Importance Of Motivation For Organizational Success

Related to the magnificent changes that have happened in technology that leads the world towards Common denominators, and a diversified change happened in the world economic extension. The main economic change that result the most challenge not only for the domestic organizations but also for the multinational one is the up growth of the universal market. In order to be successful in long term business handling employees is one of the most critical equipments for a universal business to compete with others especially for multinational organizations.

From here it raze the importance of the HRM (Human Resources Management) as necessary process to handle the complexity requests and needs of those multinational overseas organizations and to differentiate those successful organizations from each other.

The core business of the human resources management is to attract the talents from the markets, help the organizations to achieve their goals through retaining the organizational talented employees and improve the employees’ performance through different motivational tools.

From here the organizations started to understand that inspiring employee’s motivation needs more than the old tactic of carrot and stick. Today organizations need to understand the needs and advices of their employees and start to submit rewarding systems that can match those needs.

To increase the level of motivation to improve the performance of individuals the organizations started to make rewarding systems that can works on the Intrinsic and extrinsic needs of the employees as employees differ as individuals from one to another. Some employees may be in need of extra wages or incentive and the others may need more responsibilities or opportunities to growth.

Accordingly, motivating staff is part of an employer’s responsibility to attract and retain employees. The motivation process will help maximize the ability of human resource and develop sustainable management strategies for the organization seeking success and longevity.

This research will introduce the many factors and provide answers to the questions that affect employee motivation as follow: What employees look forward to gain from their job Intrinsic and Extrinsic, How leadership style affect the employees and the whole organization motivation, The Effective techniques to reward employees, The importance of creating a supportive workplace, The role of open communication in maintaining motivation spirit inside the organizations, How to handle the demotivated employees, How to keep motivation spirit inside the organization.

Importance of motivation in today’s workplace environment

The most important challenges that are facing the employers are two, the first one is how to motivate the employees to work achieve the organization goals and the second one is how to meet the needs of the employees to keep them motivated.

Meeting the goals and achieving the organizational goals are both the most difficult factors facing any managers and they become more and more complex with the huge changes that has happened in today’s technology and economics that leads to more and more changes in employees needs.

: Importance of motivation for organizational success

What is Motivation? How it effects the workplace environment? And why is it important for both employers and employees? These are the main questions that need to be handled as indicated below.

Motivation is a management style of operating attitude based on the knowledge of what make people act and achieve it starts with physiological needs that turn on employees behavior, Luthans (1998) confirmed that motivation is the operation that wake up, energize, command, and reinforce the employee’s performance and behavior.

Daft (1997) indicates that motivation refers to the power even intrinsic or extrinsic to the employees that trigger eagerness and assertiveness to pursue a specific course of action.

Motivation could be defined as the interesting to spend high level of efforts and persistence towards the organizational goals conditioned by this high performance the ability to satisfy the employees’ desires and needs (Stephen, 2000).

Decenzo (2001) define motivation as a result of interaction between the individual “employees” and the status, employees differ in the motivation drive, but the employees motivation changes from status to status and from place to another.

Motivation is the willing to spend high level of work effort to allow the organization to reach its goals, conditioned by the ability of the organization to satisfy some individual needs of the employees Robbins, et al .(2001).

Motivation defined related to the dictionary Webster’s something inside people that causes them to action and that this motivation is different from one to another. While the new Merriam-Webster dictionary defined it as a need that makes a person work and achieve.

There are key words that can conclude the definition of motivation such as behavior, process, attitude, physiological needs, management style, energize, performance, needs, individuals, aim, goals, drives, some of the researchers like Luthans )1998) and Evans (1998) agreed that the motivation starts from the behavior and it is management process starts with physiological shortage that stimulate employees behavior towards a desired incentive. And to understand this motivation process everyone has to understand those three key words needs, motives and rewards. Daft, (1997) and Decenzo (2001) agreed that motivation is a result of interaction between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards and it differs from status to status and from individual to another. While Stephen (2000) and Robbins, et al (2001) agreed that motivation is the willing to spend high level of work effort to allow the organization to reach its’ goals, conditioned by the ability to satisfy the employees needs.

Understanding the meaning of the work place environment expression is very important as it effects the employee performance and motivation in direct way, The work place environment is like the iceberg the apparent part of it is the physical one that can be identified as the place that one works in an office building or from home, the air quality, decoration, equipment, and the safety measures while the hidden part which is the most important and it reflects about 80% of the work environment is the culture, values, believes, relation between employees and the employer, all those factors effect directly the employees motivation.

