Workforce motivation

Employee motivation in the workplace is a combination of workplace culture, organizational strategy and management style. The right balance is essential. Employees have common basic needs that must be addressed by the plant or corporate culture. These include: physical, safety, social, esteem and self-actualization. Bored employees have a substantially negative impact on the level of motivation of other employees.

 A de-motivated workforce will ultimately result in high absenteeism and employee turnover rates usually accompanied by poor customer service. Motivation is not for hire. Rather, it needs to be created, encouraged and supported by the organization.

The real challenge is to sustain this employee motivation in the long-term. In the workplace, Workforce motivation means getting employees to exert a high degree of effort. The key is to get them to do a good job consistently. In this light, motivation is something that must come from within an employee. However, management can help create an environment that encourages employee motivation.  Motivation can best be understood by using the following sequence of events: needs, drives or motives, and goal obtainment. In this sequence, needs produce motives, which leads to goal obtainment.

Needs are caused by deficiencies, which can be either physical or emotional. For instance, a physical need exists when a person is hungry. By comparison, an emotional need exists when a person has no friends or meaningful relationships with other people. Motives produce action. Hunger pains (the need) activates the desire to find food (the motive), which leads to eating (the accomplishment).  Achieving the goal satisfies the need and reduces the motive. When the goal is reached, balance is restored.