This article I have chosen shows that, in the business situation, people who are highly motivated, makes a huge difference for the company. What motivates these people is not money but stimulus with career advancement, challenging work and training. After reading this article, it will help us to understand why motivation is so important in workplace and also gives us the recognition to the significant of human resource management.
We already defined the concept of motivation. Now we discuss how it relates to the business context. As we discussed earlier, motivation will lead towards a better performance and it is normally depended on the satisfaction of needs for responsibility, achievement, recognition and growth. Workers will feel their needs and it varies from one person to another and from time to time. Motivated workers have feeling of self-respect, strength and confidence that will lead the company’s profits and goals. If there are workers who are highly motivated and have a full satisfaction to their job, it will also help other workers to perceive their achievements and goals. Therefore, keeping motivated in the workplace is very important and necessary for the company’s better profits.
From the article, Thompson, the consultant for occupational psychologist (cited in McCarthy, 2004) said that “recognition and the feeling of being valued in an organisation” would motivate individuals in workplace. She also stated that when people has much satisfaction that is being perceived as helpful or an expert, it is all about ways to express their pride and conceit.
Then what factors will make workers motivated? Davidman (1970) studied that keeping motivating high requires is remuneration. According to Herzberg, Mausner & Snyderman (1959) remuneration is designed to focus organisational behaviour, encourage greater accountability and provide a foundation for recognising and rewarding achievement. They could be such as good evaluation of workers to the whole, granting workers needs and bonus and so on. For example from the article, Peter Sammons, partner at Team Craft New Zealand, an organisational learning and development consultancy (cited in McCarthy, 2004) said, that managers should celebrate small as well as big successes and share rewards, “such as profit sharing, to keep a group on track and encourage cooperation” within fair level.
Moreover, the factors that influence the motivation is environment such as relationship to other workers, working conditions, and work such as satisfied work and perception of contribution to the career. For example from the article, wageworkers in environments such as production lines wish an access to the phone with a family. Also one more from the article, when workers feel that they are doing a good job, and their efforts are recognised and rewarded and their wages are fairly raised, that means that they make their “good motivational place of work”. However we cannot decide which factors will have the most effect on motivation because I think it will depend on each person. Environment is often viewed as a less influence factor, but it should be very considerable as well as others. Environment could involve with the relationship with other workers. For example, a worker does not get along well with his/her leader, cannot respect his/her leader, poor communication with co-workers, undefined company’s objectives and so on. Leadership holds the key to manage those employees’ motivation. Leaders should know the employees well such as the ages of their children and their issues. Therefore I think this communication related environment has a significant influence to the motivation. Peter Sammons (cited in McCarthy, 2004) also says that the company needs to encourage workers to refer “positions of responsibility within the organisation and make training and upskilling readily available”. Therefore attitude to employees should be very considerable. Employees should be seen, as a human who has unique needs, abilities, personality traits, values and more. Also work goal must be clearly defined, achievable and measurable. Leaders need to handle well with employees incentives. Moreover, well communication systems through co-workers, unions and family members are important.
To summarise what we discussed here is that managers need to provide the right organisational climate to ensure that their employees can see that by working towards the organisational goals they are also achieving some of their own goals. These goals could be such things as financial rewards or personal rewards such as the respect of their colleagues or job satisfaction or a combination of anything that the employee considers to be important. Different people have different styles of working. For example, some people need competition to do their best, while others work better at their own pace. We need to respect people’s work style and arrange the conditions. Also when people have done something you feel good about, it is very important to reward them. Like the situation in the article, the manager has introduced life insurance and many employees have focus on health and fitness issues, therefore it is very good for individual and also makes them feel valued and reduces their sick leave.
The article helps us to gain the deeper understanding of motivation that is widely contributed to the human resource management. From its situation, we have learned that we should be more carefully emphasis on personal specification and job related individual characters. Introducing suggestion box and interaction with company and the life style of the employees are also important. People who are passive communicator, people who think that employees as a tool, which is easily exchangeable, people who want just a easy job, such people are not adequate for human resource management. Motivation is behaviour that towards a better performance, and behaviour will be learned when encouraged or rewarded and make a better behaviour, thus motivation is a powerful factor that controls people’s will to work. Human resource management deals with people, with a purpose of keeping motivation high, and makes the best of value of employees’ abilities at work. Individual’s enthusiasm is depending on its motive. The entire individual has their motive or drive, however when their needs meet the achievement of job, they will be highly motivated and company will make the most of its profits. Besides, as we know already, motivation is not useful only in business context, but our everyday life. Our will to do something, it is all come from our motivation and obviously we all know that how well we could do things when we are highly motivated.
