Introduction to Employee Motivation

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Introduction to Employee Motivation: A Key to Success

The present era of Artificial Intelligence has led to expeditious growth in global economy, resulting high competition among businesses beyond borders through the concept of Globalization. Every business seeks to win the competition apart from striving through the rivalry, with the resources shared among them.

Saloni & Ramesh (2012) explains that the ‘Competitive Advantage’ hold by a business would lead its way to success with the key resource of ‘Human Capital’ while DeFillippi & Arthur (1994) highlights the unique ability of the man power which is to apply a sensible competency of ‘Knowing-How’ with concern to the knowledge, skills, technology & abilities which are related to the business context. The other resources fail to comply with this unique feature even though it contributes in many other ways. Sarah et al. (2007) further adds that the Human capital creates an economic value according to the collective competencies they hold, since they carry diverse set of skills and competencies resulting from different personalities with according to their gender, age group, native, culture and religious norms making them Unique, rare and irreplaceable.

Manzoor (2012) states that being recognized as an asset is not enough. Also the author further explains that a productive performance along with a positive employee engagement is expected from the employee, by every employer despite of the business type, size and the capacity, to be truly considered as a key asset. Aviad (2016) insists, that a business should shape their employees with motivation to have a set of human resources which would be promising, hard to imitate & found with scarcity in order to retain the “Sustainable Competitive Advantage”.

This is where Employee Motivation comes into role play. Many authors have contributed their perception on what Motivation is; Osabiya (2015) simply defines Motivation to be a psychological driving factor which enables a behavioral change within personnels resulting Individuals to perform at their optimum capacity to bring out the best version of them in the interest of satisfying their need. Amit (2017) adds strength to Osabiya’s idea by stating that Motivation provides endurance with the state of mind to go ahead to achieve any goals, in spite of any hurdles on the way.

“A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step”. As per the saying an Organizations’ victory starts from every small bits from the lower level. As emphasized by Saloni & Ramesh (2012) Competitive advantage would distinguish the business from others, leading its way to success driven by the Man Power with Employee Motivation. Ovidiu (2013) marks that every personnel is a different combination of strength and needs: Therefore a crucial role of managers are needed here to identify, what an employee is best at and what is needed by the specific Individual to keep him going towards the goal with satisfactory employee performance, while continuing himself to be positively engaged with the Organization (Faisal et al, 2017). Mazoor (2012) further explains it by stating that leaders are responsible to create a workforce, with enabling a win-win situation. This summarizes that leaders starting from small units, who are in close employee relationship has a huge responsibility of contributing to the business in molding employees with appropriate Motivation Factors.

Many researches and studies has proved that employees performance levels remain stagnant due to job dissatisfaction and high stressed working environment which is mainly caused because of the scarcity of Motivation provided. A Research by Sharaeva & Liu (2019) has stated 77% of Russian employees do not give their performance up to standard due to the lack of motivation which has caused not to realize what they are really capable of. Another Study of Susan & Keri (2013) revealed that only 30% of American employees were engaged & the remaining 70% did not provide their capacity which alarmed the entire US economy to be slowing on growth, during the period of 2010 – 2012. The author also blamed each company for not holding a proper bottom line motivational responsibility, which has eventually affected on the economy.

When looking at the motivational element in the Tea Plantation Sector, it is unevenly distributed from the bottom line workers to the top level management employees who covers the range from workers working in the estates for cultivation, to the employees involved in commercializing and exporting the final product. A research conducted by Mahalakshmi & Franklin (2015) points out that the plantation employees are not satisfied with their jobs due to lacking & uneven distribution of motivation factors. As a personnel working for similar sector I suggest that a Motivation strategy should be set to the organization after assessing the motivating factors closely and carefully in line with different levels of employment along with a reasonable comparison of actions taken in other organizations in the similar sector. This would lead employees to work positively engaged along with Job satisfaction, ensuring the victory of the business propelling to the next level.

