Essay Sample on Motivating Employees for Longer Organizational Life

Introduction

The life of any organization is typically detected by how motivated the employees of the organization are. The more motivated the employees are, the higher are the chances that the organization will have a longer lifespan, and of course, better products and more quality services, and these are exactly what attracts the customers. Converting that into monetary, higher scales of quality.

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Every organization strives to find a way they can motivate their employees. That is why we have many different people and groups trying to explain their views on how to achieve a maximum employee's motivation. Science argues that people value money irrespective of how pleasant or unpleasant their jobs are. Scientists argue that if you want to improve employees' motivation, give them a little more cash. Daniel Pink, on his YouTube video on surprising truth on what motivates employees argues that the fact is actual if you are dealing employees who have to apply their mechanical skills or where a set of rules and regulations are to be strictly observed to achieve produce, but this is not true when it comes to requirement of "thinking skills" (Daniel 2010). In his YouTube video, he makes an instance where the research was conducted to students at MIT, where students were given different tasks and different amount of rewards offered, such that the highest performers would be offered the biggest prize, medium level a slightly small reward and low level offered the least size of the reward. The results of this research turned out a bit unexpected when cognitive skills are in the picture, but when mechanical skills are being employed, this is probably the best approach.

However, the human relations movement has a different argument. They hold on to the emphasis that employees want to feel some usefulness and belongingness to the organization, and money is a little influence on their perception of motivation. This is classically how human beings behave. We give our best to something we own or something we believe is ours. Why wouldn't we? It's ours, after all. If we do unsatisfactory work, it is we who face the consequences, and if we do good work, it's still us who will reap the sweet fruits. With this kind of mindset, the question of better payout of the realm. Glamour UK magazine uses this approach to motivate its employees. Glamour magazine is one of the most prominent women's magazines with a considerably large fan base in the United Kingdom (Daniel 2010). At Glamour, employees, whose significant percentage of them are writers, are encouraged to view the magazine as their own. This gives them a sense of ownership, and not only do they have to do their duty as an employee of the company but also as a person who wants to improve the lives of women through the magazine. This makes the working environment not just "work to pay bills" kind of situation but as "working for a purpose" environment. However, for employees to enjoy this motivation strategy, the pay should be satisfactory enough. This is the go-for strategy, mainly if an organization's growth and productivity depend on how creative there employees can be.

On the other hand, Human Resource approach employee satisfaction a little bit differently. They assume that employees are much motivated by the will to make genuine contributions to an organization. They claim that employees are thrilled by the growth and effectiveness of the organization. For instance, as explained by RSA Animate, about Atlassian, an Australian software company that takes a day a week to engage all its employees, and asks them to develop something using any resource they wish to use as long as whatever they develop or come up with is shown to the organization by the end of the 24 hours, and no one will get into their way (Pinder, 2008). This is exactly how the strategy works, as long as in the work environment of employees, the employees are allowed to make full use of a human resource that is available to them to come up with new products without restrictions, then that is all the organization needs to employ employee motivation in its workplace. Most of the organizations today are guided by this approach in structuring their employee motivation scheme.

Understanding employee's personalities are really handy while motivating employees. Different organizations require employees who possess different personalities. Different people exhibiting different personalities are committed differently to work. A psychopathic employee may be too committed to ensuring the thriving of the organization or self-thrive that he might not care how their behavior affects other employees, or worst, they might be ignorant of how their actions influence the organization's competitors (Daniel 2010). When dealing with such type of employee, the scientific view of give money and let the best performer take home the gold may not be fit, because it will only increase aggressiveness amongst the employees. But when dealing with proactive individuals, probably, offering them money for more good work may not be recommended. Alternatively, the Human resource approach might work best for them.

General Mental Ability is another factor to consider. People who are generally considered to be smart may not necessarily be motivated by money. A good enough salary, maybe yes, a little bit, but a bigger chunk of money for excellence? Now, this may not work. Such individuals require some sense of belongingness to the organization to demonstrate quality production.

Cultural differences also affect how employees react to different motivation strategies. The beliefs of people influence how they approach problems. For people who believe in avoiding problems, money can never convince them to stay and find solutions, just like more significant rewards may not necessarily motivate problem-solving individuals to solve a problem. All a problem solver requires is the availability of resources to help solve the problem without restrictions.

Employee's traits are not the only measure to be put under a scale; the organization's system should also be evaluated, starting with employees' performance evaluation schemes. Organizations should not reward the highest producers only. They should also reward the little efforts employees make, like the earliest arriving, the improving employees, ones came up with creative ideas, whether it was successful or not, the most disciplined and many others (Pinder, 2008). This will remove focus from just being good at doing stuff, which will still be something employees will observe but new domain of possibility will be opened to how creative employees can be, how much of risks they are willing to take, how responsible can they be, the possibilities are endless, and it's time for organizations to tap these possibilities and use it to their advantage.

Also, the reward package should not be only money, and organizations can implement different reward systems like sponsorship of their next projects, promotions, opportunity to work on the organization's main projects, mentorship programs amongst others like rewards (Pinder, 2008). Also, the organization should review their formal regulations, and remove or limit rules that stop employees from being creative with their decisions as long as these decisions are controlled either by supervisors or department heads.

All these approaches make sense variedly in different areas of expertise in an organization. To employ an employee motivation scheme, an organization has to observe and learn its employees thinking and expectations thoroughly. Putting that into consideration, the organization has to find a leveled ground to merge the findings and organization objectives to come up with a suitable employee's motivation scheme. This will not only address employees' concerns, but it will also reduce employee motivation strategy going wrong.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this not just a radical scheme of finding out where the organization niche is and only selecting a strategy. In work motivation and organizational behavior, Craig Pinder points out beliefs, intentions, expectations, equity, and fairness at work, among others, as some of the concepts that affect motivation at work(Craig C. Pinder,2008). An organization has to carefully understand both the organization's constraints and individual constraints to establish which scheme best suits their employees.

References

Daniel, P. (2010) RSA Animate - Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,

Pinder, C. C.(2008). Work motivation in organizational behavior (2nd ed.) Psychology Press