Employee Motivation Is Positively Correlated

¶ … employee motivation is positively correlated with productivity, which is why it is important for managers to keep their people motivated. Productivity is also influenced by the personnel's abilities and in high-tech industries hiring people with the right skills is crucial for the well-being of the business. So, if we consider job performance to be a function of abilities and motivation, the managers' job would be to maximize this function given the system's constrictions (financial, material, technological, and time).

Motivation strategies

According to Accel team (2007), there are seven motivation strategies that could help managers improve company performance:

Positive reinforcement/high expectations. This strategy implies that when the reinforcing factor is applied, the likelihood of a behaviour will increase. The most common example of a positive reinforcement is to give food to a dog whenever performing certain tasks correctly. Conversely, we talk about negative reinforcement whenever the removal of a reinforcing factor decreases the likelihood of a behaviour. Whenever managers have high expectations from their employees and encourage and appreciate behaviours meant to live up to those expectations, the motivation is likely to be increased and maintain at high levels.

Effective discipline and punishment. This strategy is correlated with the prior one. Just like reinforcement, punishment can be both positive and negative. Positive punishment refers to the application of an adverse factor to determine the decrease in the likelihood of a behaviour and the negative punishment refers to the removing of a factor that would increase the likelihood of a behaviour. The role of discipline at the work place is to provide employees with a well -defined set of rules that would improve their sense of justice and the company's as well.

While motivating its employees, it is important for a manager to know when to reward or to punish given behaviours.

Treating people fairly. On the employees' side, fairness is very important. People need to know what type of reaction is triggered by certain behaviours. Shortly they need to know what to expect from their employer. Also, they need to be treated with respect, enjoy confidence and trust, have the possibility to grow together with the company and improve their skills, have a good communication with mangers and colleagues and be motivated by financial incentives. On the employer's side, it is good to treat employees accordingly to create a better environment for them, which in turn would have stronger motivation and have better results. A good manager has to remove barriers that may stand in the way of satisfying all these needs; otherwise, motivation levels are expected to fall.

Satisfying employees needs. Each employee has its own personal and professional needs. The two types of needs are correlated to each other, as private life is correlated to the professional one. According to Maslow, the human needs are organised in a hierarchical manner. The satisfaction of those have to be made from the bottom up and the more developed the environment in which the individual lives, the more complex its needs are. From the bottom of the hierarchy to the top, the needs are: physiological (basic needs: hunger, thirst, shelter, etc.), safety (i.e. retirement), love (i.e. belong to a certain group of people, a community), esteem (i.e. status, recognition) and self-actualization (i.e. self-fulfilment). The lack of satisfaction of each type of need induced a certain type of frustration, which affects motivation in a negative way and indirectly the individual's performance.

Setting work related goals. This is an important strategy because it helps managers evaluate the employee's performance during the year and reward/punish him/her consequently. The impact on the employee is that it has a well-defined image of the job responsibilities and it is aware of the consequences of certain actions he/she may take. The goals have to be realistic, measurable, specific for the job, challenging and attainable in the same time.

Restructuring jobs. Individuals often need to develop further abilities for self-fulfilment. Which is why, as the employee gains more experience, its responsibilities are enhanced. Also, it is useful to introduce job rotation to qualify the personnel for a wider range of tasks and to develop their abilities. By jobs being restructured we understand a permanent update with industry trends (i.e. technological upgrades, foreign languages) for the same job or job rotation for the same employee. Both ways are meant to stimulate motivation.

Base rewards on job performance. Employees need to be determined to strive for better results. These results come with better performance and better performance comes from better motivation and enhanced abilities. To increase motivation, managers should let employees know that a part of their rewards (such as financial benefits other than the fixed salary) will be proportional with the performance. Employees will try to have better results to have better rewards.

Motivation plan

Working conditions and workloads are the positive aspects of the survey's results. However, there were some individuals (22% for working conditions and 30% for the workload) that were unsatisfied with what company had to offer in this area. These two issues will have the lowest priority, since most of the respondents were satisfied.

Safety conditions, development and promotions opportunities, reward policy and benefits need to be addressed with priority, as the respondents were poorly satisfied by the company's implication in these areas.

Safety conditions should be number one priority. However, since improving these conditions, the company would have to make installations upgrades in the utility plants, the safety conditions issue will be addressed after all other issues that received a negative employee feedback.

89% of the participants stated that they would like to improve their skills, but they see no opportunity for that. Given that the company has tight financial constrictions, the possibility of paying trainings for the employees to improve their qualifications is not to be taken under consideration for the moment. However, the company can organize job rotations, so that each employee gets the chance to diversify its skills by learning how to perform some of their colleagues' tasks. Some of the employees may turn out to be more efficient and more compatible with other jobs than the one they currently have. Also, the managers may make an extra effort and redefine their job attributions, so that everybody knows what the company expects from its employees and what the company gives in return for fulfilling these attributions correctly. Perhaps, mentioning those responsibilities in a document and making it public would increase transparency in the company and employees would feel more satisfied.