MANAGEMENT
“What monetary and non-monetary motivational factors among employees will lead them to perform better at work?”
Rationale behind the Research Question and Literature Review
We understand that employees serve as the most important asset for an organization. If the employees are not trained well to perform their job responsibilities and they also lack the prior knowledge and skills required to achieve goals, it is likely that the organization will never be able to succeed in the long run. In order to ensure that the organization remains ahead in the competition, it must take care of its employees. Having said this, the employees are taken care of only when the organization design policies which are aimed at their personal and professional grooming and growth. If the employees are given the opportunity to work during flexible hours, their levels of motivation will increase and they would exhibit high levels of commitment towards the organization (James, 2005). Moreover, by offering competitive salary and benefit packages to employees can also help in increasing their morale and help them in fine tuning their future goals. Employees feel motivated and show a high degree of loyalty towards the organization when they are provided constructive and timely feedback for every strategic move they make. The feedback from seniors allows an employee to identify its strengths and weaknesses and then he works hard on areas which need improvement at both personal and professional levels. If the work environment is friendly and free of any form of prejudice, then the employee would certain meet their targets with enthusiasm.
When employees are appreciated for their hard work, they feel valued and work with more confidence towards the betterment of the organization (Lindner, 1998). As the phenomenon of globalization is gaining acceptance and popularity, organizations have changed the way they have been operating earlier. This is because globalization brings with itself the threat of competition. Every organization can now expand its business beyond the national boundaries which call for new and improved approaches to living up to the mission, vision, and objectives. One such approach allows the employees to participate in the decision-making process. Employees are given the opportunity to make the most of their creative and innovative skills and knowledge and come up with suggestions which they believe can contribute towards a better future for the organization. The way organizational members communicate with each other has also undergone change. The long communication channels rarely exist and organizational employees communicate with each other via shorter and feasible means. Sometimes, an employee can directly communicate with an executive member without having to follow any formalities.
All these discussed concerns lead to the creation of a work environment where employees feel energetic and motivated to achieve their defined goals which ultimately contributes to the effective and efficient performance.
Research Design
The design of this research will be experimental and the focus would be on identifying the elements which motivate the employees to perform better. For carrying out our research, we will select employees about ten in number and find out how the organization keeps their levels of motivation and productivity higher. For this purpose, a survey was conducted to find out in general what are the basic factors which lift up employees morale. It was a general assumption that monetary factors such as compensation, rewards, and long-term benefits help in keeping the employees motivated and satisfied.
Conceptual framework
For the purpose of identifying the research question, motivational factors were chosen as independent variables whereas performance was given the status of the dependent variable. The factors of independent variable were varied to see whether they influence the performance levels positively or negatively. Motivational factors are basically divided into monetary and non-monetary variables. Monetary factors include those related to salary and compensation packages. On the contrary, the nonmonetary factors which lead to increased motivation among employees include empowerment, recognition, productive work environment, strong organizational culture, effective performance management, decreased organizational politics an environment which supports open communication.
Experiment
For carrying out the experiment on the identification of factors which motivate the employees to perform better, it was announced by the management that every employee will be offered raise in salary and annual bonuses. The response of employees was quite positive and they began to exhibit high levels of loyalty and commitment towards their job. However, the variable of the non-monetary variable was also manipulated in the sense that although the compensation was raised but factors such as fair performance management system, recognition, positive feedback and guidance, productive and friendly work environment, team projects were reduced or almost eliminated for a period of one month.
Expected Results
It was observed that when non-monetary variables were eliminated from the work environment and only the contribution of monetary factors was introduced to find out how employees perform in their job, their performance levels did not remain satisfactory. The levels of commitment and loyalty seem to lower down and employees would spend most of their time in idle activities or gossiping because they knew that they would get a handsome salary at month end but because there was no recognition for their efforts and their creativity and involvement was no more needed in strategic decision making, their performance declined. Some employees exhibited laziness and showed no eagerness to work.
Conclusion
The research was aimed at finding out how motivational factors contributed towards effective employee performance. Motivational factors including monetary and nonmonetary are both essential for ensuring that employees feel enthusiastic about their job and meet their goals effectively. The high performance of employees is reflected in the form of their results such as exceeding the defined targets. It was concluded from experiment that both monetary and non- monetary factors contribute towards high levels of motivation which ultimately leads to high performance.
Reference
James, H. S. (2005). Why did you do that? An economic examination of the effect of extrinsic compensation on intrinsic motivation and performance.Journal of economic psychology, 26(4), 549-566.
Lindner, J. R. (1998). Understanding employee motivation. Journal of extension, 36(3), 1-8.
