Job motivation
Current research on job motivation and satisfaction reveals many directions and implications, including perspectives on reward based motivation, intrinsic vs. extrinsic reasons for job satisfaction, and the power of management to set a leadership example for employees. Unfortunately, many employees who are under-motivated decide to pursue new work paths or develop an antipathetic attitude towards their employers: they do not feel that they have an equal say, and are even sometimes afraid to give feedback because of so-called established roles that have not been broken down with effective communication and their so-called need hierarchy is not being adequately addressed by the management structure. This makes them un-motivated to do things like increase positive customer service and productivity, because they don’t see themselves as being an integral part of the organization and its functions in relation to the customer or client, and they don’t feel that management trusts them and is committed to them.
The basic assumption of the current research is that by communicating effectively and using the same language to work towards the same unifying goal, a team in any setting will be able to increase its thinking- and decision-making power and become more motivated. This will lead to a teamwork motivation system rather than being a group of distinctly separate management and employee factions who are unable to work as a team because the managers can’t motivate the employees because of poor and ineffective communication, which creates barriers instead of building bridges. Generally, job motivation involves three main factors: the problem of leadership motivating employees, the issue of financial incentives, and factors of job burnout and stress.
If employees are not satisfied with their jobs, it leads to negative outcomes like poor organizational performance. In many cases employees face risks that management doesn’t understand in terms of highlighted assumptions regarding burnout and repetitive task sourcing. Employee and manager burnout is often associated with a condition known as emotional exhaustion, in which this motivation is also adversely affected and the productivity of the manager or employee at the organization is compromised. The professional worker in this situation who is suffering from burnout and emotional exhaustion may exhibit feelings of fatalism, stating that events are out of their control or giving up leadership opportunities out of a sense of the decision having already been taken out of their hands. Job motivation is negatively affected by symptoms of job burnout and stress.
The feeling of fatalism that associates with stress, in turn affects the motivational level of employees, who are to be looking at the professional performance associate as an example of organizational leadership, but see only in the burnt-out worker an expression of fatalism or giving up, along with signs of frustration and even associated depressive symptoms such as wanting to sleep all the time. At this time, employees are not satisfied or motivated, and the argument from one side of the fence is that it means unhappy employees lead to unhappy organizations; therefore, organizational managers should show a great deal of leadership. “One of a manager’s responsibilities is to inspire staff and encourage them to strive for excellence and remain productive even during difficult times at your firm. While this can be challenging, there are steps you can take to generate enthusiasm in any business environment” (Messmer, 2005). Employee motivation is a major problem in many organizations. “Motivation should relate to individual needs. For instance, a staff member who enjoys collaborating with others may prefer team goals; an independent worker will strive for individual objectives.” (Messmer, 2005). In many industries, the average employee who has been in the profession for some time is often burnt out through emotional exhaustion, which may have occurred due to several factors in the employee’s performance. This involves a definitive decrease in job motivation in the employee.
To address problems of job motivation, a program could basically offer the administrator or manager a transplantable method at least addressing the problem of burnout and other factors leading to a loss of job motivation in the organizational environment, which in extreme forms could even lead to such behaviors as graft, fraud, embezzlement and corruption: even extortion is possible. Then, during regular work, performance monitoring can continue from the point at which it started in training. “Performance Monitoring–Analyze and report status–cost, schedule, and performance–on a regularly scheduled basis during project execution. Applying these disciplines to contract management helps drive performance and results throughout an agency’s culture and business operations and enhances the achievement of mission results” (Align, 2005). In many organizations, especially those that are fairly entrenched in a system, culture change is difficult. So, job motivation may suffer a downturn when it is related to organizational change.
A manager who views job motivation for employees as their authoritative dictate, will decrease productivity and lead to a downturn in motivation. This is a very important point, because it has been demonstrated that collective decisions are more effective in implementation than individual decisions in terms of communication’s importance. This is another benefit of making creative decisions in management through utilizing teamwork and listening to the employees’ feedback. Yet another benefit is that the unity that binds the group together will further ideas of equal participation. There are plenty of people who are content to be a team member, but effective leadership and effective teamwork patterns can help ensure that everyone involves becomes a real motivated
team player. “Communication is a powerful catalyst for establishing and sustaining trust,
the emotional state that is shared by highly committed workers and leaders” (Mayfield
and Mayfield, p. 93). Having respect for others is not just something theoretical: it takes dedication and training, and a sense of curiosity combined with an awareness that one’s own perspective is not universal. A certain amount of humility and willingness to learn and try new things is vital to the process, which will in turn lead to more motivated and creative employees.
The more people who can get involved in the job motivation process, the more it will be an accurate reflection of the organization and community’s true set of standards and complementary goals. “The expectancy model provides an excellent diagnostic tool for analyzing an employee’s work behavior because it focuses attention on how the organization affects employee effort… the probability that effort will result in task performance is low if the task is difficult and high if the task is easy. But since easy jobs are usually boring, supervisors must delegate responsibility appropriately” (Klinger and Nalbandian, 2003). This requires creativity on the part of the supervisor and a belief in teamwork on the part of the employees. In terms of teamwork, as mentioned, it has been demonstrated that collective decisions are more effective in implementation than individual decisions. This is another benefit of making creative decisions in management through utilizing teamwork.