Approaches theories for understanding employees motivation

Motivation theories provides a way to understand the employees and human behaviors in different situations and status, and it gives attention to know what is the main factors and drivers that effects employees performance and increase the level of commitment and achievements, it also takes care of knowing what is the employees and human needs and how to satisfy those needs.

Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy

Maslow (1954) an American professor of psychology he arranges the human needs in a hierarchy pyramids starts with the physiological needs which is the basic needs and ends with the self-actualization. Maslow confirmed in his theory that once you fulfill the basic level of his hierarchy you can move to the upper one until you reach the top of the pyramids (figure 1).

The five levels in Maslow’s Hierarchy are, (1)Physiological needs- the basic needs of employees which is comfortable workplace, fresh air, healthy food, main physical tools that allow the employee to finalize his day to day work. (2) Safety needs- rules that can keep secure employees safety such as life insurance and medical insurance, affording rules against harassment and violence, fair salary and incentive schema.(3) Belonging and affection needs- social needs, by affording the ability to work in groups, team building activities inside the organization. (4) Esteem needs- Ego/status the ability to be promoted, adding employees to talent of pool employees inside the organization, getting the opinion of the employees in company decisions. (5) Self-actualization- Special assignments to employees to allow them to show themselves against the others and to gain more personal and professional experience, giving more responsibilities in decision making and in handling other employees and tasks inside the organization.

Maslow indicates that the satisfaction progression allows the employees and humans to move from one level to another, which is not the case in practice as some employees can move from one level to any level else based on his capabilities and his level of maturity and not in that systematic way.

Alderfer’s ERG Theory

Alderfer condensed Maslow’s five needs hierarchy into three levels only:

Existence needs- include all physical and safety desires, he merge the first two needs of Maslow’s hierarchy into one level.

Relatedness needs- which show the belonging and affection needs of Maslow.

Growth needs- which include esteem needs and the self-actualization in one level (figure 2).

Alderfer also submit the Frustration-regression principle, which suppose that the employee can move in and out of the different levels based on if their needs have been done or not which is more logical than Maslow’s theory. Alderfer theory priorities the needs level based on the realistic, existence needs is the most realistic and the Growth needs is the low realistic as it based on the special capabilities of each employee.

Herzberg Theory of Factors

Frederick Irving Herzberg an American psychologist he adjusted Maslow’s needs theory and reached two areas of needs that motivated employees and those two areas are shown in (figure 3) as follow:

Hygiene – which includes the factors that leads to job dissatisfaction and this shows the lower level of motivators that include “pay, work conditions, supervision and how the business is run”.

Motivators – which include the factors that lead to motivation in the workplace and this show the higher level of motivators that include “responsibilities, the nature of the work, recognition and achievements”.

Herzberg theory is very easy one that shows that the employees’ desires and needs is more than that on the hygiene level but the motivators in workplace is more important than the physical needs.

McClelland’s Acquired Needs Theory

McClelland’s build his theory in that the employees’ needs is not a natural or inherent but it is obtained learned and improved based on the experience that employee gained during life experiences and the three types of needs in this theory are shown in (figure 4):

The first indicates the need of achievement- the n-ach employee is achievement motivated that needs challenging realistic goals, always willing to success, they prefer to work as an individual or with another high achievers employees and asking for feedback regarding their work progress.

The second one is the need of affiliation- the n-affil person is belonging motivated that needs to belong to a team, like the cooperation environment than the challenging and competition one.

The third one is the need of power- The n-pow person is authority motivated, want always to win and to control over things, enjoy emulation and wining.

All the above theories have explained the human and employees motivators and how to motivate employees based on their needs and desires from different perspective. McClelland’s concept of achievement motivation is relative to Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory, people with achievement motivation resort to be interested in the motivators. The motivation theories also furnished a ways and tools to understand and deal with employees’ behaviors in different situations. No theory of the above is suitable for all employees or for all situations as each employee has his own values, believes and capabilities and the reaction of each employee will differ from another based on the organizational tools submitted to increase the level of motivation of its employees.

