Some Famous Theories on Employee Motivation

For productivity to be achieved by organizations factors like employee motivation, job satisfaction, commitment and skills have to be taking into consideration. When employees are satisfied with their jobs, they are motivated to give their level best to attain organizational goals. This job satisfaction can come from different factors that link to motivation at work. The need  to increase productivity which will lead to increase in profitability makes it necessary for managers to understand various motivational theories. Organizations have different strategies they use to motivate their employees. They understand that if the staff is not motivated, he or she will not be satisfied, the staff would not put out the best job. Overall the company’s level of productivity can be affected.

Strategies to Motivate Employees

Some strategies used to motivate employees are :-

o   Performance Pay and Rewards

o   Flexitime

o   Job Empowerment

o   Job Enrichment

o   Job Rotation

We will take about performance pay and rewards system and how effective they are in motivating employees. Performance related pay is generally used where employee performance cannot be appropriately measured in terms of output produced or sales achieved. Like piece-rates and commissions, performance related pay is a form of incentive pay. A reward is a work outcome of positive value to the individual. Some argue that this kind of system can cause dispute about how performance is measured and whether an employee has done enough to be rewarded, it may also create rivalry between employees or managers.

Motivational theories on Employee Motivation

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 – 1917) brought forward the notion that workers are motivated primarily by pay. His Theory of Scientific Management argued that worker do not normally enjoy work so they must be controlled and supervised. Managers should break down production into small parts, workers should get training and tools to help them work better on their job. He notes that workers are then paid for the number of items the make in a period of time, as a result workers are encouraged to work hard and maximise their productivity. His approach is closely related to autocratic management style where employees do as they are told with minimum contributions of ideas. But is approach can be boring as workers do the same things all the time. In the end workers are not so motivated.

Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow (1908 – 1970) along with Frederick Herzberg (1923-) introduced the Neo-Human Relations School in the 1950’s, which focused on the psychological needs of employees. Maslow’s theory states that there are five levels of human needs which employees need to have fulfilled at work to be fully satisfied. Below are the list of needs in hierarchy. He says that only once a lower level of need has been fully met, would a worker be motivated by the opportunity of having the next need up in the hierarchy satisfied. For example a person who is dying of hunger will be motivated to achieve a basic wage in order to buy food before worrying about having a secure job contract.

He says that managers have to give their workers incentives to workers in order to help them fulfill each need in turn and progress up the hierarchy. Managers need to see that workers have different things that motivate them and do not all move up the hierarchy at the same pace. They may therefore have to offer a slightly different set of incentives from worker to worker.

Frederick Herzberg

Frederick Herzberg believed in a two-factor theory of motivation. This theory states that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are driven by different factors - motivation and hygiene factors, respectively. Motivators are more concerned with the actual job itself. For example, how exciting is the work? How much opportunity it gives for more responsibility, recognition and promotion. For example a worker will only turn up to work if a business has provided a reasonable level of pay and safe working conditions but these factors will not make him work harder at his job once he is there. Importantly Herzberg viewed pay as a hygiene factor which is in direct contrast to Taylor who viewed pay as piece-rate in particular.

Herzberg notes that managers can motivate employees by creating a democratic setting in the work place and by improving the nature and content of the job they do. Some of the methods managers could use to achieve this are:

Job enlargement – workers being given a greater variety of tasks to perform (not necessarily more challenging) which should make the work more interesting.

Job enrichment - involves workers being given a wider range of more complex, interesting and challenging tasks surrounding a complete unit of work. This should give a greater sense of achievement.

Empowerment - means delegating more power to employees to make their own decisions over areas of their working life.

In conclusion, both Maslow and Herzberg, suggest that satisfied employees tend to be more productive, creative and committed to their organizations. If an employee is not satisfied with work the person might not be motivated to go to work, this can affect production in the case of a manufacturing company whereby the production process needs every one to be at work all the time. Furthermore, unsatisfied employees can decide to quit the company all of a sudden causing general productivity to reduce. Good ways to motivate employees would be through methods like promotions, job enrichment, job rotation and communications. Employees that feel like their needs are taken care of by their company tend to be more satisfied.