Introduction
A lot of experts defined motivation as ( the inner force that urges employees or people in general to complete personal works and achieve goals ).
And employees Motivation can be defined as stimulating the employee to get him to do his best efforts for the worker benefit. Also, it is a kind of psychological process that includes stimulation and direction that focuses on the employee. It is essential for employees to get the best from them and it is associated with effective management and leadership.
Employee motivation has an important and wonderful impact on increasing the productivity of many business firms and companies. A lot of different ways can be used to motivate employees, such as (make competitions between teams, financial rewards and gifts, safety and security, and a lot of ways and techniques ). Many companies have struggled in knowing which is the best technique to motivate employees to improve performance, but then they realized that there is no unique technique or strategy for every company to motivate employee, so each company use its own techniques.
About the Employee motivation factors
All managers should consider the important employee motivations factors to know the need of each employee and how to motivate and train each one.
And the most important employee motivation factor that how the manager can treat employees with respect, but if the manager doesn’t respect his employee, he will never be able to motivate them and also they will not respect him.
The manager has a lot of ways to respect his employees such as ( assigning tasks to employees that they are best suited for. ) and many other ways.
Employee Motivation Techniques
Employees are considered as the company’s backbone so It’s important to use motivation in any company because the profits will improve, and there are some important motivational techniques that can be used to arouse employees enthusiasm :
the first is to be interested in them and with each employee, that’s mean knowing their personal background, their hobbies, future plans and a lot of things, you will lose a lot of time to talking with employees because people like to talk about themselves, but you will satisfy their ego and they will like you and trust you.
the second important one is to be trustworthy and respectable with them, that’s mean if you promise them to do anything for them, so you must fulfil it at all cost, these techniques make employees trust you fully, also you must be a good example in following company’s rules and accomplishing job’s work in time and in the most ethical manner possible.
Of course, providing employees with experience, training and development is of great importance to the company. In other words, employee motivation is very important. It differs from one person to another. However, all of them are going towards the same goal and achievement, getting employees to do their best to the benefit of the work. And by providing career development’s opportunities, the employer can motivate an employee to increase the quality of production and work. Motivation techniques are common and a lot, there is responsibilities’ delegating technique and the shared decision-making. And for Incentives techniques such as increasing payment (salary).
Employees with effective motivation can do a much better performance than others. A motivational technique that works in a good way is the employee of the month. This type of technique focuses on an individual employee who has proved that he is the best in performance and effort for the specific month. So the employer should award him to management. Most companies put the picture of that employee in a prominent place; they also get a few bonuses for that month. Sometimes the employers awarded their employees (employee of the month) by giving them a small gift like a pen or coffee mug and other small motivation’s gifts.
Always it nice to have an award ceremony or to give someone this award at any meeting. The effect of this type of technique is huge and clear Although it doesn’t cost a lot of money. First of all, it gives the employee recognition that he is doing a good job. So you can definitely motivate employees with this simple technique.
Also, there are a lot of successful and good employee motivational techniques such as the competitions between employees, that make works completed faster. Also, prizes or awards are kinds of motivations that can do much in this regard, such as awards for perfect attendance, and awards for jobs well done. And there are some companies that let customers rate their customer service representatives. Then the best employee who has provided the most wonderful customer service is awarded.
Motivation theories
Motivation theories that were common in the 1950s are David McClelland’s needs theory, which relates to “management by objectives” and Frederick Herzberg’s description in Motivation to Work of motivation based upon empowerment and self-esteem. Probably the most well-known motivation theory is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, in which higher-level needs include affiliation and recognition, as well as self-respect and competence. Later, Douglas McGregor described as controlling and conventional Theory X contrasted with a holistic and participative Theory Y.
Theory X
It says that most humans have a natural dislike towards work. Because they don’t like their work, so before they worked hard enough, all of them must be controlled and threatened. In human’s nature, the human doesn’t like responsibility but he desires security above everything, and at work especially men need more than financial rewards, they also need a lot of higher-order motivation, in order to get the opportunity to fulfil themselves, but theory’s managers and experts don’t give this opportunity to their staff so that all employees behave in an expected way.
McGregor’s Theory Y
One old-fashioned management philosophy believes that people are basically lazy and therefore require constant monitoring. The more current philosophy says that most people will choose success rather than failure. And that everyone has the potential to be successful and this second philosophy is well-illustrated in McGregor’s “Theory Y” in The Human Side of Enterprise.
Theory Y is focused on :
- The play or rest in work is natural as spending of mental and physical effort.
- Self-motivation, control and direction are more useful than the threat of punishment or external control.
- Commitment is an important way that makes employees awarded upon their achievement, most significant of these rewards, the satisfaction of ego and self-actualization needs.
- under the proper conditions, the human mustn’t only learn to accept but to know how to be the responsible one, how to avoid responsibility, lack of ambition, and focuses on security are generally the results of experience, all of them not inborn human characteristics.
- Make people able to exercise at a fairly high degree of imagination, how to solve organisational problems extensively, creatively not narrowly.
The intellectual potentialities of the human are being only moderately utilized in our modern industrial life, Theory Y causes the conclusion that positive results can be achieved by setting up the right conditions, including creating the right atmosphere that needs for achievement. If these conditions are not met, however, bad consequences will take place. Theory Y implies that if employees are lazy, indifferent, irresponsible, inflexible, uncreative, uncooperative, so the causes lie in management’s methods of organization and control.
About Theory X and Theory Y assumptions
- These two theories are based on the social science research which has been implemented and demonstrates recognition to become more effective.
- McGregor notice that the two theories assumption are two separate attitudes, it is difficult to put theory Y into practice on the shop floor in huge production operations, but McGregor also describes how Theory Y can effects salaries, management of promotions and the development of effective employers or managers. Also, McGregor said that theory Y is helpful to problem-solving.
- To exercise authority is one of the management tasks, and there are cases in which this is the only method of achieving the desired results because subordinates do not agree that the ends are desirable. It’s important that the task is clear to the employees as well as the objectives, so they can realize the purpose of the action. So they will exercise self-direction and control to do better work. This will work more effectively than if the employees have ordered from the management.
- Another important thing is that if the employees are consulted in the work, this gives them much motivation to do better work and efforts. If these conditions are present, managers will find that the best way to solve problems leads to much improved results compared with the alternative approach of handing out authoritarian orders.
- Also If management becomes influenced by estimating the possibility of its human resources, and accepts the knowledge given by social science researchers and displayed in Theory Y assumptions, then it can devote time, money and effort in developing improved applications of the theory.
Conclusion
the motivational process consists of automatic psychological and rational processes. Processes’ degree depends on whether the process is distal or proximal. The degree of automatic processes in motivation is also affected by other factors like task complexity, affective states, individual traits.
Keeping employees motivated is not a difficult or costly process to be ignored; however, its results are excellent for any work. So It must be taking into consideration.
Works cited:
Chinongoza, M. (2007), Employee Motivation Techniques.
Hunt J. (2005), Employee Motivation is a Psychological Process.
Saavedra, L. (2008), Proven Leadership Techniques in Employee Motivation for Supervisors.