CHAPTER 10

MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES

INTRODUCTION

Employees are undoubtedly the key variable in organizational or a firm performance.

Since the performance of a firm is highly dependent on the performance of its employees, managers must take steps to ensure that workers are properly motivated.

Motivation is defined as a process by which people’s behaviour is energized, directed and sustained over time.

VALUE OF MOTIVATION

Most of the successful businesses are not because of their business ideas but because of their employees. Some firms believe that if they can hire people who are naturally motivated, the employees will perform well in the workplace but this is not what normally happens.

Although some people naturally make more effort to perform well, they will still need a workplace that motivates them. When a firm can motivate its employees, it can increase their productivity.

MOTIVATION THEORIES

Employee motivation depends on job satisfaction or the level which employees are satisfied and happy with their jobs.

“I can live for two months on a good compliment.” – Mark Twain

Some of the most popular theories on motivation are Hawthorne studies, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Herzberg’s job satisfaction study, McGregor’s theory X and theory Y, Expectancy theory, Equity theory and Reinforcement theory.

MOTIVATING UNHAPPY EMPLOYEES A firm may not be able to motivate some of its

unhappy employees, regardless of its efforts used to motivate them. If no form of motivation is effective, the threat of being fired may be used as a last resort to motivate these employees so their bad attitudes will not affect other workers.

The unhappy employees might decide to seek employment elsewhere, which would not be good to the firm. That is why it is crucial for the firm to find ways to motivate unhappy employees as soon as possible.

HOW WOULD THE FIRM ENHANCE ITS JOB SATISFACTION AND

MOTIVATION In order to motivate employees, firms provide Job

enrichment programs that designed to enhance worker motivation which commonly include the following elements:

Adequate compensation program Job security Flexible work schedule Employee involvement programs: Job enlargement,

Job rotation, worker empowerment, participative management and Management by objectives (MBO)

Teamwork Open-book management

Adequate compensation program An adequate compensation program should

ensure that workers who achieve the highest levels of performance receive the highest percentage raises.

Thus, a merit system, which bases pay on performance, tends to be more effective than an across-the-board system in which all workers are allocated similar raises. Firms may set up various types of incentive plans that reward employees for achieving specific performance goals.

Job security

Workers who are worried about losing their job often have low morale and feel little loyalty to their company. Firms can provide more job security by training employees to handle various tasks so that they can be assigned other duties if their typical assignments are no longer needed.

Flexible work schedule

Some firms have also experimented with a compressed work week in which workers work the same number of hours, but in fewer days.

Job sharing, where two or more people share a particular work schedule, is another method of providing workers with more flexibility.

Employee involvement programs Job enlargement expands the jobs assigned to employees, giving them a

greater variety of tasks to perform. Job rotation allows a set of employees to periodically rotate their

assignments. This not only relieves the boredom associated with doing the same job all of the time, but also allows workers to gain additional skills, enabling them to move into a different position if their primary job is eliminated.

Worker empowerment, which seeks to get workers more involved in decision making and gives them more authority.

Participative management is closely linked to worker empowerment. Empowerment actually gives workers the authority to make decisions about their jobs, while participative management simply means that managers seek more input from workers before making decisions. However, both approaches reflect more responsibilities for employees.

Management by objectives (MBO) is a popular form of participative management. This technique typically allows employees to participate in setting their own goals that determine how they will be evaluated. MBO also allows employees the ability to use their own creativity to achieve their goals.

Employee involvement programs Teamwork is another approach to increasing

employee involvement. This approach gives a group of employees with varied job positions the responsibility to achieve a specific goal.

open-book management, the firm educates workers on their contribution to the firm and how the performance of their job affects key performance indicators that are relevant to the firm’s owners.