Employee Motivation and Engagement towards Oragnizational Growth

 

What is Motivation?

In Armstrong's Handbook of Human Resource Practice he describes motivation as the strength and direction of behaviour and the factors that influence people to behave in certain ways. 

He also mentions how the word came from as below:

The term "motivation" drives from the Latin word movement (movere). People are motivated when they expect that a course of action is likely to lead an attainment of a goal and a valued reward - one that satisfies their needs and wants. 

While Armstrong explain above as motivation, he also brings up motivational theories introduced by different authors. 

Ganta V.C has described Motivational strategies as below in his article, Motivation in the workplace to improve the employee performance (Ganta V.C, 2014)

Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

Source: Plateresca / Getty Images

 

Abraham Maslow presented his model of motivation in 1954. The basic idea of Maslow's model was that there are five levels of needs for humans and each level needed to be fulfilled before someone could be motivated by higher level factors. Above is a graphical example of Maslow's model. According to Maslow, you wouldn't be able to motivate someone with positive feedback (an esteem factor) if their basic physiological needs aren't met. This makes sense if you apply it to the workplace. If someone doesn't get paid enough to put food on the table for his or her family, he or she isn't going to care too much about a 'good job' sticker! (Ganta, V.C., 2014)

In emerging job market, employees seek more than just basic needs. According to Maslow's theory, we can say an employee need to have a reasonable pay that they can provide for themselves this will help attract employees to the organization. If you pay above the industry rate, the organization will be able to attract good set of people to your organization. If you make sure these employees are well taken care of by providing them other needs such as providing a safe working environment (specifically for staff who work with machinery), you will be able to keep your employees motivated. 

As employees grow in their career from operational level to operational manager level, providing training and considering about their growth will also help to keep staff members motivated as proven by research. In addition, creating a positive work culture will also have an impact of employees who are in operational managerial level. 

As they grow on higher level they tend to expect respect from colleagues, supervisors which will also keep them motivated to provide best of them to the organization. 

Which state are you in at the moment? Do you think this implies about your organization?

Herzberg's Two Factor Theory:

In 1959, Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman published the two-factor model of work motivation and developed the motivation-hygiene theory, which was influenced by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Jones, 2011). 

Herzberg, after and his team referred over 2000 articles on motivation and have come across that the job satisfaction and dissatisfaction differ on two variables. 

1. Hygiene factor : Supervision, interpersonal relations, physical working conditions, salary, company policy and administration, benefits, and job security

2. Motivation factor : Achievement, recognition, responsibility, advancement, growth. 

Source: Research Gate

Having a positive hygiene and motivation factors will lead to higher job satisfaction as per the Herzberg's theory. 

What Is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement is a HR concept that describes the level of enthusiasm and dedication a worker feels toward their job. Engaged employees care about their work and about the performance of the company, and feel that their efforts make a difference. An engaged employee is in it for more than a paycheck and may consider their well-being linked to their performance, and thus instrumental to their company's success. (Smith. T, 2023)

Researchers have proven that there are different ways to get employees engaged. According to researchers, employees will be engaged by lifting their motivation. Self motivated employees will contribute to the organisation which will improve the engagement.
Employers can use rewards, promotions for excellent work, providing regular feedback, appreciating employees. 

As you can clearly understand, these cover motivation theories discussed above. By using above engagement strategies, employees will be motivated and will increase their engagement. 

When employee engagement increases, they tend to achieve operational excellence and their own KPI's effectively and efficiently which will ultimately help to achieve organizational goals and objectives. 

Employee Engagement and Productivity

Many researches have proven that the employee engagement enhances the productivity of employees towards the growth of the organization. 

Engaged employees are innovative and always have an idea of two about what they can do better. The quality of being collaborative and enthusiastic towards work, allows them to complete their workplace goals more effectively; which leads to increased organizational productivity. (Stone. K , 2023)

If you take your organizational context, if you are motivated towards work, won't you be more engaged with the work you do and won't you find better ways to improve the productivity of the organization?

Most researchers have found that engagement of operational level management is what mostly helpful in increasing the productivity. What are your thoughts? Watch below to understand more.  

    References:

• Alshmemri, M., Shahwan-Akl, L. and Maude, P., 2017. Herzberg’s two-factor theory. Life Science Journal, 14(5), pp.12-16.

• Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2023. Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice: A guide to the theory and practice of people management. Kogan Page Publishers.

• Ganta, V.C., 2014. Motivation in the workplace to improve the employee performance. International journal of engineering technology, management and applied sciences, 2(6), pp.221-230.

• Patro, C.S., 2013, December. The impact of employee engagement on organization’s productivity. In 2nd international conference on managing human resources at the workplace (Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 9)

• Shaheen, A. and Farooqi, Y.A., 2014. Relationship among employee motivation, employee commitment, job involvement, employee engagement: A case study of University of Gujrat, Pakistan. International journal of multidisciplinary sciences and engineering, 5(9), pp.12-18.

• Simply Psychology, Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory Of Motivation-Hygiene. Available At Https://Www.Simplypsychology.Org/Herzbergs-Two-Factor-Theory.Html Accessed On 26/3/204

• Smith T. 2023, What is Employee Engagement? Definition, Strategies and examples. Available at https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/employee-engagement.asp.  accessed on 26/3/2024

• van Tuin, L., Schaufeli, W.B., Van den Broeck, A. and van Rhenen, W., 2020. A corporate purpose as an antecedent to employee motivation and work engagement. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, p.572343.