Motivation is a vast subject, which we would be discussing further down in the upcoming blogs. We would be reviewing in detail on the Importance of motivation, factors affecting motivation, theories applied and the outcome of perfectly applied motivation in future blogs.

References

·         Amit, S. (2017) EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION: A STUDY ON MODERN WORKPLACE MOTIVATION.  International Journal OF Engineering Sciences &Management Research, 4(4), pp. 68 – 77.

·         Aviad, P. A. (2016) Human Resource-based Competitive Advantage: The Case of Motivational Rents. Journal of Entrepreneurship & Organization Management,5(1), pp. 01-08.

·         DeFillippi, R. J. & Arthur, M.B. (1994) The boundaryless career: a competency-based perspective. The boundaryless career: a competency-based perspective, 15(4), pp.307 – 323.

·         Faisal, N. A., Husam, A., Faiz, S. and Dia, Z. (2017) The Impact of Employee Motivation on Organizational Commitment. European Journal of Business and Management, 9(15), pp. 134 – 145.

·         Mahalakshmi, A. & Franklin, S. J. (2015)  A STUDY ON THE IMPACT OF MOTIVATIONAL FACTOR ON EMPLOYEE JOB SATISFACTION WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO TEA PLANTATION INDUSTRIES OF ANAMALLAIS, COIMBATORE, DISTRICT. International Journal in Management and Social Science, 3(1), pp. 59 – 64.

·         Manzoor, Q. (2012) Impact of Employees Motivation on Organizational Effectiveness. Business Management and Strategy, 3(1), pp. 01 – 12.

·         Osabiya, B. J. (2015) The effect of employees’ motivation on organizational performance. Journal of Public Administration and Policy Research, 7(4), pp. 62 – 75.
·         Ovidiu, I. D. (2013) Employee motivation and organizational performance. Review of Applied Socio- Economic Research, 5(1), pp. 53 – 60.

·         Saloni, P. & Ramesh, C.D. (2012) Achieving competitive Advantage through HR practices: A case study. Journal of Strategic Human Resource Management,1(2), pp.35 – 43.

·         Sarah, M. A., Lea, W., Jon. P. B. and Douglas, T.H. (2007) Employability during Unemployment: Adaptability, career identity and human and social capital. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 71(2), pp.247 – 264.

·         Sharaeva, E. & Liu, Z.C. (2019) A Study on the relationship between employee motivation and work performance. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 21(3), pp. 59 – 68.

·         Susan, S. & Keri, G. (2013) How to Tackle U.S. Employees' Stagnating Engagement.  Gallup.Analytics & Advice about Everything that Matters [Online].Available at: <https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/162953/tackle-employees-stagnating-engagement.aspx> .[Accessed on 14th April 2020].







Comments

  1. Uditha N Rupasinghe31 May 2020 at 13:22

    Agreed with your views and According to Maduka and Okafor (2014), motivation refers to the willingness of an individual to put greater efforts to attain particular goals. Therefore, the concept of motivation stresses on an individual’s feeling of enthusiasm and attentiveness to be able to achieve his or her goals in an effective manner.

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    1. Kobigah Kanagendran1 June 2020 at 04:31

      Yes, Agreed Uditha. Maduka & Okafor (2014) remarks that, this is where the challenge arises to the management in order to understand and identify the correct driving force which encourages the willingness of employee, to enhance the employee performance. Also Ovidiu (2013) suggests that management can simply focus on two aspects of which, one is to concentrate in reducing the factors that causes job dissatisfaction while the second is to concentrate in improving the motivating factors along with the employee empowerment which eventually leads to employee motivation, along with improved performance.

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  2. Manjula Perera1 June 2020 at 10:25

    I agree with your views and Armstrong (2012) states that motivation is concerned with the strength and direction of behaviour and the factors that influence people to behave in certain ways. The term ‘motivation’ can refer variously to the goals individuals have, the ways in which individuals chose their goals and the ways in which others try to change their behavior.

