Motivating Employees

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Please see response attached, some of which is also presented below.

RESPONSE:

Interesting and somewhat complex question for sure, as it depends on the factors and theories of motivation that one holds. However, there seem to be some common threads. Let's take a closer look through discussion and research to see what the motivational literature has to say about employee motivation.

1. What can organizations do to motivate their employees?

Although motivation is a key topic, it is still often not well understood, perhaps because it demands that a person understands human behaviour and theories of motivation to get a broad idea of the many different factors that can motivate people. For a quick overview of the motivational theories click http://www.joe.org/joe/1998june/rb3.html. And, some factors motivate one person to act and change, but not another. Human behaviour and motivation are complex so, therefore, an organization needs to have clear goals, match ability with job requirements in the hiring and selection process, assess and employ training and career development when new skills emerge, and have a toolkit of potential motivational strategies to use for different people and different situations.

Motivation is the key to performance improvement. Essentially, motivation is a means to reduce and manipulate the gap between the present state of others (e.g., lacks certain skills) and the desired state (e.g., skills for the job - career development and training might be the motivator in this case, as job performance = ability + motivation). However, research suggests that a poor fit between the worker's ability and job expectations is de-motivating, so perhaps this is the first thing that an organization can do to motivate employees and reduce the risk of de-motivating the employees by placing them in a position that they are lack in the necessary skills and training. So, first and foremost the organization must:

(1) Match ...