Excerpt
Introduction
Human beings have brains which respond to various signals in different manners. The nature of the attitude and the ambient environment serve as the principal determinants of an individual appropriate response. Motivation which entails that aspect of acquiring positive attitudes in the surrounding environment and incorporating them into one’s behavior, purposely aimed at enhancing performance. Consequently, a motivational behavior appear to be the only influential aspect of human nature that holds promise to realization of one’s intended goals in life as an individual. From the work performance perspective, motivation has been known to be a basic tool for improving productivity at the workplace. For this reason therefore, it is important to nature precepts of motivational behavior for profitable output to be realized. In life, individual’s strive towards attaining success at last at the end of all tasks that one commits himself/herself ton undertake. On the hand, it is observed that all organizations’ main objective is to achieve success. It’s absolutely true to assert that all these adorable rewards from any form of work cannot be realized fully if motivation is deficient. In this research paper, all aspects of motivation are going to be discussed for general understanding as well as for identifying the most appropriate ways of nurturing motivational behavior in employees for improved performance at the workplace.
Employee Motivation
At the work place, motivation plays a very fundamental role especially with regard to attitudes of the staff and their employees or rather their managers, who are primarily concerned with supervisory matters to achieve a particular task. Motivation therefore serves as the basic tool at the workplace for managers so as to ensure efficient alignment of aims, values and purpose especially among employees in any organization. Owing to human nature, motivational efforts appear to face a great challenge as each individual possesses personal preferences or attitudes which may be difficult to change or modify (Robbins & Timothy, 2007). As a result, it is important for managers to first identify and comprehend precisely for their employees motivational needs, after which they will take the most appropriate approaches to align their aims and values so as to improve performance hence increased chances of success. Because of this reason, an extensive evaluation of various approaches which have been applied differently by a varied number of managers at different work environment to enhance achieving success.
At the workplace environment, employee motivation has been identified as one of the ingredient for ultimate success. To achieve success, employee motivation skills, motivation models, motivational drives or attitudes as well as expectancy models of motivation have so far been designed.
To produce high quality work, employees require constant motivation either from their own desires to work for the best results possible to be achieved under full commitment or from their leaders and managers. The aspect of motivation of employees at the workplace usually acts as the key determinant factor for success in virtually all organizations. It is therefore great challenge to all managers in charge overseeing the performance of all employees or rather the general staff. Improved productivity at work is recorded when employees are properly given motivation compared to poor results observed when little or no motivation is provided. The principle element of management at all levels lie in employees’ motivation. The phrase ‘loyal employees’ has become common with managers simply because they range productivity of their employees on grounds of performance as well as on their social aspects (Thomas, 2004). Thus it is true that virtually all managers do not value all employees the same. In retrospect, employees are known to have varied attitudes towards their managers depending with the degree of motivation.
Employees’ perform at the workplace differ considerably. Subsequently, the overall success of the organization gets affected due to the fact that, in any form of work involving a group of people each with a specific role to play, success depends on their general output. Involvement of a group of individuals in joint execution of a particular task brings in varied human diversity with regard to personality, therefore it has been discovered that the overall success achieved at all times is in one way depended partially on each individual and partially on the collective effort by all individuals. It is important thus to focus on motivation from an individual’s perspective and again from the general perspective in the work environment. Owing to these two perspectives, motivation can associated with an individual’s personality or as an external influence, that is, from the ambient environment hence the two forms of motivation. Motivation inspired from within an individual is referred to as intrinsic motivation. This type of motivation is believed to be brought about by inherent aspects of a human being such as one’s fundamental verities of life, personal goals, happiness, self esteem as well as physiological needs. In other words, intrinsic motivations are attributed to an individual’s willingness and desire to achieve a specific goal. On the other hand, motivation inspired from by forces from the surroungding environment is referred to as extrinsic motivation attributed to things that appear to be appealing to an individual. It is actually that aspect of created by as desire to acquire something, or rather that feeling created by the realization that something which you don’t have is worth much pleasure. As a result, one sets out to acquire. Desire by every human being to live happily forces one strive for it day-by-day all throughout the entire life because people detest sadness in life. Extrinsic motivation come from such things as; money, prizes, excellent performance results and from other people around you.
An example of intrinsic motivation is seen when an employees does things freely from own preferences and interests. Likewise, some employees show an outstanding interest or passion in their duty or the willingness to learn new skills through real life experience with the main aim of reaching success. On the other hand, employees tend to improve their work efficiency when they are offered incentives.
Motivation Models
Extensive study which has been carried out by a group of psychologists, independently at various time frames and work environment has subsequently designed useful motivational models. These models give a structured guide as the masterpiece of combined effort by individual psychologists particularly on employee motivation. Consequently, various approaches have been designed to address the enormous number of challenges affecting the employees’ performance and satisfaction. An overview on motivational models general features was given by the early models developed by two renowned psychologists; G. R. Oldham and Richard Hackman. These old days psychologists explained in details about what they ultimately identified as the fundamental components to motivation, not only in regards to the employees motivation but generally on all aspects of success in life as a whole. Basically, they were driven by such aspects of aims, values and social alignment at the workplace aimed at achieving organizational intended objectives. From the work ethic perspective, they explored on many factors, both intrinsic and extrinsic, and subsequently outlined the basic elements of motivation. For instance, they sought for initiatives that can serve the challenging hurdle of lack of meaningfulness to work, results ownership and the feedback responses. These fundamental elements useful at the workplace identified as: task identity, task significance, skill variety as well as feedback and autonomity.
Skills variety which entails use of different skills and the task identity based on self actualization of the underlying personal potential at the workplace were identified key to enhancing meaningfulness to work. Moreover, the task significance element was also cited to be concerned with enhancement of meaningfulness to work. On the other hand, autonomity was identified to be the only principal element that can enhance employees’ ownership of work related results whereas the element of feedback gives an immediate response about the obtained results.
Alternatively, employees’ work performance and satisfaction can be boosted significantly through improvement the overall work environment or rather the general structure/features of a particular task. This approach involves incorporation of the five main elements of employees’ motivation. These approaches seem to influence the outcome of a single, several or even all of the fundamental elements of motivation. Some of the designed approaches are; first, creating feedback channels: this approach enhance feedback response about the work results. The second approach is building an efficient client relationship so as to increase autonomy, skill variety and feedback altogether. Thirdly, employees’ performance and satisfaction can be enhanced through task combination which creates diversity at the workplace, that is, skill variety as well as task identification. Moreover, designing work units influence task identity and task significance to a greater extend. Fourthly, autonomity, task significance, task identity and skill variety can be boosted significantly by providing employees with a high degree of responsibility and ultimate control over the task being undertaken (Carla, 2008).
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