Introduction
Every organization wants to be successful in the current highly competitive environment. To achieve organizational goals and objectives organizations need to develop plans to maintain or increase their performance. Among those strategies should be ways to properly motivate employees. Achieving organizational goals is not the only reason for employee motivation but also to achieve employees’ personal goals. Satisfied employees are a key factor in ensuring the success of an organization. This is because human capital is one of the most important assets in an organization capable of helping an organization to succeed and may also lead to failure of an organization if not managed efficiently.
Effects of Employee Motivation on Organizational Behavior
Organizations have the power to control the behavior of employees working for them. The power to control employees’ behavior comes from a social system comprising of three elements; activities, interactions, and elements (Dobre, 2013). Activities are the normal task assigned to employees by their superiors in an organization. Interaction is the behavior between people performing different tasks and sentiments are the attitudes that develop between people.
There are certain activities, interactions, and sentiments that people have to meet to continue working in an organization. Motivated employees are able and willing to perform their assigned tasks effectively leading to an organization with high productivity. The interaction between high-level employees and motivated subordinates is also very good. This is because to properly motivate employees, organizations need to understand the needs and behaviors of employs. Finally, organizations with motivated employees have positive sentiments and high worker retention since motivated employees have no reason to leave the organizations. As sentiments become more positive, the interactions between employees are enhanced. This results in an organization with employees who conform to the expectations and norms of the organization.
Strategies to Increase Employee Motivation
One of the most important ways to increase employee motivation is through using financial motivators. According to a research conducted by the Society of Human Resources management, more than half of the surveyed employees said that financial motivation is very important (Burton, 2012). This type of motivational strategy involves an employee receiving some kind of financial reward the most common ones being salary raise or cash bonus. Organizations may also use pay commissions as a way of financially motivating employees. This type of motivation is mostly used for employees in sales where the workers are paid a percentage of the sales amount. Some organizations also use a profit sharing program to motivate an employee. The program involves adding a portion of an organization’s profits on top of workers’ salary and is mostly used in the service sector. The final type of financial motivation is called piece work where the employees are paid an extra amount of money based on the amount of produced product.
Another strategy of motivating employees involves non-financial means. According to studies, the top five motivators mentioned by employees were non-financial (Burton, 2012). There are many different types of non-financial motivators that employers may use. The first one is acknowledgment where the employer publicly recognizes an employee for a job well done. The second is offering non-financial rewards such as trophies or parking spaces to exemplary employees. The third is job rotation whereby employees are given an opportunity to explore other jobs in the organization. This type of motivation is useful in training employees and ensuring that also ensures that employees do not get bored doing the same jobs in the organization. Security is another motivation that been used in organizations. Employers want to feel that their job secure and also feel safe while dispensing their duties for the organization. The last type of non-financial motivation is quality circles. Quality circles are regular meetings between management and employees to analyze the work and see if there are better ways to increase performance.
Employee empowerment is the other type of motivation strategy that management can adopt. This involves giving employees the freedom and power to make decisions. Having more control over their jobs gives employees promotes growth and productivity in an organization. This makes workers in an organization feel appreciated and that their feedback concerning organizational matters is valued. Furthermore, research has shown that employee participation in administration and decision-making concerning organizational policies, strategies, and objectives leads to better understanding of the cultures and organizations of an organization. Employees’ perception of these organizational goals and cultures is positively related to high levels of employee motivation (Dobre, 2013).
Conclusion
Every organization is striving to remain relevant in today’s competitive environment. To achieve this goal, organizations have to ensure that their employees who play a major role in the success of an organization are motivated. Having motivated employees leads to an organization with positive sentiments and low employee turnover, whose workers complete their tasks, and have good interactions with each other. The three main strategies of increasing employee motivation include financial strategies like increasing salaries, non-financial strategies like job security, and worker empowerment. All these strategies have different ways of motivating employees and increasing their work engagement.
References
Burton, K. (2012). A study of motivation: How to get your employees moving. Retrieved from https://spe.indiana.edu/doc/undergraduate/ugrd_thesis2012_mgmt_burton.pdf
Dobre, O.-I. (2013). Employee Motivation and Organizational Performance. Review of Applied Socio- Economic Research, 5(1),
