Workplace Case

Employee motivation has always been a problem for leaders and mangers. When employees are not motivated, they tend to spend little or no effort in their jobs. They try to avoid work as much as possible, exit the company they work for and produce low quality work. Employees who are motivated are persistent, creative, productive and give high quality work. Every employee has different ways to become motivated and the employer need to get to know their employees very well and find different tactics to motivate them based on their personal wants and needs.

Motivation varies in different people. Motivation emerges, in some theories, out of need, values, goals, intentions, and expectations. Since motivation comes from within, managers need to cultivate and direct the motivation that their employees already have. In order to motivate employees, manages try to use incentives like; contests, ranking of people, plants, shift changes, team, performance appraisals, quotas and commission pay. All these systems are implemented in the belief that they drive performance, but they are considered temporary motivation. Managers need to study the organization as a system, instead of using extrinsic motivators to motivate employees. When employees receive feedback about their performance and have an important, identifiable piece of work to do which requires skill variety, they may experience feelings of happiness and therefore intrinsic motivation to keep performing well. (Hackman & Oldham, 1980)

Frederick Herzberg developed the motivation- hygiene theory of worker satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Herzberg said that hygiene factors such as salary, fringe benefits, and working conditions can prevent dissatisfaction but they do not motivate the worker. Motivators such as achievements, recognition, responsibility, and advancement increase satisfaction from work and motivate people toward a greater effort and performance. Herzberg suggests that employees are most satisfied