Motivation Is the Key to Materializing Energy

Motivation is the key to materializing energy and getting things accomplished. Organizational relationships require proper motivation from all sides of the relationships. Leaders must be motivated and workers must be motivated as well in order to succeed at any mission. The purpose of this essay is to design an organizational motivation plan that encourages and maintains a high level of performance from the members of the Woo Widget Company. The essay will first describe the need for the plan before introducing key components of the system that intends to increase the productivity and efficiency of the employees at Woo.

Before designing a motivational plan that will work in this environment, it is necessary to reveal some important facts that contribute to the motivating factors of the employees at this organization. WooWoo designs widgets, but the widget that WooWoo makes is a clone of a nationally known widget. Woo sells their widget cheaper but accrue more costs due to defects. Woo has 50 employees.

Objectives

Any decent plan must contain realistic and attainable objectives and goals that can be accomplished through disciplined and consistent attention. For the purposes of keeping the employees at Woo motivated there are four key objectives that must be generally kept in mind during the plans design. These objectives include:

-high job satisfaction

- low turnover rate and high retention rate

- high productivity, both effective and efficient

- high-quality work

Methods of Motivation

According to Osterloh et al. (2002), motivation within business organization can be divided into two categories, intrinsic and extrinsic. They wrote that "the dynamics between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation helps to determine which factors influence the intensity and quality of the production of intangible firm specific pool resources, especially tacit knowledge," (p.67). In other words, a balance must be struck with these two motivational factors kept in mind.

Using this dualistic approach, incorporating two methods of motivation that attempt to appease both sides of the motivational scale seems like a rational and reasonable approach to this problem. In addressing the intrinsic motivation in employees will require influencing the factors that drive interest in the task itself, or by making the work itself very interesting and challenging. Extrinsic motivation is seen in attaining outcomes for performance, such as receiving a pay check or other forms of gratification.

Proposals

To address the intrinsic side of the motivational impulses in the workers at Woo, it is essential to convince the workforce of the importance that their work is to the rest of the world. Making workers feel special and unique is essential in them finding intrinsic importance in their work. Widget making is not glamorous and does not require any thing obviously special, but this cannot be readily admitted.

Creating an atmosphere of extreme importance where each individual feels compelled to be a part of the larger group, serving a greater purpose is essential in motivating the workers at Woo. A propaganda campaign highlighting such emotional ties to the work done at Woo will be helpful in creating an environment of self importance.

Amabile (1997) suggested that allowing workers to be creative can help their productivity. She explained this technique using the Intrinsic Motivation Principle of Creativity. She wrote " intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity. Controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity but informational or enabling extrinsic motivation can be conducive, particularly if initial levels of intrinsic motivation are high, " (p.46) Once again balance in the approach appears to be the key component in achieving high levels of motivation in employees.

Addressing the extrinsic motivation principle is simple and can be implemented by issuing monetary or vacation bonus structures that accompany effective and efficient behavior. Finding a bonus structure that meets management approval must include addressing these extrinsic needs that are rooted in each worker.

A third proposal would suggest doing nothing and letting the employees motivate themselves. While this hands off approach seems risky, there are some distinct advantages of this proposal. Reliable and honest workers would still produce at high levels if their intrinsic needs were being met, while others would do the opposite. This process can therefore be used as a screening or monitoring process that can help locate where the most serious attention and resources needs to be allocated.

The Relevance of the Individual Worker

Relativity is an important factor when trying to understand anything that is complicated in this world. The individual worker is a complex and evolved character within society that has certain implications in many different aspects of that same society. Work itself is often embraced as a virtue. If someone is working hard they can usually be trusted as someone who values truth and justice. In some instances those who do not work are often labeled as lazy, unemployable or damaged goods.