Motivation Framework Model

Motivation framework Model consists of the rewarding systems; extrinsic rewards systems that cover the physical rewards that come outside the job and the other is intrinsic rewards system that reflects the personal satisfaction that comes from the job itself ( figure 5). And it covers leadership style and develop communication process.

Extrinsic rewarding system

Extrinsic rewards come from a source outside the job, mainly by management; extrinsic rewards are physical and material rewards they are divided into financial and non-financial type of rewards.

The financial extrinsic rewards are divided into three main categories: The first one is performance based- such as bonus, commission, incentive plans and merit pay plans. The second one is implied membership-based- such as cost of living increase, labor market adjustment and profit sharing. The third is the explicit membership-based- such as protection programs, pay for time not worked and services perks.

While the non financial extrinsic rewards that make life on the job more attractive are for example: Business cards, assigned parking space, own secretary and impressive titles.

The role of the extrinsic rewards yes is important but it becomes to shrink nowadays after the huge change that has happened in transferring of data and information technology and increasing the complexity of handling business after merges and accusations that has happened in both multinationals and domestic organizations that leads to huge change in the world economical situations.

Intrinsic rewarding system

Intrinsic rewards reflect the personal satisfaction that comes from the job itself, the intrinsic rewards is more intangible and it is working mainly on the individuals and how they feel about their organizations and their job. There many types of intrinsic rewards such as: (1) Participation in decision making, (2) Greater job freedom, (3) More responsibility, (4) Opportunities for growth, (5) Diversity of activities.

The intrinsic rewards appears to create a winwin equation for both employers and employees and it does not depend on more financial rewards to gain more performance achievements and it becomes more convenient when resources are scarce.

Leadership Style

Leadership style plays a vital role on workplace motivation; these styles may leads to very positive effect or very negative effect according to the leadership style that managers and leaders within organization use, and these styles may even vary from department to another within the same organization. The following characteristics are essential triggers to measure the leadership style:

A. Leader Vision: If the number one factor that inspires employee motivation is a manager with vision, so the biggest challenge as a manager is to figure out a clear-convey to employees a clear vision of what Manager hope organization, division, department, or team will achieve, Then enabling employees to live out that vision by helping those set objectives, or strategic imperatives. When employees fully understand where their organization is headed and what their role is in meeting that goal, they are far more motivated than employees who are left in the dark.

Organizations that have a clear, well written, and well communicated vision or mission statement that describes their ultimate goals has a higher chance to achieve its strategic objectives. It is also very important that all departments within all organizations articulate a vision for their own department and convey it to department team; and this vision will be very efficient when employees’ input are welcomed and treated with respect toward achieving this vision.

B. Creating and Setting Strategic Imperatives: Employees should have individual strategic imperatives that will contribute to reaching department’s overall vision. Get all employees involved in the process, not only in creating their own objectives, but in developing objectives for the department. Department’s overall goal should already be evident or at least outlined department’s Manager. It never hurts to remind staff members of the goals if Manager hasn’t done so lately.

It’s hard for employees to remain inspired when they have no specific and clear goals. Organizational and departmental mission statements are good motivational starting points, but to keep and maintain such motivation, Managers are in need to set objectives, or strategic imperatives, for department and individual employees. Strategic imperatives are limited, specific goals that we can complete and measure.

Employee who are willingly to take on more responsibilities, need their manager to Support their ongoing motivation by making their objectives extended to the others. Manager need to Explain to employees that though there is a defined list of strategic imperatives, if they see another item that needs to be included, by all means manager need to add it. Most importantly, managers must reward those employees for their strategic vision and the extra work they do.

C. Recognition: Leaders must think positively toward their subordinates, so Leader need to be able to create more ideas when introduces some of his objectives on areas that are already successful. Plus, it’s fulfilling for employees that have good leader ship style be reminded of the things they have done well.

Employees will be much more motivated to meet their strategic imperatives if they know that their work will be appreciated and recognized. That means that Managers or Leaders needs a way to measure their productivity and achievements.

Praising is one of the most influential tools that leaders use to get the most and impressing ideas and innovative from employees.

D. Creating Job Measures: Job measures provide a way to quantify employees’ improvement in meeting their strategic imperatives. Job measures should relate to the type of strategic imperatives that Manager and an employee have agreed upon.

Here are a few variables leader might take in consideration when quantifying the job of his employee: first one is Timeliness- The number of times deadlines are met and the reasons why deadlines are missed. The second is Accuracy- The ability of employee’s to perform without mistake. And the third is Following procedures- The ability of employee’s to follow guide lines, policies and standard procedures in their work.

