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Employee Needs & Motivation/ Intrinsic Motivation

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I need help with these two questions with citations and references added.

Employee needs are not hard to meet if the employer understands that each employee is an individual and a part of a group. Needs need to be met with each person's needs evaluated. The basic needs of employees like lunch, breaks, food, and water are easy to understand. But at the same time the food and beverages need to be understood in case of allergies. Different foods and beverages need to be available to employees.

Some times companies even pay for lunch for each of the employees as a reward. At other times there are vending machines with sandwiches and snack foods. I would have to say that snack foods should be available, but so should other health foods to encourage employees to have a healthy lunch without having employees leave and come back to work late. This does not always work out and some companies do not offer healthy lunches.

Rewards are not always what they seem with employees and employers. Rewards are given to help motivate employees (Reeve, 2009). Rewards can range from raises, bonuses, paid lunches, commissions, and more. Rewards also include being placed in higher quality groups for status reasons, motivational reasons, and production reasons. Rewards come in all forms and understandings. It is like being called to a principles office in school. The feelings one can get because of the unknown reason they are being called to the office. It is the same at a job. Employees do not always like being called to the bosses office for fear of the unknown, judgment, punishment, and fear.

Questions:
1. What are your thoughts on all of this? How do you think companies can reach a better understanding of employee needs and met the needs of all the employees?
2. How would the world be today if everyone was motivated intrinsically?

If, this study was done in 1984, what is education doing today to find studying intrinsically rewarding. As a GM in a busy fish market and restaurant, we employed several high school seniors that needed a part-time job. I would always ask them if they had homework or had any test to study for, they all replied not really. The surprising thing is that they all graduated with A's and B's and would be at work by noon or 1:00 pm. These high school students did everything possible to graduate early, not to head to college, but so they can work more. http://education.purduecal.edu/Vockell/EdPsyBook/Edpsy5/Edpsy5_intrinsic.htm
3. What are your thoughts?

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Solution Summary

This detailed solution discusses how employees needs are met, and includes rewards given to motivate employees.It also discusses what would happen if everyone was motivated intrinsically. Includes APA formatted references.

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1. What are your thoughts on all of this? How do you think companies can reach a better understanding of employee needs and met the needs of all the employees?

This is an interesting concept. It is only recently that such a large effort has been placed in supplying perks to workers, in terms of onsite food and services. Google is one of the extreme examples with perks ranging from free gourmet food and snacks to fitness classes, dry cleaning and even transportation service (Smith, 2013). These perks help to attract and retain employees, and also encourage them to spend more time at work, being productive since many of their needs are taken care of without running errands or wasting time running out for food, etc. At the same time, these perks cost money. Companies have only so much that they can spend and still stay in business. The New York Times points out that "overall compensation rose only modestly last year" (Schwartz, 2013) while perks have definitely increased. Extrinsic rewards like food and snacks may encourage employees, but are these perks more motivational than an increase in salary? As the post points out, not all food appeals to each person. Perhaps companies would be ...

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Sally Baldwin, Ed.D
Education
  • BA, University of Southern California
  • MSS, United States Sports Academy
  • Ed.D, Boise State University
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