Understanding Employee Motivation, HRM Essay Sample

Organizations engage in various activities to ensure employee retention and optimum performance of the company due to the responsibilities assigned to the employees. One critical aspect that companies engage in to ensure the preservation of the workers is employee motivation. For optimum performance and job satisfaction, employees need to be motivated. According to Ganta (2014), the different motivation tactics utilized by an organization have a direct impact on employee productivity. Motivated workers carry out their responsibilities to the best of their knowledge; thus, resulting in increased return and productivity of the company. On the contrary, unmotivated employees tend to produce low-quality products, leave their jobs when given the opportunity, spend minimal time in their careers, and avoid reporting to their workplaces (Ganta, 2014). Motivated employees display traits such as persistence, creativity, and productivity. Therefore, employers should utilize various tactics to understand their employees and to motivate them. The essay focuses on the employee patterns of human behavior and discusses some of the factors used to encourage employees in an organization.

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The quality of work and performance in a company has a direct impact on the success and sustainability of an organization in the marketplace (Mathur & Gupta, 2012). The former relies on how effective the workers connect and communicate in the organization; hence, human behavior is of paramount significance in a company. External and internal factors govern human behavior in an organization. The company is the one that causes internal factors while external ones culminate from personal and individual causes. Some of the employee patterns of behavior include mental attitude, family background, values, dietary habits, spouse support level, expectations, health, and focus. Employees have different beliefs, values, and methods of reacting to particular problems in an organization. The environment, education, and family upbringing influence the mental attitude of an individual significantly. Positive and negative energy is acquired since childhood. In an organizational setting, employees who are positive thinkers are recognized easily and motivate others to improve their abilities. A majority of companies grill candidates based on their family backgrounds. It is believed that people brought up in a well-organized family with a lot of care, develop feelings of love, affection, and respect everyone. Such candidates exhibit the same in the organizations (Mathur & Gupta, 2012). Human beings have two primary values, material and spiritual. The race to chase tangible valuables is evident among employees in an organization, and it destroys their inner peace and creates tension. Employees who have balanced these two values encourage mutual understanding, collaboration, and assistance in the organization. Dietary habit is another employee behavior typical in many organizations. Mathur and Gupta (2012), argue that employees who consume non-vegetarian diets suppress feelings of love and kindness. Such workers end up having anger issues in the society. The trend is vice versa among employees who consume vegetarian foods. Besides, employees in an organization display behavior that is directly similar to the level of comfort they receive from their spouses. An employee filled with anger issues from their spouse is unable to become productive in the organization. The instance of exchanging harsh words while at home extends up to the workplace and the worker fails to perform a rational behavior. Expectations are another pattern of behavior typical of employees. In every organization, workers set different expectations to meet, and when this is achieved, they become happy; however, when things fail to work accordingly, the employees lack the spirit to continue with their duties. Health affects the behavior of employees. A worker with a sound body displays positive energy while one experiencing ill health fails to perform efficiently. Another practice common among employees is focus. When employees engage in an activity that is challenging and demanding they shift their focus to a less demanding task or participate in a blame game.

Factors Motivating Employees

In every organization, various factors motivate employees to perform efficiently in their duties. One of the elements is financial motivation. According to Burton (2012), financial incentives are short-term and long-term motivation strategies utilized by the organization. Cash bonus and salary raise are two types of financial motivation that have long-lasting effects on the motivation of the employee. A cash bonus motivates a worker to understand the objectives, to meet, and perform productively to ensure the goals are met. Salary raise is done once or twice a year, and it is based on various factors such as performance and sales that are significant in the organization. For instance, a survey conducted by the Society for Human Resources Management in 2009 indicated that over half of the employees recorded that benefits and compensation are essential for employee motivation. In another study on the impact of salaries on employee motivation, the results indicated that individual pay increase productivity rate from 9 to 17 percent (Al Jasmi, 2012). In another study by Trank, Rynes, & Bretz, (2002), employees recorded that excellent salaries and allowance make them feel safe in their organizations. Another financial technique to motivate employees is the use of commissions. Commission paid encourages workers to generate more revenues for the company and increase their income. The Society for Human Resources Management Employee Job Satisfaction survey found out that six out of ten employees were likely to leave their current organizations if another company offered a 30 percent salary increase and the same benefit packages. Therefore, financial incentives are critical factors towards motivating employees to improve their performance.

