Motivating Employees: Manager's Guide to Enhancing Productivity - Essay Sample

Background of Study

Motivation might seem to be one of the most researched areas of management. A manager that can grasp what motivates an employee will have more productive force (Mullins, 1996). To motivate a worker to achieve organisational goals, the manager must determine the worker's needs, the motivational factors, and provide avenues where there will appropriate intrinsic incentives made available to satisfy them. When the management has successfully achieved that, the workers will be positively impacted by the willingness to work and increase the efficiency and effectiveness in the organisation (Mohamed, 2010).

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Motivation, however, has been one most intensively planned issue in human resource management as the major preoccupation of man has been work, which happens to be a central feature of the modern city. The concept of motivation is developed from management orientation perspective, human relations school, classical management thoughts and human resource perspective which emphasises the need to get the best and optimal performance from employees/workers while human resource perspective laid greater emphasis on social needs like the need for recognition and acceptance within the workplace. Performance and motivation extend the growth of productivity and observe in their behaviour once they are provided with motivation. However, employees can be motivated in two ways, and they are a positive approach and a negative approach. There have been certain competing theories aiming to explain the nature of motivation, such as the Maslow (1943) theory, Herzberg et al. (2011). Each of these theories tries to rationalize why human beings behave the way they do while also suggesting the best way organisations can better affect the behaviour of their employees (Hammer, 1979).

Motivated employees are critical to the success of Nigerian organizations such as Oando or Shell. If people are treated the same in other parts of the world which without some references can be deemed unproven, then it is surely down to poor management. Effective management is almost always contingent, meaning that people should be treated, to some extent, as individuals. This theory is known as a complex man, according to which everyone is suffering from different needs and necessities. Therefore, there must be different criteria to judge their performance and motivations. (Abbah, 2014)

Statement of Problem Nigerian public servants always express their disappointment regarding corruption in the work place and the lack of competitive wages, developmental plans, and health care programs. Human relations also tend to be poor. (Nife, 2016). However, it is understood that employees are a vital resource for any civil service. Specifically, an employee's performance can be increased when they are motivated properly with reasonable incentive. This has caused behaviours of employees such as passive performance of job, lateness, and absenteeism. To maximise the performance of government organizations and their employees, it is necessary to carry out proper motivational policies that are implemented and formulated. However, there has been some existing studies that are aimed at the effects of motivators on performance in Nigeria (Jibowo, 1977) but to maximise the performance of government organizations and their employees, it is necessary to carry out proper motivational policies such as structured work, engage them, provision of work tools, introduce rotation in jobs, insert private sector mind-set workers at management level, alter programmes and enable the public workers to structured organizations so that they can learn proper working culture and inherit it. Therefore, this research may be able to suggest ways to reduce these problems outlined.

Research Question

What are the intrinsic factors that motivate employees to improve their performance in public and private organisations?

Significance of the StudyThe main objective of this research was to highlight the motivational policies regarding the performance of employees in an organization. The study sought to emphasize and show the impact that good policies have on the motivation of staff and serves as a means of evidence to organization staff and professionals of private and public companies. Additionally, the study, through its findings, would serve as a project plan that influences on the general processes of government in terms of training, development, and performance management.

Scope of the StudyThis study focused on the processes of human resource management and assessed the motivational strategies, which enhance the employee's performance in public and private organisation including a case study of Nigeria Content Development Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and Vodacom Nigeria.

Research Objectives

• To establish what drives intrinsic motivation (desk research survey and interviews).
• To identify the current levels of intrinsic motivation in NCDMB and Vodacom Nigeria.
• To determine current practices aimed at maximising intrinsic motivation in the respective organisations (survey and interview)
• To establish practices that are currently absent in one or both organisations (survey and interview) and make recommendations about implementing practices that can increase intrinsic motivations.

Hypothesis

Intrinsic motivation is proportionately more influential in driving public sector performance than it is in delivering private sector performance.

The above is underpinned by the capability of private sector organisations to apply extrinsic motivational tools that compensate for deficiencies in intrinsic motivation. In reality, one may find that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is higher in the private sector.

