization can also be constrained by resources and this case, will require re-evaluation of the appraisal systems such that non-monetary or non-resource-based tokens are used in motivating employees (McGregor and Neel). As such, Spector (482) agrees that whether an economy shrinks or grows, it is necessary for an organization always to motivate employees and one of the approaches to use when resources are not finite is employee empowerment or involvement. Therefore, for this case, the focus is to explore how the reward systems can be designed to motivate the employees with reference to theoretical recommendations and models of employee motivation.

One of the ways through which an organization’s reward system can be reevaluated or redesigned to motive the employees when there are not enough resources is that the reward system should focus more on the intrinsic rewards (Van Yperen, Nico, Burkhard Wörtler, and Kiki 179). In this case, an effective way of motivating employees is by developing a reward system that has incentives for intrinsic motivation. As such, Humphrey, Jennifer, and Frederick define intrinsic motivation as ‘‘what comes within the personal or the internal interest that one has to offer, always driven by enjoyment and personal interest in the particular job task’’ (1332). The underlying assumption is that intrinsic motivation lies within an individual and does not depend on other factors like tangible or monetary rewards provided to the individual. In fact, existing literature indicate that the most powerful reward comes from within the individual or inside an employee (Prasad and Steffes). In particular, having a reward system that focuses on intrinsic motivation has greater advantages to workplace motivation because it is a way of ensuring that employees have the opportunity to engage in personal pat at the back to celebrate personal ability, growth, competency, knowledge as well as self-control over their endeavors. The importance of employee motivation through intrinsic rewards is also echoed by Van Yperen, Nico, Burkhard Wörtler, and Kiki, who confirm that intrinsically, motivated employees always strive to work towards recording higher productivity levels and more likely to focus on professional development (181). Precisely, a reward system that focuses on intrinsic rewards provides employees with the opportunities for personal achievement, self-efficacy or sense of accomplishment, and professional growth.

Nonetheless, designing a reward based on intrinsic motivation is the perfect fit for any knowledge economy where the best employees can offer include experience and problem-solving skills. Intrinsic motivation finds the basis from Frederic Herzberg, who argued that intrinsic motivation is the best in increasing motivation among employees, in fact, more effective than the financial rewards (Thomas and VELTHOUSE 669). As such, the statement can be interpreted that financial rewards are not enough in maximizing motivation among employees because they always want to feel that their contributions mean something to the organization. Therefore, it is better to have a reward system that rather recognizes individual contributions and appreciating such in the form of professional advancement like promotions rather than having a system entirely focused on financial rewards (671). For instance, in a given scenario, an employee may want to realize the sales quota set by the management for him or her to earn a particular bonus. However, unless there is some level of self-accomplishment in reaching the sales target, the motivation will be less powerful. Therefore, the change or redesigning the reward system also goes in hand with a total shift in the organizational culture that provides jobs, tasks, and responsibilities that improve intrinsic motivation.

A change in the workplace culture to embrace intrinsic motivation requires that the management should provide meaningful work to the employees because through such, employees will have a greater commitment to achieving a sense of self-motivation (Van Yperen, Nico, Burkhard and Kiki 183). On the other hand, the entire organizational culture should be changed to allow employees the chance in making choices on how to execute their job tasks, thus the necessity of providing employees with higher levels of autonomy. Besides, a culture should be cultivated in the organization whereby the employees have opportunities for showing their areas of competence or expertise in addition to the facilitation of professional development in a bid to expand knowledge among the employees (McGregor and Neel). Moreover, better intrinsic motivation comes at the expense of providing feedback on personal progress and professional growth. In addition, it is necessary to improve the level of intrinsic motivation by ensuring that employees are monitoring their progress. Therefore, the above considerations should be noted if an organization strives to create a workplace or an organizational culture that provide incentives for intrinsic motivation within the reward system.

A variety of literature work has focused on exploring the effectiveness of intrinsic rewards with some arguing, citing substantive evidence, that change of behavior is better achieved through intrinsic rewards. On the same note, some argue that reward systems that focus on extrinsic rewards are not only inappropriate or ineffective, but also damages employee’s motivation in the long-term (Thomas and VELTHOUSE 675). In fact, it is believed that providing extrinsic rewards for tasks that employees find intrinsically interesting crowds out their intrinsic motivation. In this regard, the central argument is that empoyees tend to perform worse when provided with extrinsic motivation or pay-based rewards. In particular, other works of literature present the evidence that rewards offered when one does the desired task, are usually destructive (McGregor and Neel). The implication is that rewards often change the way people do certain things, and this explains why extrinsic rewards can change the motivation that people have in doing particular tasks. Therefore, the above statements try to suggest that rewards should at least not change the attitude or behavior of the employees for the worse when doing certain tasks but rather encourage and motivate them to accomplish more at the personal level; thus, the justification that intrinsic rewards are equally effective in motivating employees.

One of the approaches that have been used in motivating employees without focusing on the monetary rewards is increasing the level of involvement or engagement with the employees (Thomas and VELTHOUSE 667). Various approaches have been cited as ways through which employees can be engaged, and one of such incentives is the psychological engagement that entails the perceived belief that the management is fully committed to meeting the needs of the employees. Engagement can come in the form of including employees in critical decision-making processes because through this they will feel valued and recognized as outstanding individuals in the organization (Thomas and VELTHOUSE 678). On the other hand, engagement involves giving the employees the chance to decide on which rewards they would prefer, especially for the non-monetary rewards. As such, self-efficacy or having employees believe in their abilities by trusting them with tasks is a better way to motivate employees (McGregor, Lindsay, and Neel Doshi). In this regard, such a psychological empowerment approach like trusting in the abilities of the employees requires that there should be the least supervision during work as this will make the employees perceive that the management believes in their abilities in executing the job tasks with the recommended quality, competence, and skills (Spector 485). Therefore, from the perspective of employee engagement, the entire appraisal system of an organization should be aligned with some of the approaches of empowering employees. As such, it is evident that redesigning a reward system to focus on intrinsic motivation also requires a change in the organizational culture whereby workplace engagement and empowerment are given priority as prerequisites for employee motivation.

Conclusion

In summary, the above discussion has highlighted an alternative and the best approach to changing a reward system when an organization does not have enough finite resources. In particular, it has recommended the necessity to focus on intrinsic rewards as those that focus on appreciating the personal achievements or accomplishments of employees. More so, the discussion perceives that employees are highly motivated when they have the personal urge to accomplish certain tasks, and this is determined by the extent to which the management provides the necessary workplace environment that recognizes individualized contributions. In this regard, a reward system that embraces intrinsic motivation focuses more on the knowledge development as well as professional advancements of the employees besides the emphasis on personal or individual competence levels of the workers. Intrinsic motivation, as the discussion finds out, finds its basis from Frederick’s theory of motivation where he provided a clear distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. On the other hand, it has been noted that individuals are highly motivated when they undertake tasks that they are personally compelled into achieving and this should be reflected in the organization’s culture by providing room for such personal accomplishments. Moreover, intrinsic motivation should go in hand with employee engagement and involvement in some of the critical decision-making processes especially those concerning the rewards they should get for concrete achievements.