To help employees get the most from performance measurement, leader need to keep these guidelines in mind: Encourage employees to believe on the measurement as a way to promote self-growth, not as a way for Manager to check up on them. Communicate measurement results when it will help to do so. Make sure that Manager are always measuring processes, and not assessing the value of people. Measure processes related to own position too.

Some employees have a strong level of self-motivation; so Continuous Improvement can be an important part of managers’ drive to help them succeed and achieve outstanding results. The following are some guidelines to help Manager or leader Support employee motivation to maintain high quality: Manager or leader need to emphasize and confirm that every employee is a link in the quality chain. If one link breaks, the chain breaks. Leader need to Help employees recognize that quality rests not only on the performance of the entire group but also on the performance of each employee. Manager or leader need to allow each employee to refuse everyone when she or he knows something is not top quality. Quality needs to be the ultimate authority. Manager or leader need to Respect employees’ judgment and give them both responsibility and authority. Authority without responsibility is dangerous, but together they provide the essential support for accountability and motivation. Manager or leader need to make results measurable and transmitted those results so that everyone can see progress. Manager or leader need to make quality part of the operation even when it’s difficult. The test of a real quality organization is its qualification to maintain high standards under pressure.

People who have difficulty maintaining their motivation over a long period of time are not suitable for an organization practicing Continuous Improvement, total Quality Management isn’t a project that starts today and is finished tomorrow, it is a continues process.

Employees are inspired by values as well as vision. Practicing values, such as honesty, transparence, respect and fairness, will not only inspire employees, but it will also reinforce them to use the same values when dealing with internal and external stakeholders.

Communication Process

The communication is one of the essentials elements for any motivation process and it has a very big effect on the success or failure of motivation, and to assure getting the most positive effect of communication there are a lot of considerations as follows:

A. Maintaining Open Communication: Maintaining open communication with employees helps inspire and maintain their motivation. But open communication means more than just accelerating employees meeting or a good word from managers; open communication includes a number of factors: Communicating regularly with employees in ways that meet their needs, visiting employees in their work areas, listening to employee concerns and accepting constructive feedback from employees.

B. Communicating Regularly-and Appropriately: When Employees use certain expressions such as “I don’t know, I just work here.” this must be considered as a clue that something wrong, as When employees feel eliminated and ignored, they often believe that their contribution to the organization did not recognize, which impede their motivation. Manager can support high motivation by communicating regularly with employees and by adjusting communication to meet their needs.

Communication in today’s workplace should be easy. No matter you are working on the same building, same city, same country or even same continent as the technology development reached levels that one cannot imagine.

C. Visiting Employees Work Areas: It is very important for managers to get to know and understand their employees in order to be able to offer them effective rewards and reinforcement, the fact that a manager need to spend some time with employees in their own work areas to allow them to understand and inspire motivation on them.

One work situation that shows a real communication challenge for the manager is the telecommuting employee. Managers have not to ignore or miss those employees the improvement of the technology and telecommunication since has solved this problem as manager can meet those employees through webinars, video calls, e-mails, and managers can also allow those employees at certain period of time to visit the organization Head Quarter (HQ) as a sign of appreciation and showing interest on him.

D. Listen to Employee Concerns and accepting Constructive Feedback: Communication with employees must be a two ways communication, managers have to accept the constructive feedback from their employees and to practice the active listening style when communicating with their employees, to improve their active listening there are some strategies that can help in that: Managers have to pay attention and show interest when employees speak with them, Managers have to provide communication alternatives, seek clarification, give feedback, and summarize employee comments, Managers have to respond to employees’ ideas and opinions, without attacking verbally or putting them down, to respond honestly and openly, and to treat employees the same way they want to be treated and Managers have to show employees that they can trust them by avoiding making assumptions, listen to the full feedback or opinion without interfering with their own comments.

E. Shows Respect: When Manager are paying attention and making efforts in developing open communication with their employees, they start to feel that their point of view have been respected and that their contribution in business are appreciated. When employees know that they are the first one to know what is going inside their organization and their department and they are apple to participate by their ideas and opinion in decision making they believe that their work is valued, and this helps build their motivation.

