Motivating Employees

Everyone know motivations and it is really important regarding your works. But what exactly is a motivation. Motivation best defines as the process where a person’s energy are sustained and directed to achieve a goal. There are some early theories of motivation such as :

- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: this theory stated a that human needs form a sort of hierarchy which consist from the highest to lowest:

· Self — Actualization

· Esteem

· Social needs

· Safety needs

· Physiological

- McGregor’s Theories X and Y: this theory assume two things.

· The first one is theory x where it is a negative view where workers are seen as lazy, avoid responsibility, and to perform they must be coerced.

· The second one is theory y where it is a positive view where workers are seen as someone who can self-direction, responsible, and enjoy work.

- Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory: This theory stated that job satisfaction and motivation are affected by intrinsic factor meanwhile job dissatisfactions are affected by extrinsic factors. And there is something that is called Hygiene Factors (factor that don’t motivate but eliminate job dissatisfaction) and motivators (factors that increase motivation and job satisfaction.

- McClelland’s Three Needs Theory: stated that major motives in work involves of affiliation, power, and achievement.

Then another than those theories there are also contemporary theories of motivation:

- Goal-setting theory: stated that when specific and difficult goals are accepted it will achieve performance increase and higher performance.

- Self-efficacy: stated that belief of an individual that he or she is capable of doing a particular task.

- Reinforcement theory: stated that behavior is consequences of its function. And behavior that immediately follow that consequences are called reinforcers.

When designing jobs that motivating then these are the things that have to be note.

- Job design: how tasks are being combined for job completion.

- Job scope: what the requires task of the job and how is the frequency for those task.

- Job enlargement: expansion of job as a result of job scope increased.

- Job enrichment: vertical expansion of job as a result of additional planning and responsibilities evaluation.

- Job debt: how much control employees have over their work.

- Job characteristics model: framework by using five primary core job dimensions to analyze and designing jobs.

There are five aspect of five core job dimensions:

- Skill variety: degree of where a job requires a number of different activities in which employee can use various talents and skill.

- Task identity: degree where job completion requires an identifiable piece of work.

- Task significance: degree that determines how substantial it is to the work of other people and their lives.

- Autonomy: how much freedom and independence a job give to the employee regarding their work.

- Feedback: degree where doing work will resulted in getting feedback about their performance at work.

Other than that there are also approaches that redesign job design:

- Relational perspective of work design: design that focuses on that jobs and people task are much more based on social relationships.

- Proactive perspective of work design: an approach where employees have the initiative to change how their work performed.

- High-involvement work practices: work is designed so that it will involve workers and elicit greater input.

There is also:

- Equity theory where it stated that employee compares their job’s input-outcome ratio with relevant others and corrected any inequity.

- Expectancy theory: stated that individual have an tendency to acted in a certain way corresponded to the expectation and attractiveness of outcome that will be followed by that act.

Even though motivation is very important there are a lot of issues regarding motivation such as:

- Motivating in tough economic circumstances: things like recession make it tougher to motivate because there are layoffs, no bonuses, tight budget.

- Motivating unique groups of workers: to counter this then company can do compressed workweek, flexible work hour, sharing jobs, and telecommuting.

- Motivating contingent workers: training opportunity, give chance to become permanent employee.

- Motivating low-skilled, Minimum-Wage Employees: to solve this give programs for employee recognition.

- Motivating professionals: update regularly their knowledge, don’t have a define their workweek, remember that loyalty is to their profession not to the employer.

And as for me that would I do to motivate my co-worker and employee in the organization. For me personally first of all there is a need to set a goal that is accepted and beneficial for everyone. Because if there is something that we wanted to achieve for then it will serves as motivation for the employee to work. Then another than that make the work schedule manageable and flexible. Because right know times has changed and there is a need to give flexibility for the workers on how they are working to assure they are comfortable with their work loads. Then this is also very important in my opinion is that the best way to motivate the employees is give recognition to their works and reward them appropriately. This is done so that employee know that if they work hard and achieve great results then they also will get the appropriate rewards. Because we have to remember that when working the first thing that we expected are the benefits and rewards that comes with it. And these rewards and benefits can be done in the form such as bonusses and promotion. Personally that are the things that I will do to motivate my employees.

Citation:

Robbins, S.P., & Coulter, M. (2018). Management (14th ed.). London, United Kingdom: Pearson Education Limited