Specifically, the manager of employees wanting greater levels of motivation can use theories in existing literature and other theorists to develop several strategies to encourage an atmosphere of communication, teamwork, and fulfillment in the workplace that will result in this ultimate goal. This boosts human needs categories of self-esteem and social need fulfillment. “Organizational theorists have advanced several viewpoints regarding the nature of the satisfaction-performance relationship: (1) satisfaction causes performance; (2) performance causes satisfaction; (3) the satisfaction-performance relationship is moderated by a number of other variables; or (4) both are caused by an exogenous variable” (Jones, 2006). Jones points specifically to inconclusvieness in the general research environment on job satisfaction and organizational performance. “All three studies came to a very similar conclusion regarding the estimated strength of the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. In aggregate, the conclusions drawn by these researchers, and many others, substantiate the presence of a positive, but very weak, relationship between job satisfaction and job performance” (Jones, 2006). Jones’ study highlights how specifically, the manager of employees wanting greater levels of motivation can use several strategies to encourage an atmosphere of communication and teamwork in the workplace that will result in this ultimate goal. They can also provide employees with encouragement in more individualized ways, such as choosing a system where the awarded employee has their name and picture placed on a plaque that can be seen by other employees and customers. Using this method, employers of can foster an atmosphere of friendly competition where leadership and hard work are shown to have visible rewards.
A major organizational challenge to job motivation in the workplace is conflict. Conflict occurs when members of a group or team cannot reach an agreement through common negotiation. There are many causes of conflict in the organizational environment. Conflict is negative, and effective communication embraces an aspect of positive sharing of information that reflects upon both the sender and the receiver. Only by truly communicating our plans, needs, and desires can we garner effective results. And these results are often the result of a decision-making process, which is closely linked to patterns of effective communication and motivational theory. The importance of positive and practical decision-making cannot be over-stressed. In their everyday lives, individuals are faced with a multitude of decisions every day; life as they know it would not exist without these complex decisions. This is the same, no matter what country. Conflicts can be best resolved in a relaxed atmosphere in which people feel comfortable talking.
Overall, employees can be motivated by managers who communicate effectively
and feel that they are part of a team of professionals, under motivational leadership. Research could therefore find the most effective typology of differentiating the effectiveness of positional leadership against more organic methods. In this case, since quantitative resources are limited, the evidence presented in the research typology is mainly in the form of extant portrayals of leadership in terms of raising salaries and instigating performance based awards, as a way of increasing job motivation. “The overall objective of the performance based project is to provide an accurate and thorough cost infrastructure… This is accomplished by providing costs for core functions, program elements, activities, processes, and object classification level data which are used to justify budgets, provide management with improved cost data, and act as the foundation for future strategic needs” (Davis, 2004). The idea here is that people are mostly motivated by financial rewards.
In defining effective leadership, there is also the problem of defining universal
traits in relation to a motivational organizational environment that is built primarily on the differentiation of individuals. That is, the research regarding motivational strategies may show that there is no one clear set of characteristics that defines people-oriented (as
opposed to heroic) leadership, because there is so much variance in individuals. “There
are no universal traits that predict leadership in all situations. Rather, traits appear to
predict leadership in selective situations. Traits predict behavior more in weak situations
than in strong situations” (Robbins, 2003, p. 315). This report has thus looked at
leadership in dynamic and positional ways in accordance with different situations and
environments, concentrating on giving examples of organizational leadership from the
existing literature of dynamic industries and environments, to show how leadership can
be classified along lines of utility in solving some of the problems inherent in job motivation.
As mentioned above, it is an unfortunate fact that today, many employees who are under-motivated decide to pursue new career paths or develop an antipathetic attitude towards their employers. These employees do not feel that they have an equal say, and are even sometimes afraid to give feedback because of so-called established roles that have not been broken down with effective communication and their so-called need hierarchy is not being adequately addressed by the management structure. But communication isn’t the only important facet managers need to consider; they also need to realize that they are significantly under-paying lesser employee positions. In one study, “The authors find that top executives in major corporations are paid hundreds of times more than their employees. The authors report that surveys show that the greater the degree of participation in workplace decision-making, profit sharing and stock ownership, the greater the employee job commitment and satisfaction” (Katz, 2006). There are various theories.
Looking at the organizational environment of the company and looking at variables such as employee motivation and effectiveness in relation to external and internal rewards, in terms of incentives as well as in terms of comparison with other types of feelings such as pride and competency and proving oneself competent to others. This shows the effectiveness of differentiating positional leadership against more organic methods like transformational. Employee motivation should be approached as a continuing process rather than a series of isolated events by a manager who knows the value of teamwork and communication. The needs of the individual employee should come first, so that the employee does not see motivational programs as coming from an external and remote impetus that may be less likely to motivate them. In terms of the focus for this mentoring relationship, the key issue in these cases would be for the mentor to seek more effective alternative in terms of motivational programs for the workplace in its time of low employee morale. This would, in turn, lead optimally to both greater stability within the workplace, and a satisfied base of employees who are still able to receive the respect they deserve as human beings.
REFERENCE
Davis, B (2004). The evolving stages of performance-based management. DISAM
Journal.
Jones, M (2006). Which is a Better Predictor of Job Performance: Job Satisfaction or
Life Satisfaction? Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management.
Katz, AR (2006). Job satisfaction on rise, survey finds. LA Business Journal.
Klinger, J. and B. Nalbandian (2003). Personnel Management. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Mayfield, Jacqueline, and Milton Mayfield (2002). Leader Communication Strategies:
Critical Paths to Improving Employee Commitment. American Business Review, vol. 20, pp. 89-94.
Messmer, M (2002). Motivating your employees. National Public Accountant.
Robbins, S. (2003). Organizational Behavior. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall
Align your organization (2008)
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