Towards successful motivational framework

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Maintaining Effective Work Environment

Managers have to support their employees who believe in their jobs and have high sense of motivation by creating a work environment in which employees feel appreciated, deputized and empowered. Two ways that can be used to create such type of positive and effective work environment: (1) Broadcast positive reinforcement- There are three basic types of reinforcement Positive, negative and punishment. Positive reinforcement given when managers rewards positive employee behavior or attitude with a positive reaction, while negative reinforcement given when manager rewards positive employee behavior or attitude by not carrying through on a negative response. The management uses the punishment when they meet negative attitude or behavior with negative reaction.

Managers has to know the best type of positive reinforcement that can work efficiently with their employees as the motive changes from employee to another, and the only way to allow any manager to use this tool efficiently is to deal with his employees as individuals and this needs a lot of time from managers to spend with his employees to know them deeply and this is positive reinforcement by itself. (2) Create a friendly organizational culture- Besides working with employees as individuals managers have to spread a friendly work environment culture within their departments to increase the level of motivation, loyalty and team work culture, such as offering flexibility working hours, respecting diversity of workforce, opportunities for education and training courses, and some social exercises outside work.

Handling Demotivated Employees

Motivated employees are critical for the success of any organization, but a lot of managers are struggling to handle their demotivated employees, the problem of the demtivated employees in any organization is not only on them but also on the negative atmosphere that they spread inside the organization that for sure will have an impact of the motivation of the others. Sometimes the reason behind employee demotivation and poor performing is not related to the quality of the employee itself but to some other factors that effects his behavior and attitude, some of those reasons me be from outside work and the others are related to the job itself.

Here is some reasons related to the job that can make the employee demotivated: If employees feel uncertainty related to stay in the same job or doing the same work for a long period without any increase in his responsibility or getting more empowerment that will him to lose the sense of achievement, If managers’ expectation for performance is so exaggerated that the employee cannot achieve it, If the employee did not have the enough skills that can help him to meet the expected performance. If the employee time is fully used in his current job and did not have much more time to spend in extra responsibilities, If the rewarding system inside the organization is not fair enough, If the rewarding system inside the organization can not fit the diversity of the experience and talented employees.

The best way to determine the reason behind the poor performance is to have open discussion with the employee regarding his problem, and the manager has to be able to accept the unexpected feedback from his employee as the problem may be related to the leader ship style of the management. If the employee is consistently unable to meet performance standards for whatever reason will not allow the other team members to meet their goals and will decrease their motivation so it is the time to get red of such employee.

Conclusion ( Must answer the introduction questions and complete it )

Related to the globalization that has happened during the last few years this requests high performance organizations and employees, the dilemma that there is a shortage of qualified employees and many business opportunities, this what makes the motivation systems a very hot topic inside the organizations as they are in need to extract the talented employees from market and at the same time keep the current high talented employees inside the organization.

The second problem is that motivation is an internal factor and its benefit appears after a long period, and the needs of the employees are growing. The efficient development organizations and its management have to make feasibility studies about motivation types, the impact of it on employees’ performance and execution, and motivation sensitivity towards different external and internal stimulations.

Organizations has to understand that they are handling humans, and those employees are the most important assets they own, and that motivation participation is to get the employees to do something because they want to do it, no business or job can be done without knowing or offering to the employees what they are in need of.

The rewarding systems are extrinsic come from a source outside the job, mainly by management and they are mostly financial rewards, while intrinsic rewards reflect the personal satisfaction that comes from the job itself and are working more on individual needs and target mostly the talented people and they are not financial rewards.

Organizations has to use the most suitable motivational programs intrinsic or extrinsic and to focus more during the next period on the intrinsic rewarding systems as it appears to create a winwin equation for both organizations and employees and it does not depend on more financial rewards to gain more performance and achievements and it becomes more convenient when resources are scarce.

Based on the findings of this research, the following recommendations are made; Organizations should design developmental programs to increase its employee’s motivation in order to reduce their turnover, Organizations has to submit motivational programs that can retain their talented employees such as “talent pool programs and career path programs”, Organizations have to use fair rewarding systems to increase the level of motivation of their employees, Maintaining Open Communication and accepting constructive feedback from employees, Motivation on the job should not be restricted to extrinsic rewards only, but also intrinsic rewards, Organizations have to use employees’ Satisfactory Surveys (ESS) to measure the level of satisfaction and motivation of its employees.