Motivation among employees within an organization is a critical component of the organizational success. As such, every organization strives to ensure that their employees are adequately motivated to give their best in the realization of the organization’s objectives. However, every organization faces a unique set of challenges that relate to employee motivation. The ability to address these challenges in light of the motivational principles and theories is key highly dictates the success and future of the organization ( Raghunathan, 2016). The organization that I work for has equally had its share of the motivational challenges. One of the motivational issues that this organization encountered was lack of lack of employee reward. The organization did not have a framework of recognizing and rewarding exemplary performance of employees. Therefore, the employees were not motivated to achieve extra for the organization. This paper discusses how the organization applied motivational theories and principles in dealing with this motivational challenges and how these principles and theories yielded positive results for the organization.
The motivational issue discussed above led to the deterioration of the performance of the organization. The management of the organization was forced to reexamine the motivational state of the employees and put in place measures that could enhance employee motivation. Several measures were put in place to address these employee motivational issues. Firstly, the organization put in place a career growth and advancement strategy. Each employee had a career projection for a specific period. With this strategy, the advancement of career was mainly dependent on the individual performance of the employees. Therefore, employees who exhibited exemplary performance would move up the career ladder within the organization faster compared to their counterparts who demonstrated less performance.
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Subsequently, the motivational approach borrowed largely from the Maslow’s motivational theory, which highlights five levels of human needs that motivate people. These include psychological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs (Jian-Jun, 2015). A higher need often motivates an individual. The psychological needs are the basic needs that motivate an individual to work hard. One’s these needs are satisfied higher needs motivate the individual. Most of the employees in this organization had already satisfied their psychological needs. The idea of creating a career growth path was founded on the principle that such a career projection assures the employees that they can satisfy higher needs on the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs of if they work hard (Jian-Jun, 2015). Therefore, the career projection projects a reward for employees who achieve and surpass the expectations of the organization. Such possibility served as a motivation and greatly helped in solving the employee motivational issue that the organization was facing.
Secondly, the organization put in place a recognition system for exemplary job performance. Under this program, the employees who achieve extraordinary results or attained outstanding performance in their respective organization were given a tag of “employee of the years.” The recognition of the employee of the year was undertaken through rating all employees on different criteria. Such criteria included the performance of the employee on their respective key performance indicators, creativity, and innovation of the employee in their workplace and the ability to influence others among other rating criteria. Moreover, the organization began to hold annual events at the end of each year whose main aim was recognizing and rewarding such employees. The employee who emerged the winner of the employee of the year award was given a monetary reward. This potential recognition played a critical role in motivating employees. Employees worked hard knowing that their efforts could not go without recognition. Consequently, this initiative helped to solve the motivational issue that the organization was having.
The Herzberg’s Motivational model guided this motivational initiative . Under this model, Herzberg proposed a two-factor theory of motivation. He classified the factors that affect employee motivation into two categories. The factors that lead to employee satisfaction at work are referred to as motivators ( Pegler, 2012) . On the contrary, the factors that lead employees to be dissatisfied with their jobs are referred two as hygiene factors. Motivators include responsibility, recognition, and advancement while hygiene factors include supervision, administration, work relationships, job insecurity, and poor salary ( Raghunathan, 2016) . The employee recognition system chose one of the motivators and used it to motivate employees in their respective jobs. The motivating factor chosen by the organization was employee recognition. The organization was able to use it appropriately in a way that created the sense of the organization’s commitment to recognize and reward performance. This ultimately served to motivate the employees within the organization.
The third step that the organization took to address this employee motivational issue was the introduction of peer to peer appraisal. This was a form of performance appraisal where each employee would rate the other employees working with him or her in the same department. The organization provided the employees with the criteria of appraisal. The criteria involved performance appraisal based on performance, peer relationships, and leadership among others. Average points were arrived at by dividing the total ratings of every peer by the number of peer workers appraising the individual worker. This approach helped the organization to identify the employees among the team that was much appreciated by the team for their outstanding interpersonal and leadership skills. Moreover, this approach helped the organization to identify employees that took time to empower, mentor and motivate fellow employees towards the realization of the organization’s objectives. Such employees would them be recognized and rewarded by promotions to leadership positions within the organization.
The motivational approach was mainly anchored on McClelland’s theory of needs, which classifies human needs of motivation into three types. These include the need for power, the need for affiliation and the need for achievement ( Stern, 2018) . The need for power is mainly centered on the people’s desire to be in positions of influence and control others. The need for affiliation is mainly concerned with the people’s desire to gain approval from others. Lastly, the need for achievement relates to the desire to do and be recognized for over and above what peers have achieved ( Hunitie, 2017) . Therefore, the principle behind the organization’s approach to creating a platform for peer-to-peer appraisal was in line with this motivational theory. It provided a platform where employees could gauge each other in their relationships. For instance, this platform prided an opportunity to fulfill the need for affiliation through being recognized and appreciated by peers at the workplace.
Lastly, the organization initiated a program of sharing with the employees the annual goals of the organization. At every start of the year, the organization would highlight the specific focus of the year. This varied from Sales goals, human resource management, health, and safety at the workplace and to equipment utilization goals. Secondly, these goals were cascaded down and customized for every department. They formed part of the key performance indicators for every individual employee. Secondly, the employees in every department were made to understand how each of their roles would be critical in achieving the collective organizational goals. Lastly, the management explained how the realization of the organizational goals would lead to the realization of each worker’s goals. The major aim of this activity was to enable the employee to recognize the important role they play within the organization and hence motivate them to work hard for the realization of both the overall organizational goals as well as individual goals of each employee ( Stern, 2018) .
This motivational strategy was anchored on the Urwick’s motivational framework. This motivational framework is anchored on two main factors. The first factor is the level of knowledge the employees have about the overall organizational goals and how their efforts contributed the realization. An employee who is familiar with the organizational goals and how his efforts contribute to this realization will feel more recognized than an employee who has less information ( Hunitie, 2017) . Consequently, such an employee will be highly motivated. The second factor is the realization of the relationship between the achievement of the organizational goals and individual goals. Therefore, this initiative aimed at ensuring that all employees are not only aware of the organizational goals but are equally aware of the critical contribution of their role. Consequently, their roles were appreciated and recognized within the organization.
Overall, the motivational issue that my organization has faced in the recent past is lack of employee reward and recognition. The employees felt that their efforts were not being recognized and their performance never rewarded. In response to this challenge, the organization put in place four specific programs. These included a career growth and advancement strategy, performance recognition and rewarding system, peer-to-peer appraisal and familiarizing employees the organizational goals and the importance of their roles. These motivational steps that the organizational took were largely in line with the principles and theories of motivation. They were able to yield positive results for the organization.
References
Hunitie, M. (2017). The impact of servant leadership style on employee service quality, employee creativity, employee commitment and employee performance. International Journal of Business Research, 17 (1), 43-50.
Jian-Jun, J. (2015). What motivates personnel in the U.S. Military Organizations?: Testing the need hierarchy theory. Korean Review of Organizational Studies, 12 (3), 31-50.
Pegler, C. (2012). Herzberg, hygiene and the motivation to reuse: Towards a three-factor theory to explain the motivation to share and use OER. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2012 (1), 4.
Raghunathan, R. (2016). Two theories of motivation and their assessment by Jayanta. Oxford Handbooks of Motivation, 2 (5), 223-235.
Stern, M. J. (2018). Theories of motivation, cognition, and reasoning. Human Resource Management, 7 (12), 412-426.
