- Short-term goals work best for your remote employees, and long-terms goals work best for your office employees. It is okay for office employees to have long-term goals because they frequently receive informal short-term feedback while accomplishing their long-term goals. However, remote employees frequently do not receive the same informal feedback; therefore, by setting up short-term goals it will force you to provide them with the positive feedback to keep them motivated.
- Communicate value to your remote employees by helping them understand how their work adds to the overall success of the company. Office employees require less "value" communication because they can see what they are creating, while remote employees can usually only see their own work.
- Build company loyalty with your remote employees by sending out coffee cups, hats, and shirts with emblazon with your company's logo. Instead of sending out your remote employee's paycheck in a plain white envelope, stick it inside a logo emblazon coffee cup in a nicely wrap gift box.
Money as Motivator
What is an important factor that leads to success of an organization? People would answer this question differently. For example, some people might say that good product is a main factor as it generates profit while some might think that innovation is more important. In fact, success of an organization is affected by many factors. Absolutely, one of the very important factors is good staff. To have potential in the workforce, the organization needs effective human resource management. One of the crucial tasks in managing people is making them work efficiently. To deal with this job, human resource manager needs tools: motivators.
What are effective motivators that the organization should use? The first answer that might come up in people's mind would be money as money can buy almost everything people want. People usually think that monetary reward is a very good motivator. Actually, there are some drawbacks of using cash to motivate people. Using money as a motivator is like two-bladed sword. Though it can motivate employee to be a good workforce, it can make them dishonest. Moreover, there are other ways to motivate people at very low cost, which give the same or even better results as using money.
As mentioned above, money can buy almost everything people want, but only almost. There are many things that can not be traded for money. Due to these weak points, money is not as good motivator as it is viewed.
Firstly, money can lead to bad or illegal performance. Money can really motivate people because, as we all know, money can buy satisfaction. Theoretically, workforces will perform better as they know that they will get more money from bonus or a raise. The problem is that in the real world, they do not perform "better" but perform to "look better" in their bosses' eyes.
For example, some might try to give an image of high workload by sitting in front of the computer and typing all the time, though they have nothing to type. In some case, they might walk around the office, especially in front of the bosses' rooms, so that they will be seen as busy and diligent. The worst case is that they will try to serve their bosses the best, not the company.
These are absolutely not the results the company expected from the motivation program. Moreover, if the company implement this program for a long time, it might become company culture: money-oriented. Employees will be concerned only about how to make more money. They might perform better as that can generate more earning but they will do something to get more money also. These "other things" are things that all companies wish not to happen in their firms. For instance, some employee will use working time to drive for the boss's wife or to book a concert ticket for the boss's son. Some might not do the job because he loves it but because there are many loopholes to get special bonus: big amount of bribes.
In a company that uses a stock option policy, managers get stocks as their bonus, and the policy can lead to illegal performance. "The lure of money and power can lead to inappropriate and illegal actions. Ivan F. Boesky was accused of insider trading that resulted in huge personal profits - and a $100 million fine. The scandal, one of the worst on Wall Street since the 1920s, shook public confidence with the fear that stock trading may be rigged. Money is often used for motivating, but it also addresses itself to human greed, which dulls the conscience and may lead to unethical and illegal behavior." (Weihrich and Koontz, 1988)
Secondly, companies can use other low cost motivators to motivate their workforces to perform better. "A personal organizer, complete with simulated bison-leather case, is one of the gifts being offered to British Telecom (BT) employees as part of BT's "Living Our Values" initiative. BT is using noncash benefits to reward exemplary behavior. The BT initiative is an example of an employer using gift items to enable managers to show gratitude to employees for such things as continuous improvement and teamwork." (Rue and Byars, 1977) If the company use bonus as a motivator, it will face a problem if it does not have good strategies to implement it with. For example, if the company gives a bonus every month, this bonus will do no good as a motivator. The reason for this is that if the company give a bonus to employees every month, employees will feel that the bonus is what they must have as part of their salary, not as a reward for good performance.
