Research Paper on Motivating Employees Beyond Money: Improving Morale & Productivity

Introduction

Employees need something that will motivate or improve their morale when doing work. This can be done through either raise of pay or any other rewards that do not involve the use of money. If an employer wants his or her work done well, he or she should be well acquitted to his or her employees, which makes it easier to identify what their needs are. In the case the employer does this he or she is going to have a positive impact from the employees improving his or her production output. Therefore, in this case, our primary focus will be on what makes the employees happy as they carry on with day in business and what improves their motivation and attitude towards the work.

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Literature Review

One of the things that make employees happy and improve their performance at work is the rewards that they receive from the management. Some of the resources, for instance, awards involving money, have a direct impact on the employees, whereas non-monetary bonuses end up improving the morale of the employees, increasing the productivity of the organization. In the case of rewards not involving money, they develop the attitude of the employee positively, which results in enhanced performance improving productivity (Kohn, 1999). That is, it helps in making employees commit themselves to the company, thus increase in the output. In most cases, attitude is what determines the performance of the employee, which is crucial in the business and money together with other materials needs do not entirely satisfy one. Each has his or her own psychological need, which is what an employer should target to impress his or her workers. Most of the employees all they want is recognition, and the reward being offered to them must not be expensive but something to show that it is appreciated.

Another thing that makes the employees happy is the ability of the employer to identify the problems that are associated with rewards. This will ensure that they do not give out prizes to the employees to punish them, ruin the relationships between them, undermine their interest or try to prevent them from taking risks. For instance, giving employees rewards in the form of money will only work for a given period and eventually come to an end resulting to harm in the business. That is these employees start developing loss in interest from what they are being offered, which ultimately affects the whole industry, thus more significant losses. This is since when one employee notices that the other employees have received rewards that are more than what he or she has received it will end up ruining his or her morale (Linz & Semykina, 2012, p.811). Therefore this results in a negative relationship between employees since there is a feeling of not being treated equally affecting the productivity of the firm.

Apart from that, another thing that can make an employee happy is job satisfaction. In the case of job satisfaction, there are various characteristics of the job, place of work and that of the employee. For instance, in the case of job characteristics, we have the amount of payment, work hours, opportunities of promotion and the job difficulty. When it comes to the aspects of the place of work, there is the environment of work and security of the job (Yousaf, Latif, Aslam, & Saddiqui 2014, p.1779). On the other hand, characteristics of the worker are age, gender, marital status and education. Therefore, both the actual and rewards that are expected are linked to the satisfaction of the job. However, this depends on whether the prize is intrinsic or extrinsic. An award is referred to be intrinsic if it is related to the job itself like getting to learn a new skill to get to achieve something worthwhile extrinsic reward is received after having a good work like increase in the salary.

Nonetheless, there is also the issue of the country in which the individual is employed in which job satisfaction varies. That is in low developing markets; there is little job satisfaction in which most of the people will not proudly do their work since they feel exploited. With this intrinsic reward tend to have more considerable influence when it comes to the satisfaction of the job if they are of greater importance to the employee. In some cases, however, they appear beneficial to the workers, notwithstanding whether liked or not.

Conclusion

From the above context, one can, therefore, conclude that for a job to be done to the satisfaction of the client, he or she must ensure that his or her workers are well rewarded. Through rewards, this ensures that the employee feels appreciated for the work that he or she had done. Apart from that, the employer should not only focus on the monetary rewards but also ensure that he knows his or her workers to appreciate them accordingly for the work they have done.

References

Kohn, A. (1999). Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.https://doi=10.1.1.606.7632

Linz, S. J., & Semykina, A. (2012). What makes workers happy? Anticipated rewards and job satisfaction. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 51(4), 811-844. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-232X.2012.00702.x

Yousaf, S., Latif, M., Aslam, S., & Saddiqui, A. (2014). Impact of financial and non-financial rewards on employee motivation. Middle-East Journal of scientific research, 21(10), 1776-1786. Retrieved from:https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Madiha_Latif2/publication/266739543_Impact_of_Financial_and_non_Financial_Rewards_on_Employee_Motivation/links/543a9a9d0cf2d6698be2ee8b.pdf