Motivation, How Motivate to Perform in the Workplace

To find good workers is not that easy, but it’s even harder to stop employee’s turnover. Company must ensure that employees perform tasks, increase productivity and feel the satisfaction of their work. To make this happen companies need to ensure that their employees are motivated. 1. 1. Motivation – to encourage people to act, so that they and their company would reach their setup goals and to ensure that all sides will be satisfied.

Motivation benefits the company as an employee who is motivated wants to be at work, takes pride in their work, does not have a negative attitude towards the company and is dedicated to work longer hours and takes delight in it. The company, having these workers can achieve: * Higher productivity and quality * Better attendance * Lower employee turnover * More likely that changes will be recognized, rather than resisted 1. 2. But there are many factors which affect motivation level in the workplace.

One of the most important is social factor, if an organization is soaked with negativity it can be disastrous, it can lead to low morale, no desire to work, low performance & poor quality and finally resistance to any changes within the organization can be crippling in these competitive times. Environmental conditions can affect motivation levels in the workplace as well, such as, bad air conditioning system it’s too cold or too hot to work, tools for work are in poor quality or do not comply with the requirements to do a good job or work place is life-threatening.

Many other factors can affect motivation in the workplace are related to how management runs the organization such as, unfair bonus system, unrealistic targets/goals, no balance between work and life. 1. 3. Not only work the environment might affect motivation, because the workplace brings together people from different backgrounds, philosophies, cultures and personalities. Different personalities might affect what motivates people to participate in the workplace.

Creative personalities might see workplace as a place to experiment with new ideas, achieve different solutions. Communicators may be motivated to discuss and debate business decisions. Competitive employees may view the workplace as an arena where they hope to beat out others to demonstrate their ability. Although motivations may reflect a mixture of several work-related goals, playing to people’s strengths can boost motivation and result in better products and services.

For example, assigning a competitive type employee the task of developing a campaign to beat out your primary competitor might be successful. Personalities also affect workplace behavior and sometimes might cause disagreements. For example, a person who has a more relaxed approach and is sensitive can find it difficult to work with a person who does things quickly. He might feel rushed and even be angry or hostile. That might cause friction between them and both of them might start feeling that they start interfering with each other’s potential capabilities. . 4. Demotivated or low motivated employees directly impact an organization’s performance and its stability. For instance if employees are motivated and proactive they are ready to go the extra mile when it’s needed and to do whatever it takes to achieve setup goals, these two things builds an organization’s stability, but if organization’s employees have low motivation it is completely vulnerable to both internal and external challenges its employees are not going the extra mile to maintain the organization’s stability.

Lack of motivation equates to less work being accomplished. Productivity does not disappear it’s usually transferred to aspects not related to business needs such as, personal conversation, longer breaks, internet browsing, all these things costs time and money for organizations. 2. 1. Frederick Herzberg the Two-factor theory also known as Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory states that there are certain factors in the workplace that cause job satisfaction, while a separate set of factors cause dissatisfaction.

Satisfaction and psychological growth is a factor of motivation factors. Dissatisfaction is a result of hygiene factors. Herzberg developed this motivation theory during his investigation of 200 accountants and engineers in the USA. Hygiene factors – are needed to ensure an employee does not become dissatisfied. They do not lead to higher levels of motivation, but without them there is dissatisfaction. Motivation factors – are needed in order to motivate an employee into higher performance.

These factors results internal generators in employees Often “salary” and “incentive payments” are spoken about as motivators. While you might agree that without them there may be high levels of demotivation, most don’t consider them as effective motivators. They are, as Herzberg says, “hygiene factors”. Herzberg’s research included considerable data collection. View Herzberg’s data bellow: 2. 2. A manager must be sure to provide sufficient hygiene factors while at the same time building satisfiers or motivators into employee’s jobs.

In essence, hygiene factors are necessary to be sure a subordinate is not dissatisfied and satisfiers are needed to motivate an employee to work towards a higher level of performance. To begin eliminating things that are causing employee dissatisfaction the manager needs to fix problems related to things such as unfair treatment, noncompetitive wages, job security and ineffective policies, managers can then start to create a supportive culture, challenging work and offer effective leadership showing respect for subordinates.

Each of these activities helps a manager to reduce job dissatisfaction and makes the first step towards motivation and higher productivity. In my current work place at Amazon, Herzberg Two-factor theory is very widely applicable, for example every morning at Amazon there is “Gemba walks”, during that walk employees can rise their concerns and issues how to improve working conditions, and all these raised issues are recorded on “Gemba wall” where everyone can see at what stage raised issues are.

Couple examples of what employees requesting: Radio – so they could listen to the music while working, in packing area where employees using monitors to scan items – request was to have adjustable monitors, because of different people height, tall employees had to work stoop over the table, and Amazon changed 250 working stations in one week! There are other things what Amazon applying like “Worker of the week”, “Worker of the month”, “Fun Fridays” – were every Friday there is different dress code. 2. 3.

To make employees even more productive, more motivated, more proactive we need to engage them. Engaged employees care about the future of the company and are willing to invest discretionary effort. Engaged employees feel a strong emotional bond to the organization, which results in higher productivity, quality, lower turnover and absenteeism. In order to make it happen organization and managers need to let go of any negative opinions that they might have about their employees and approach each of them as a source of unique knowledge with something valuable to contribute to the company.

Companies need to make sure that employees have got all necessary tools to do their jobs. Just as the marketplace and customer needs change often, so do your employee’s needs. Should be clearly communicated what is expected of employees. Employees can’t perform well if they don’t know what is expected from them and what exactly they need to do. Companies need to make sure that all workers are trained to do their jobs. Companies should, not only, be giving feedbacks to employees but also find out what employees think about the company and be open to new ideas or constructive criticism.