Motivation is derived from a simple word “motive.” Motives refer to drives, needs, wants, and desires within an individual. It is the skill or process of inspiring employees' behaviors and actions to achieve certain goals. Conducting business in the entire world is becoming increasingly challenging. Revenue growth and corporate performance are challenged by external and internal environment operating factors. For businesses to survive profitably in the highly competitive and challenging global market economy, the human resources factor of production should be managed impressively. The issues in human resources include human factors, production, materials, employee retention, machine, training, and selection ( Porter, Riesenmy, & Fields, 2016) . Human factors involve the most challenging issue because different to other factors of production; employee management requires handling emotions, thoughts, and feelings to improve production. High productivity is usually one of the long-term benefits of highly motivated employees. The essay will evaluate the relationship between motivation and employee performance.
Overall Performance in Organizations
Performances can be divided into employee/individual and organizational performance. Individual employee performance can also be described as job performance. The overall performance of any organization is dependent on the individual performance of its employees and other factors such as the business environment. The differences between a job and organizational performance are quite evident. A successful organization is one that can meet its objectives or the business that successfully implement appropriate business strategies. Job performance is the outcome of employees’ actions. In the current competitive world, companies face ever-growing challenges regarding retention, commitment, recruitment, engagement, and belief of their employees. Multiple types of research in different industries and countries reveal that the most successful companies often have highly motivated employees. However, the number of employees who are passionate about their jobs is only 19% in the entire country ( Azeem, 2016) . Most companies are struggling to retain their best employees.
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Motivation is about providing employees with the correct balance of rewards, guidance, resources, and direction so that they are passionate and inspired to continue working according to the desired outcomes of the company. Most of the organizational challenges revolving around retention, commitment, recruitment, engagement, and belief of their employees can easily be solved if the organization is willing to motivate their employees properly. In the era and environment of fierce competition, organizations are taking a keen interest in the proper management of their human resources. Human resources are the core asset in all organizations ( Lazaroiu, 2015) . Managers who can properly motivate their employees are often quite successful. Such managers use motivatio0nal tools. However, it is important to realize that employee behavior is always related to their attitude and employees cannot be fully motivated by money only. Managers should consider involving employees in finding the correct techniques of motivation that would be beneficial to their businesses.
Individual Job Performance
Good employee performances are of primary concern in every organization because the success of all businesses is dependent on employees’ commitment, creativity, and innovation. Productivity growth and good job performances are important are stabilizing the economy of any country through boosting the number of products that are available for consumption, improved living standards, and higher wages among many other benefits. Individual employee performance is vital because it affects every member of the society. Employee job performance and productivity are highly related. For instance, in the US, performance in some situations is measured as the value and quantity of goods produced. Nevertheless, in most cases, productivity is always related with production-oriented terms such as turnover and profit while performance is associated with perception oriented and efficiency terms such as goal accomplishments and supervisory ratings ( Porter, Riesenmy, & Fields, 2016) . Therefore, a high job performance refers to an employee’s ability to have high productivity and deliver the desired results.
Individual employee performance has more meaning that the ability of an individual employee and extends to the managerial side of performance. Task distribution and organization’s structure and hierarchy are important in improving employee performance. Employee performance is dependent on various individual factors such as abilities, personality, experience, skills, and knowledge. Furthermore, an individual’s personality may affect their job performance ( Azeem, 2016) . Therefore, it does not focus entirely on the meaning of performance but on how job performance is composed and how the performance can be measured. Individual job performance can be categorized into abilities, personality, experience, skills, experience, and knowledge. Some researchers believe that personality possesses a more specific responsibility for achieving job performance. Some of the main challenges in job performance include high rate technological growth, employee retention, regulations by government, high recruitment costs, increasing competition, and training. An organization with such challenges will often have employees who feel overworked or demotivated.
Measuring Job Performance
Most businesses often use subjective methods of measuring job performance, especially supervisory ratings. The data form supervision may be inaccurate because they are often quite subjective. Most companies do not use objective techniques to measure job performance. Consistent worker performance can only be achieved when the working environment is stable. However, in the daily practice, achieving stable working conditions is very difficult. Therefore, measuring job performances objectively becomes even harder. Organizations measure the productivity of their employees despite the formulation of a generally accepted tool or criteria for measuring employee and organizational performance ( Lazaroiu, 2015) . Most employers believe that they can measure employee productivity although some of the techniques are inefficient. Objective techniques of measuring employee productivity may be quite costly. Some researchers believe that personality is a key aspect when measuring job performance. Nevertheless, the impact of education and personal characteristics is quite difficult to measure, and some of the techniques were considered invalid.