Job rotation and enrichment is another factor that motivates employees in an organization. Job rotation is the ability to work at different tasks or new roles for a set of period (Kaymaz, 2010). It is done to ensure employees have the opportunity to gain more knowledge, skills, and competencies in a specific role. Kaymaz (2010) further argues that when job rotation is focused on functional flexibility, it serves as an essential technique for employee motivation. Sekhar, Patwardhan, and Singh (2013) in their paper mention the study by Azizi and Liang (2013), who found out that workforce flexibility can be attained by cross-training and intensified further by job rotation. Sekhar, Patwardhan, and Singh (2013), also found that job rotation prevents workers from performing influence activities for private help. Moreover, Kaymaz (2010) designed a conceptual framework to display the effectiveness of job rotation on employee performance. The structure indicated that job differentiation reduced monotony. Job rotation led to the development of managerial skills. The conceptual framework also helped the author to establish that job rotation led to social interaction. Communication between employees from different departments creates a friendly environment, which enables employees to carry out their activities with high motivation. Job enrichment in an organization has been found to attract, motivate, and retain workers in organizations. Results from research by Choudhary (2016) indicate that job enrichment results in job satisfaction and prevents staff turnover. The author also found that job enrichment through skill variety and task identity increased employees recognition of task significance; hence, stimulate the employees to raise further their commitments to achieve the set objectives of the organization.

Recognition is another significant factor that motivates employees in an organization. It is a positive tool where workers are praised and recognized due to their excellent performance in a company (Al Jasmi, 2012). Employees tend to work harder when they are appreciated and acknowledged for their efforts. They do their best to display the skills and abilities that they possess. Al Jasmi (2012) continues to argue that employees who are recognized are more positive about themselves. Bradler, Dur, Neckermann, and Non (2013), conducted a field experiment to measure the effectiveness of public recognition on employee performance. The researchers found that public acknowledgment of employees results in significant increase in production. They also found out that recognition works well when offered exclusively to an individual. Moreover, the results indicated that exclusive recognition increased organizational performance because of positive responses of non-recipients (Bradler, Dur, Neckermann, & Non, 2013). The research study also identified that non-recipients who did not receive public recognition improved their performance to be appreciated. For this case, recognition has been identified as a significant factor for motivating employees in an organization to enhance their performance.

Management style is another factor that motivates employees in an organization. According to Al Jasmi (2012), researchers have concurred that employee motivation and proper organizational performance rely on leadership, not managers. For this case, a leader is significant than a manager for the successful motivation of employees. Leaders have to understand the needs of their employees and rank by prioritizing urgent needs fast. Aghazo and Al-Anazi (2016) developed a survey of 30 employees to identify the impacts of leadership style on employee motivation. The results indicated a firm relationship between leadership style and employee motivation. The transformational leadership style was found to have a positive correlation while the transactional method was negative.

Communication is another aspect that influences motivation in an organization. Companies should design proper communication styles to apply when addressing employee issues. For instance, face-to-face interaction from the management is appealing and motivating than the use of emails (Al Jasmi, 2012). Research by Rajhans (2012) identified that organizational communication plays a crucial role in employee motivation in the contemporary business environment where there is increased workloads, greater emphasis on performance, and extended working hours. Effective communication reorients employees perplexed by changes, informs, and motivates those who adapt more to the changes. Rajhans (2012) further argues that the existence of multi and cross-functional teams prompts organizations to develop proper communication styles and adopt the art of persuasion to deal with the needs of the workers formally. Effective downward communication encourages employees to be proactive and engage in teamwork while upward communication enables managers to manage individual issues that affect employees.

Motivating a diverse workforce within an organization requires a lot of concentration form the managers to ensure that the employees are satisfied and motivated to continue with their responsibilities. A diverse workforce means that the organization comprises of different people from various ethnic backgrounds. The diversity of these workers illustrates that they face different challenges on a daily basis. In such an organization, problems may range from language barriers, especially when there are foreign workers and stereotyping from managers and other colleagues. The company should consider the various motivation strategies and assess their possible outcomes on the employees before enacting them since they may produce different results and harmony in the organization will not be achieved.

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