Therefore, if the company really wants employees to work better and better, it has to raise the bonus again and again. In addition, there are many motivators that can motivate workforces better than money. "…money isn't the only motivational tool at your disposal. In fact, studies have found that non-monetary compensation is an even more important factor many people." (Business profitability tips, 1998) According to Hagemann, the motivation factors ranked with importance by Japanese, American and German companies in the first, second and third places were clearer strategic directives, more information about work and more participation in the job while money was ranked in the ninth place.
Money can be better motivator as it can indicate the status of the preson. This statement is true but not for all situations. There are many people who gain respect from other people because of their good and honest habit though they earn little money. In the meantime, some who are rich but have bad reputation might be considered as dirty people or of a very low status. However, there is another argument that an increasing salary is an indicator of success. It might be true but there are many things that can also show success such as more participation and more responsibility. Use an example may make the argument clearer. If the company wanted their employees to perform better, instead of luring them with higher bonus which make them greedy, the company might give them more freedom to work, one of the ways to enrich the job, or enlarge the scope of their jobs. To use these motivators instead of money, the company can save their cost and also receive at least the same quality of result.
Last but not least, money can not satisfy all needs of people. According to Maslow's theory, the classic psychology theory about motivation, there are 5 levels of needs: physical, safety, social, self-esteem, and self-actualization. This theory states that people would try to satisfy the needs at the lower level and move up to the higher level when the needs at the lower level are satisfied. As you can see, money can satisfy only the needs at the lower level.
According to Plunkett and Attner, the physical needs can be satisfied by increasing pay, safety needs can be satisfied by reassuring that jobs will not be eliminated. For social needs, there are many strategies to cope with such as letting the new employee join in recreational activities of the firm or arranging a party with subordinates. As you can see, in these levels of needs, money can be best used only at the lowest level. For example, money cannot buy the sense of belonging in the society, social need. There are many people who are very rich but cannot get along with people in the organization well and have to quit their jobs.
Some people do not want more money as they are satisfied with their current status or they are more concerned with other things more. For example, some rich and successful CEOs whose needs are in the top levels like self-esteem or self-actualization cannot be motivated by money. To motivate these people, the company might try to make them feel that the job is challenging or make them realize that this is another goal of their lives. The company might provide more opportunities in other fields of the job and send them to some training course to make the job more challenging. Changing the job is another way to motivate workforces, as it will make them feel that they have more challenge than their routine work.
As you can see, money is not a good motivator for everybody, as each employee will have different needs in the hierarchy of Maslow.
In conclusion, using money to motivate people is not as good a strategy as it should be. Although it provides some good benefits to the organization, it also comes with many drawbacks. It can motivate people to perform better but only as the external motivator. People do not feel that they really want to work because of "intrinsic interest in a task" (Kohn, 1998) but they work just for money.
This can lead to inefficiency and illusion of performance and also cause corruption and illegality in work. In fact there are many motivators that can bring about the same or even better result as money. Moreover, using these motivators can reduce the cost of the company also. Lastly, although money can buy many things, it cannot buy satisfaction and not all employees' needs can be satisfied by money. Therefore, monetary motivators can not motivate everybody. As you can see, motivating people by money can create some disadvantages and money is not the "gold" in motivation, so the company has to be very careful when using it.
Conclusion
Every small business wants motivated employees. They work more efficiently and produce better results. Using monetary and other rewards to improve motivation is a simple idea, but doing it fairly and effectively can be challenging.
References
From Books:
- Business Profitability Tips. 1998. Available:morebusiness.com/running/profit/tip12.shtml.
- Hagemann, G. 1992. The Motivation Manual Hants Gower Publishing Company Limited.
- Kohn, A. 1998. Studies Find Reward Often No Motivator. Available:gnu.via.ecp.fr/philophy/motivator.html.
- Rue, L. and Byars, L. 1977. Management Skills and Application 7th edition USA Richard D. Irwin Inc.
- Weihrich, H. and Koontz, H. 1994. Management A Global Perspective. 10th edition. Singapore. Mc.Graw-Hill Inc.
From Sites:
- http://www.employer-employee.com/march2001tips.html#Circle
- http://www.bcentral.com/articles/hr/104.asp