Important Factors in Employee Motivation Essay

Important Factors in Employee Motivation The motivation of employees is one of the most vital requirements in the contemporary business development. People from all works of life may hold distinct views towards the topic that what are the radical motivating factors. Actually, it was salary that used to be considered as the most important motivators, as financial reward was comparatively proposed to be traded on impelling hirelings’ motivation, according to some early theories(Wiley,1997). However, some different factors of motivation, which now are universally favored by companies and conglomerates, may be more essential than personal emolument. This essay attempts to demonstrate these major factors in motivating employees, including empowerment, esteem demands and compensation in both physical and psychological aspects. Delegating more responsibility to workers is an efficacious way to increase job satisfaction, as well as employees motivation (Herzberg,1987 cited in Madura,2008). It means employees may be motivated by being involved in general affairs or being offered the power to participate in decision making, which can be equivalently called empowerment (Madura,2008) and this has been executed at numerous companies or by some notable people such as Warren Buffet. Once he left the investment in his manager and employees’ charge even without any periodical supervision, only in the case that the manager demanded to have a deliberation for exigent matters. Therefore,the personnels were empowered and they would devote all themselves to work, in order to accomplish a better consequence, since so colossal responsibility were on their shoulders (Luke,2011). Strikingly, it not only promoted the production but also increased employees’ enthusiasm and required capacity for later work. In addition, Tesco, a world famous conglomerate for commodity and service offering, also attaches importance to responsibility delegation. It stages informal discussion annually, deliberating salary raise with the workers and constantly adopt proper recommendations for food going onto the cartes in its restaurants from the staff. Employees thence be motivated to provide their enterprise with creative and proper ideas(The Times 100, 2010), cumbering with considerable duties. Equally important, esteem demands such as self-respect and respect from others,especially recognition for the works the employees have done can impel motivation to a certain extent. Full appreciation for hard work could helps erect self-esteem by concentrating on employees’ value for the firm and then the company may capacitate employees to reach their needs (Madura,2008). Nonetheless, although employees do need appreciation for work done, investigation illustrates that employers merely acknowledge recognition for employees’ work . Also, principles for presenting appreciation, consisting of description of required actions, explanation for appreciating and expressing gratitudes (Cherrington, 1992, pp. 2-3,cited in Wiley, 1997) should be followed, otherwise, it might be invalid. Take Tesco for example, it usually makes its employees feel satisfied in work by communicating with them regularly to help employees set individual goals and sum up the work they have done. What’s more,Tesco invites its workers to participate in a survey named Viewpoint every year, affording them the chances to present any opinions on nearly all fields of their work. T hus, employee motivation becomes higher as the value they have in various aspects are recognized and get the respect from their firms. Sufficient compensations related to employee outstanding achievement, can have positive effects on reinforcing employees because people will usually be motivated by being rewarded for their work. Financial rewards, together with non-financial factors, contributes to people’s getting into the swing of their job. For example, some firms like Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company offers bonuses to workers based on its profit and the average money that Nucor pays to its employees as premiums can even be more than the medial base salary(Madura,2008). Both of the two companies compensate employees with financial rewards. Apart from that,some non-financial factors may do a more adequate job of motivating workers, such as personal skill promoting and developing opportunities (The Times 100,2010). According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory, self-actualization is the final category to reach but beneficial to people if fulfilled. Best Buy organized a program to gather some employees to work and live together, getting trainings and texts. Meanwhile they were required to discuss to think of ideas for their goods sale. During this program, people who performed well in the groups can even had an opportunity to get extra management training and they then would be more likely to get promotion. Consequently, Best Buy motivated employees by promoting them with additional trainings as compensations besides pay raises and could enhance the enterprise’s creativity at the same time (Reena,2009 cited in Luke, 2011). Still some people, however, may insist on advocating salary as the most important factor in motivating. Although it is true that payment, as a kind of physiological need among five categories of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, is the foundation that people depend on for existence, itwill not absolutely result in increasing of staffs activeness. Instead, inadequacy of hygiene needs will lead to employees’ dissatisfaction for work. Dissatisfaction dose not mean no satisfaction because â€Å"dissatisfaction† may produce negative influence while â€Å"no satisfaction† will just keep unchangeable(Herzberg, 1987). As a result, adequate salary will only prevent employees from becoming dissatisfied rather than motivating them. Furthermore, as market conditions have transformed speedily and innovation continues, most people do not just work for money to survive, but for experiencing the life and actualizing personal worth. In this case, salary may have almost little effect in motivating, compared with other motivators mentioned above. From what have been discussed above, motivation now is extremely a significant problem in management of business and companies all over the world and it is widely acknowledged that fundamental factors to motivate employees need to be correctly understand. Management practices in companies and theories published by experts both contribute to the fact that important factors in motivation are complex and more than just salary. Delegating responsibility to employees can empowers them to be more active in work and appreciating the work they have done will meet individual esteem needs, preventing them from feeling undervalued. While compensation includes salary raises and non-financial rewards both can affect employees job satisfaction related to motivation.