Essay: Are more motivated employees more productive?

Are more motivated employees more productive? A Report

Abstract

With such a rapid moving economy, a shortage of qualified workers, and plentiful business opportunities, the topic of motivating employees has become extremely

important to the employer, as motivation has a great impact on the way employees performs in an organisation.

This report work was to establish: are more

motivated employees more productive?

It found out that employees can be adequately motivated. If employees do not enjoy their work, it will affect the success of the organization’s goals. As an internal drive to satisfy unsatisfied needs, motivation can direct individuals’ behaviour to satisfy those needs. Hence, the employer must understand what employees need and how to achieve those needs.

Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. Methodology
3. Literature Review
4. Findings
5. Discussion
6. Conclusion
7. Recommendations
8. References

Introduction

Does motivation lead to productivity, as is commonly thought – or is the reverse true – that productivity, (being and feeling productive) leads to motivation? According to most researchers there is a positive relationship between motivation and productivity. That is to say, when motivation increases, we should expect productivity to rise as a result. This reflects the belief that an increased motivation level causes an increase in productivity. Management trainers accept the belief as an article of faith.

Motivation is the catalyst that spurns employees’ eagerness to work without pressure. To motivate is to provide employees with a motive to do some tasks. Motivation has been used by effective managers to prompt ordinary people to achieve uncommon results in all fields of endeavours.

Highly motivated employees will provide more quality customer service keeping, the customer happy is always a positive for business. Employees who are well motivated

are more likely to stay with the company. They grow in experience and become even more valuable to their employer and the company.

Knowing what it takes to do what is right for employees can help a business succeed. Accordingly, motivating staff is part of an employer’s responsibility to attract and retain employees. The motivation process will help maximise the ability of human resource and develop sustainable management strategies for the organisation seeking success and longevity.

What is motivation?

Many contemporary authors have also defined the concept of motivation. Motivation has been defined as: the psychological process that gives behaviour purpose and direction (Kreitner, 1995); a predisposition to behave in a purposive manner to achieve specific, unmet needs (Buford, Bedeian, & Lindner, 1995); an internal drive to satisfy an unsatisfied need (Higgins, 1994); and the will to achieve (Bedeian, 1993).

The Role of Motivation

Motivated employees are needed in our rapidly changing workplaces. Motivated employees help organizations survive. Motivated employees are more productive. To be effective, managers need to understand what motivates employees within the context of the roles they perform.

Methodology

This research was designed for a large manufacturing organisation in the North East of England employing 10,000 people. The sample size included 500 employees working on a production line.

A questionnaire was sent to all employees giving twenty statements which they were asked to rate from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The statements were designed to assess their level of motivation. Motivation was then assigned a score from 0 to 100.

Employees were all assigned a unique number that was recorded on their questionnaire. The productivity was then listed using the same unique number. Productivity ranged from 42 units to 68 units.

A relationship between the answers to the questionnaire and the productivity level was then determined.

Literature Review

From a review of literature, more motivated employees are more productive, happier, and stay with the organization longer.

Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper titled "A theory of Human Motivation" is an extension of human innate curiosity. Maslow divided human needs into five. Maslow said that human beings’ first group of needs are physiological; the second needs are safety related; the third are love/belonging to the society; the fourth are esteem and the fifth are self-actualization.

The Hawthorne studies allegedly discovered the influence of human relations or social factors on workers motivation (Roethlisberger and Dickson, 2003). According to

Porter (1997) and Mintzberg (1989) motivation is only a secondary link in the chain represented by management. According to them, both motivation and market evolution are evolving in a linked relationship.

These needs are also called maintenance needs. Herzberg said there is a separate set of needs which, when resolved, do make us satisfied. These are called motivators (Herzberg, 1959). A manager does not need to provide all employees’ needs before being a motivator. All he needs to do is to make an employee happy through

identifying their state of mind while in office and talking over moody employees’ problems.

Mintzberg (1989) said to be able to motivate employees different factors would have to be put in place as much as we have employees. If management could go to the extent of carrying out opinion survey on employees, they will be able to motivate all employees and it will affect production. Recently, a company in Glasgow carried out a survey on motivating employees in the period of economic crunch.

The question is: should the company sack some workers and increase salaries of retained workers? The other question is, should the company leave employees population at status quo and reduce salaries of employees across board? The employees voted for lower salaries and remaining as a family. They all believed the economic conditions ‘will change’. If the organisation has assumed that increased

salaries and wages will motivate "retained workers" and sacked less-productive workers, they would have been wrong.

Levinson (1989) said "every manager must motivate and encourage employees somehow reconciling the individual needs with the goals of the organisation. All employees have aspirations and objectives which they want to achieve through their organisations. Responsible managers ought to help them to achieve their modest aspirations.