Personality difference may have a key role in any organization if the organizations found a criterion for measuring it. The main challenge in measuring job performance is that it is highly dependent on supervisory ratings that are not objective. A better technique for measuring the job performance objectively should include job knowledge, quality, dependability, and quantity ( Porter, Riesenmy, & Fields, 2016) . It may be a more accurate technique for measuring organizational and job performance. Learning a job is often the key to a good job performance. Furthermore, general cognitive can predict the learning abilities. Hence, general cognitive ability should be the main indicator and predictor of job performance. It also allows the supervisor to rate the job performance objectively. Employees with higher cognitive abilities can learn their job responsibilities faster than their counterparts with lower cognitive abilities. Also, they can come up with innovative methods of carrying out their responsibilities.
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
Motivation may be separate by extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Individual may be intrinsically motivated when they search for personal challenge, enjoyment, self-expression, interest, and satisfaction of curiosity in their jobs. On the other hand, individuals can only be extrinsically motivated if they engage in their work responsibilities so that they can achieve some goal different from the work itself. Some researchers believe that extrinsic motivation is the verbal reinforcement and money that is mediated outside the employee while intrinsic motivation focuses on the efforts of the individual ( Porter, Riesenmy, & Fields, 2016) . Also, an individual is assumed to be intrinsically motivated if they can perform various activities when there are no expected rewards other than the emotions, feelings, or activity itself that result from conducting the activity. Therefore, employees can either be extrinsically or intrinsically motivated. They can also be both extrinsically and intrinsically motivated.
However, extrinsic and intrinsic motivators may apply differently to individuals. Some people may focus on extrinsic outcomes while others may focus on the intrinsic outcomes. Individuals whose personalities are focuses on intrinsic motivation are highly likely to prefer challenging cognitive tasks, and they can easily control their behaviors. Therefore, setting deadlines or external goals may have limited impact unless they have high extrinsic motivation. To work with employees who have the high intrinsic motivation, the employers should focus on encouraging self-set deadlines and goals, and engage the nature of the work ( Lazaroiu, 2015) . Furthermore, people will react differently in response to a particular job. The employees will be categorized on their growth need strength. Employees who have high growth need strength are highly motivated by jobs that require feedback, high skill variety, autonomy, task identity, and task significance. On the other hand, employees with low growth need strength may be insensitive to such factors.
Some researchers state that extraverts are more intrinsically motivated introverts are more extrinsically motivated. It also appears that extrinsic and intrinsic motivation may have an impact on each other. For instance, some extrinsic motivators can reduce intrinsic motivation. For instance, when money is used to encourage production consistently, it may decrease intrinsic motivation. However, the effect will not occur if monetary rewards are not offered consistently. Although extrinsic motivation may have an opposite effect on intrinsic motivation, it may also be used to reinforce intrinsic motivation. If the needs of extrinsic motivations are properly taken care of, the intrinsic motivation can result in higher levels of performance and satisfaction ( Azeem, 2016) . Both extrinsic and intrinsic vales can motivate employees to improve job performance. However, the outcomes of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation on individuals are different. Managers should realize that some employees may be more extrinsically motivated while others may be more intrinsically motivated.
Conclusion
The essay evaluates the relationship between motivation and employee performance. Motivation is the skill or process of inspiring employees' behaviors and actions to achieve certain goals. Human factors involve the most challenging issue because different to other factors of production; employee management requires handling emotions, thoughts, and feelings to improve production. The overall performance of any organization is dependent on the individual performance of its employees. Motivation is about providing employees with the correct balance of rewards, guidance, resources, and direction so that they are passionate and inspired to continue working according to the desired outcomes of the company ( Azeem, 2016) . Individual employee performance is vital because it affects every member of the society. A better technique for measuring the job performance objectively should include job knowledge, quality, dependability, and quantity. Also, employees can either be extrinsically, intrinsically motivated, or both.
Managerial Implications
Managers should address both extrinsic and intrinsic motivational issues. Organizations should not select either extrinsic or intrinsic motivational factors to address the motivational factors in the organizations. They should have a proper balance so that it does not cause dissatisfaction. They should also evaluate the impact of extrinsic motivational factors on the intrinsic motivational factors. Different researchers reveal employees' personalities often respond differently to extrinsic and intrinsic motivation factors. Some employees are more extrinsically motivated while others are more intrinsically motivated. The general belief is that employee job performance is dependent on individual traits such as abilities, personality, experience, skills, and knowledge ( Lazaroiu, 2015) . Managers should evaluate the personal traits when motivating and hiring employees. Also, managers should come up with objective techniques of measuring job performance other than fully depending on supervisory ratings. It would be difficult for managers to measure the impact of their motivational efforts if they do not have objective methods. They should develop objective techniques for measuring employee and organizational performance.
References
Azeem, S. (2016). Drivers of Employee Motivation: Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction.
Lazaroiu, G. (2015). Employee Motivation and Job Performance. Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations , 14 , 97.
Porter, T. H., Riesenmy, K. D., & Fields, D. (2016). Work environment and employee motivation to lead: Moderating effects of personal characteristics. American Journal of Business , 31 (2), 66-84.