Literature Review

Motivation is a source that gives strength and the way forward in the behavior of people. Through good motivation, people can do well in their jobs since they are flexible to attain any target set by the management and even go beyond it (Armstrong, 2006, p.65). The main goal of this literature review is to analyze the kind of work done by the previous researchers as far as policies that govern motivation of human being is concerned. This section will cover the main motivation categories, motivation aspects, and theories. The connection between the satisfaction of the job and monetary value plays a role in affecting the morale of people. Also, under analysis is the various ways in which motivation strategies are labor output.

Types of Motivations

The following are the two main types of motivation. Intrinsic motivation occurs whenever people put their work as a priority in their responsibilities list, which is very appealing and difficult. Also, people can act freely. This category of motivation provides people with chances to progress in their careers to a better level. This motivation portrays itself in the clear through work. In their work, Cameron, Bank, and Pierce (2001, p.147) were able to illustrate why this kind of motivation was emphasized on human competency to be successful in the work. A well-planned task can improve intrinsic motivation. In Katz (1964, p.381) pointed out those varieties, not easy to understand, demanding, and unique expertise in works connected well with the capabilities of every employee. The following five main features of works; different abilities, identification of job, the importance of work, self-governed entity and replies affects the existence of Intrinsic motivation according to job properties of a prototype which was the research of Oldham, Hackman, and Pearce (1976, p.397). The second motivation type is extrinsic motivation, whereby workers are motivated to improve on their performance when certain things happen to them. These actions can be salary increases, allowances and upgraded to higher job group within the firm these actions serve as congratulation gifts while to maintain good behavior the following corrective measures are taken payment delay, getting suspended or rebuking of the workers (Scholl, 1981, p.590). Extrinsic motivation is a short-term measure which has robust instant repercussions. However, some motivations under this category have a long-term influence found within the worker's character traits, which improve the working environment and not derived from outsiders.

Theories of Motivations

Motivation theories illustrate how the working principles of the two types of motivation discussed above operate. From the work of Steers, the first attempts to know what motivates people to work hard and why human behavior was affected by the practice of hedonism. Human beings put a lot of work to embrace happiness and shun suffering caused by pain. Embracing enjoyment and keeping off pain code was the work of the old-time educationists like Locke and others before the 19th century Barrick at el., 2015, p.130). Since this time theory of motivation has gone through many changes. These changes started to prop up at the beginning of the 20th century, which helped in the birth of facts-proven management styles. Still, in this century, the scientific researchers in human traits focused on the motivations guided by comfort and excellence. The following are examples of motivation theories

Theory of instrumentality outlines the consequences of why punishing and rewarding people are the most effective methods of influencing human character traits. The assumption under this theory is that workers will see the reason to put more effort into their tasks since their output achieved from their input will be used to either reward or punish them (Jayaweera 2015 p.270). This theory has its foundation in the Taylors work which states that it is difficult to make workers toil more than a normal average employee as long as their salaries and wages remain in a constant level for more than five years. This theory explains how labor output is directly proportional to paycheck. This theory system does not care about the welfare of human beings doing the work rather relies on the outside the firm guidelines. Secondly, the theory of content is concerned with pointing out the specific needs which the morale of workers to perform. This theory came to life via the research works of (Maslow, 1954, p.447). This hypothesis shows how human needs from time to time control the working spirit of employees. In case the needs go by without being attended to this will result in confusions among the people, which will negatively affect their performance. Matching human needs with satisfying resources prevents poor output. Also, certain discipline measures are set to help the workers attain their target within the firm.

Third, a process theory is all about giving backup suggestions. These suggestions are not a mere hypothesis but rather strong ideas which were the work of Skinner (1977, P.8) who also created a scrutiny test for human behavior which shows a connection between human being way of life and the surrounding environment. From this assumption, if employees act in the best way, they will produce good results, and this cycle of behavior will continue repeating itself. For the leaders to rule their subject's well, they can adopt this hypothesis to insist for good results in case their subjects behave well (Kuranchie-Mensah and Amponsah, 2016, p.255). In this assumption, professional medics concentrate more on the mental conditions, which, in return, influence the motivation alongside human needs. This hypothesis is also called cognitive assumption since it shows how nearby surrounding areas influence how human being views things and people around them and methods which help them to analyze and comprehend their geography. Lastly, in equity theory, workers compare how their bosses treat them and how the same supervisor treats other conditions. Adam, who is responsible for equity assumption, suggested that workers analyzed equality about the paid wages and the a...