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    1. Kobigah Kanagendran2 June 2020 at 09:40

      Yes, Agreed Manjula. This reason has led management to create an competitive edge over other companies as Janine (2019) states that the motivation being a driving factor which enables a behavioral change towards attaining individual goals, can be used as the carrot in front of rabbits excluding the stick, as it produces and improves better performance removing the fact of fear.

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  3. Mahesh Rathnayake1 June 2020 at 18:39

    Agree with you, According to Dobre, (2013) almost all organizations is in a competitive environment, all organizations want to be successful. In order to that, the organization should create a strong and positive relationship with their employees and direct them towards goal achievement. In order to achieve their goals and objectives, organizations develop strategies to compete in highly competitive markets and to increase their performance. However, few organizations consider the human capital as being their main asset, capable of leading them to success or if not managed properly, to decline. If the employees are not satisfied with their jobs and not motivated to fulfill their tasks and achieve their goals, the organization cannot attain success.

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    1. Kobigah Kanagendran2 June 2020 at 09:41

      Thank you, Mahesh. Evita (2011) emphasizes that a truly motivated employee workforce reflects a competitive organization with higher productivity, efficiency and quality with creativity along with happy workable environment, filled with positive energy. For this reason Mohsen et al (2017) considers such motivated employees as the engine of the organization.

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  4. S.Elilkumaran2 June 2020 at 12:31

    As you correctly stated Lederman (2018) has mentioned in his book CRAVE that we can Enhance Employee Motivation in 10 Minutes and he further explains that the Strategic employee recognition is a management discipline that goes way beyond 'being the right thing to do.' Recognition should not be viewed only as a feel-good, altruistic endeavor. In addition Armstrong (2013) stated motivation and commitment are generally being replaced now in business by engagement, because it appears to have more descriptive force and face validity.

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    1. Kobigah Kanagendran3 June 2020 at 09:17

      Well said, Elilkumaran. Brad (2017) says engaged employees are typically the employees who are motivated intrinsically. The author also believes employee motivation and employee engagement cannot be attained one without the other. Shawn (2016) adds more value and makes it simple to understand by explaining that the employees show a general percentage of engagement towards their job not because they are emotionally willing, but they are liable to be bound with the job. The reason “Why” is determined by the motivation which can comprise Intrinsic or extrinsic motivators, depending on the Individual psychology. “What” it provide is the perfectly applied engagement that arouses emotionally, representing an enhanced performance.

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  5. Employee Engagement by Nadee Weerasuriya12 June 2020 at 17:36

    Agree with you ,according to Armstrong, (2014), motivation is the strength and direction of behavior and the factors that influence people to behave in certain ways. People are motivated when they expect that a course of action is likely to lead to the attainment of a goal and a valued reward – one that satisfies their needs and wants.

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    1. Kobigah Kanagendran20 June 2020 at 08:05


      Well said Nadee, Vrooms expectancy theory is a cognitive theory, which arouse on that definition of motivation. The theory discusses the relationship between employee effort, performance and rewards with the formulation to practical scenario, in order to support managers with the estimated chances and probabilities, with relative to changing situations (Richard et al, 2004).

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  6. Sathyapriya15 June 2020 at 10:35

    I agree with your view, Robbins (2004),defines employee motivation as:the willingness to expend high levels of effort toward organizational objectives, influenced by the effort's ability to fulfill individual needs.

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    1. Kobigah Kanagendran20 June 2020 at 07:54

      Well said, Sathyapriya. Further strengthening your view Shiffman & Kanuk (2006) also remarks that the execution of behavioral change which is by motivation is highly raised because of the sense of excitement in order to achieve their respective unfulfilled need. So it is believed that the correct customized motivation strategy set by the management, could increase the willingness of employees to intensify their performance with guidance, power & endurance (Munchinsky, 2003).

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