Having clearly set-out objectives can motivate employees. Small business owners in UK have been informed that their staff do not know what their objectives are for next year and are not feeling motivated, according to a report by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS, 2009).The BIS report revealed that only 25% of staff have had objectives for 2010 clearly communicated to them and a further third do not even know if a vision for their business’ future exists.

The report suggested this is having a negative effect on employee motivation levels, as only 27% feel positive about the year ahead. "If leaders don’t explain where the business is going and what it’s seeking to achieve, how can people be motivated or know what they’re meant to contribute? Clear goals are a key ingredient for achieving performance and productivity" (MacLeod, 2009).

For employees to be fully motivated, managers must be aware that human beings are different in the way they think, see, view, feel, do things and reason. Myer-Briggs model (1956) talked about human differences. This model is about personality types. Myer-Briggs identified four ways people differ from each other. These are: the way they think; the way they view; the way they feel/perceive and the way they see things (Myers, 1980).

To satisfy an individual you must know what he needs either by observation or through interviewing. Psychologist Eduard Spranger said there are six values in human beings which we all have in varying degrees. They are: theoretical (passion for knowledge), utilitarian (passion for money and what is useful), aesthetic (passion for beauty, balance, and harmony), social (passion for service to others), individualistic (passion for power and control), traditional (passion for finding the highest meaning in life). He said your top two values are what drive you and must be fulfilled for you to achieve happiness in life (Spranger, 1955).

Motivating employees begins with recognizing that to do their best work, people must be in an environment that meets their basic emotional drives to acquire, bond, comprehend, and defend (Nohria et al, 2008). According to Amabile (1998), "in today’s knowledge economy, creativity is more important than ever. But many companies unwittingly employ managerial practices that kill it. How? By crushing their employees’ intrinsic motivation, the strong internal desire to do something based on interests and passions. Managers don’t kill creativity on purpose. Yet in the pursuit

of productivity, efficiency, and control – all worthy business imperatives – they undermine creativity".

Employee’s motives and psyche have changed appreciably in production. All employees want is the opportunity from the management to prove their worth. Employees no more want to be "driven", but to be "moved", not to be "ordered", but to be "shown the way" and not to be "paid" but to be "compensated"

Findings

The following is a sample of the findings.

Discussion

With an increasing number of people spending more time in their offices, the physical comfort, visual appeal and accessibility of their work environment become increasingly important. So pivotal, in fact, that the American Society of Interior

Designers commissioned a 1999 nationwide study, "Recruiting and Retaining Qualified Employees – By Design" that revealed:

1. Employees who were pleased with their physical workplaces were 31 percent more likely to say they were satisfied with their jobs,
2. The physical workplace would impact 41 percent of employees and job seekers to accept a position, and the quality of their physical workplace would influence 51 percent to leave a company.
3. Even more eye-opening is that an astonishing 73 percent were not satisfied with the physical workplaces at their current jobs.

Certainly these statistics give one pause, particularly given the high costs, headaches and loss of productivity associated with staff member turnover. Wouldn’t it make far

better sense to keep valuable employees by making small, yet meaningful, cosmetic adjustments to their work environments?

"In this competitive marketplace, it is increasingly more important to focus on the appearance of the workplace," explains Todd Imholte, president of Environmental Graphics, the leading producer of wall murals for home or office in the United States.

"Studies have shown that, employers who care about their employees and their work environment have noticed more motivated and productive employees."

Denise Ones, Ph.D., the Heller Vic Professor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at the University of Minnesota says, "We know that there is a strong relationship between motivation and productivity in the workplace. Employees who are motivated will be more conscientious, dependable and ultimately more productive." Sage Publishing will release a book authored by Dr. Ones entitled, "The Handbook of Industrial, Work and Organizational Psychology" in September of 2001.

The above evidence and statistics were supported in our findings with people between 0-20% has only 45 average units of productivity, while 81-100% people has 68 average units of productivity. This shows that the higher the motivation level the higher the productivity units.

Conclusion

Without any uncertainty there is a strong link between motivation and productivity in any organisation. The research in this report show that the main reason why success

and increase in productivity in an organisation lies with the level of motivation given to the employees.

Motivation can be defined as a factor that determines the direction and force of an individual’s behaviour. For this report, motivation can be described as the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organisational goals. Accordingly, if the employer could understand and therefore predict the ways in which individuals are motivated, then the employer could use that knowledge and understanding to arouse their employees to perform their best for the organisation.

Recommendations

It is recommended that additional research to be carried out to determine:

1. What are these factors that influence employee productivity?

To begin with, it is important to recognize the truly human element in workplace relations. Step back and think for a moment—what makes people work harder? Is pay the strongest motivating force in the workplace?