Employee Performance and His or Her Motivation

Employee performance and his or her motivation is a key issue in an organization. The latter impacts the former: the more an employee is motivated, the better he is likely to perform. An important problem is that motivation is a complex undertaking: it is not always the financial package that is fundamental to an employee's performance.

Studies have shown that employees are also motivated (quite often even more motivated) by other factors. Campion and Thayer (1985), for example, concluded, following their research, that the more jobs are created to include motivational factors, the lower the efforts to complete them and the better the well-being of the employees. As Sager (1978) mentions, "it is essential to determine what an individual likes or needs in his work if motivation is to occur."

This paper proposes an approach based on Maslow's Theory of Needs to understand the role of promotion in an organization as a motivational factor. The paper will start with a proposed issue in an organization: a well-prepared employee is turned down from promotion in favor of someone else, whom he perceives as being less qualified. Starting from Maslow, the paper will investigate the motivational impact of such an action. Because the theories of Alderfer and McClelland are also closely related, aspects from these studies will also be briefly presented and used in the argumentation.

As Baack (2012), among others, has summarized, Maslow proposes a hierarchy of five needs, starting with the simple physiological needs and becomes more complex as the needs from the previous level are satisfied. As such, the level 4 and 5 needs are needs for esteem and self-actualization. Esteem needs refer to the perception that others have of the individual (and how important and motivating this can be for the employee), while the need for self-actualization reflects the individual's perception that he is useful for others, as well as that he is growing and develops as an individual, adding skills and so on.

Alderfer simplified Maslow's hierarchy of needs, splitting the needs into three categories: existence, relatedness and growth. On a parallel level, these categories can also be classified as physical, social and psychological. McClelland's work is complementary in that he adds a series of new needs, which fit very well the issue previously presented of promotion. These needs include the need for achievement, the need for power and the need for affiliation.

The situation previously described perfectly fits into Maslow's fourth and fifth level of the hierarchy of needs. The idea of promotion is complex and should be analyzed from different perspectives. First of all, promotion as a motivational factor works on the employees need for the esteem of other employees and for his self-esteem. A promotion is the manner in which the organization's leadership recognizes the excellence of the employee's skills and of his performance in the organization. As a consequence of this justification, the fact that the employee is promoted reflects the fact that he is doing an excellent job, as well as the fact that management believes him capable to perform on a superior level. It shows trust both in present and future qualities and skills.

The motivation from the previous paragraph matches level four in Maslow's pyramid. However, a promotion is also a level five action. The individual cannot perform optimally in the same position in the organization for an unlimited period of time. He needs to be offered new challenges and the opportunity to develop. A promotion works exactly toward self-actualization: the employee can perform on a new position, perhaps one that involves managerial responsibilities and a new interaction with upper management.

Noyria, Groysberg and Lee (2008) bring a new model into discussion, one that is based on four drives that underlie motivation. These drives are the drive to acquire, the drive to bond, the drive to comprehend and the drive to defend. A promotion responds to two of these drives, the drive to comprehend and the drive to defend. The drive to comprehend relates to the need to self-actualize and to develop. It understands the employees drive to find new challenges at work, to operate in new positions, to produce solutions etc.

The drive to defend relates to the promotion situation analyzed here because of the natural drive of an employee to defend what he perceives to be his rights. If he believes he has arrived to a position from where he should be promoted, then he is likely to defend what he perceives as his right. He will likely feel, if he is not given the promotion, that decisions in the organization are arbitrary.

Noyria, Groysberg and Lee (2008) propose different actions for each of the drives. For the ones discussed here (comprehend and defend), as applied to our case, the researchers propose actions such as increasing the transparency of all processes, emphasizing fairness and designing jobs that are meaningful, to showcase the contribution that the employee is making to the organization.

All of these proposed actions can be applied in the situation at hand. If the employee considers that he or she deserved to be promoted, but missed the promotion because of arbitrary reasons, then the organization should focus on making the promotion process as transparent as possible, highlighting the steps involved and, particularly, the requirements. In this sense, perhaps there are requirements regarding the number of years that the employee has to spend with a company before receiving a promotion.