Motivation of Employees

Human resource, commonly known as the employees or working staff, are said to be the life blood of an organization. They work for the establishment. They are the ones who serve the clients or customers. Therefore, within these people rests the organization’s ability to perform its daily operations, achieve its short and long-term objectives, and eventually be one of the foundations of the success, or failure, of the organization. Thus, the need to, not just satisfy the customers of the establishment, but delight the employees as well.

Situations that commonly happen in an organization include poor performance of employees, lack of dedication to work, dissatisfaction with the job and the work environment, and more. All these may bring about even worse scenarios like adversely affecting daily operations, and/or labor union strikes, which definitely paralyze the establishment’s operations.

Thus, management must not only consider the gratification of its customers but the value of employee satisfaction as well, thus the need for employee motivation. More so, motivated employees contribute to the survival of the organization (Lindler, 1998).

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As a matter of fact, management’s motivation of employees in various ways seems to be a very essential matter nowadays. This is because “motivation is requisite to learning” (Stack, 2007). And motivation itself may come through either extrinsic or intrinsic forms, or both. Extrinsic motivation is “external inducement, namely recognition, incentives/bonuses, or rewards” (Malone & Lepper, 1987).

Employees frequently complain about low salaries, insufficient incentives, unsatisfactory benefits, and the like. And it cannot be denied that these are material reasons why employees tend to resign from their jobs, thus the potential for losing customer value because employee dissatisfaction and lack of loyalty. This type of motivation can be considered effective for those employees who have goals of promotional incentives.

According to Michael Williams (1996), extrinsic motivators, such as rewards, added benefits good feedback, and good expectations, may be utilized to boost the employees’ effort to learn. In stirring employees with external motivators, management associates rewards to positive and constructive behavior. It is almost always inherent in every employee to feel valued by management when their performance are appreciated or praised. They usually develop the drive to perform better in their work because of the incentives received, and possibly future inducements which may be received if more effort is exerted.

Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is viewed as promoting learning that is “explorative, self-regulated and aimed at deep-level processing, exploration, and reflection” (Martens, Bastiaens, & Kirschner, 2007). This type of motivation, therefore, lacks or does not totally include external inducements. Intrinsic motivators include setting own goals for learning, placing importance on skills and contentment, being readily productive, and more. Employees are in themselves motivated to work effectively.

This is not primarily because of incentives or rewards, but because they recognize the need to do so, in order to be able to perform their tasks well, become productive and serve as assets to the company. This type of motivation poses a more mature drive to learn and perform well, lacking the presence of tangible incentives. Malone and Lepper (1987) describe this as “what people will do without external inducements” (Malone & Lepper, 1987). This type of motivation is possess by those employees who seek no additional reward from management but simply recognizes the interest and enjoyment in performing their tasks.

No matter, as more dynamic business communities emerge, the more there is the need not simply to employ people who are capable of performing the task well but the need as well to motivate them, and make them learn to motivate themselves and love their work.

Reference:

Lindner, J.R. (1998, June). Understanding Employee Motivation. Journal of Extension, 36, 3.

Malone, T.W., & Lepper, M.R. (1987). Making Learning Fun: Taxonomy of Intrinsic Motivations for Learning. In Aptitude, Learning and Instruction: Cognitive and Affective Process Analyses, p. 255-286.

Martens, R., Bastiaens, T., & Kirschner, P. (2007, May). New Learning Design in Distance Education: The Impact on Student Perception and Motivation. Distance Education, 28 (1), 81-93.

Stack, K. (2007). Motivation: Extrinsic and Intrinsic. In B. Hoffman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Technology. Retrieved on February 18, 2008 from http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/motivation/start.htm.

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