Definition of Employee Motivation and Morale

Motivation

Dear student, when we are using the term “Performance Management”, you should not think that the concept of performance appraisal is not very new in the world of business. Organisations have always understood the importance of human contribution to the growth and achievement of goals.

What you should note here is that, day-by-day, the significance is increasing. If you look back at the past decades, we can clearly notice that, the importance has increased manifold.

As a student of HRM, you might be interested in the evolution. As the human resource sector started gaining prominence, the organisations has to search for strategies and concepts to keep it going, that is, to keep the HR sector interested and motivated towards their performance.

So, you should have understood what we are going to look at this chapter. Yes, it is Motivation. Imagine a day of your life without motivation. No reason to get up from bed, no need to go to work, no need to eat, no meaning to life. How awful it would be? Motivation is the basic driving feeling that pushes a man to do something to satisfy his needs. The Supreme Creator of the earth has found a big solution for this problem of motivation and that is simple –hunger. An old saying states ‘the biggest pit in the world is stomach, never stay fills even you put something for years’. The basic need of satisfying hunger seems to be the secret of survival of earth. Is it not? Ok, let us see what management gurus say about motivation.

According to Peter Ducker, the “real positive motivators are responsible for placement, high standard of performance, information adequate for self-control and the participation of the worker as a responsible citizen in the community”. Motivation is the driving factor that pushes us forward. Towards something we search. It gives us satisfaction if we         achieve it. Then the motivation takes another form and starts pushing us forward again. But, the interesting characteristic of motivation is – it differs from person to person. What motivates an employee to produce more may not work with another employee in the same factory. For example, a gentle pat on the shoulder by the superior as a recognition or appreciation of work may do wonders for one employee. It may be a better motivator than anything else for him.

But the same recognition may not satisfy another worker, who may only feel satisfied if rewarded with money. He doesn’t attach any value to simple pat on shoulders. Hence, what you should remember in this area of study of motivation is the motivators are in many forms, and cannot be generalised to all.

An employee’s productivity is based on his abilities. But, often, we come across people, who don’t perform up to their standard of productivity consistently. So, what is that second ingredient that pushes him to perform to the full ability or pulls him from his talents? Any idea? Yes, of course it is the element of motivation. Motivation determines what the worker wants to do, even though he can do much better or much worse.

Motivation, a Latin word, means “move”. According to Berelson and Steiner, “A motive is an inner state that energise, activates or moves and directs or channels behaviour toward goals”.

Generally motivation is the state of restlessness, tension or disequilibrium due to an unfulfilled need. The need transforms itself to the desire to act upon to achieve it. Need stimulates, acts as a complex force to move the person to realise the desired goal.

Positive Motivation is a sum result of the following four attributes:

Motivation Frame Work

Basically, the motivation framework is explained with six different attributes.

Need Deficiencies: The process of this motivation frame work startswith the deficiencies in needs of a person. This may be different to each employee.

Searching ways to fulfil the needs: Let us take for example that theidentified need is hunger. The only thinking in that hour will be to get food and satisfy the hunger. The person will search for the ways – cooking / go to hotel.

Achievement oriented behaviour: When the way to fulfil theneed is identified, we start to behave in order to achieve the need fulfilment. In the example of hunger, if the way is decided as cooking, the person will behave to start cooking. He may analyse and acquire the things needed to achieve the action.

Performance: The real work to satisfy the need is performance. Inour example, it is the cooking of meal.

Rewards/ Punishment: This is where the performance is evaluated.For example, when the cooking is over, the person may feel good about the food he prepared and happy. He got his hunger need satisfied and we may say rewarded. On another hand, if the food is horrible, he may feel bad and punished. The performance is thus followed by the consequence, positive or negative.

Rising of next need: Once the need of hunger is satisfied, the personmay feel the next need. After food, yes it is sleep. Is it not? The next need may be to search for a place to sleep. The next motivator stands ready. This is the final step in the frame work that is, reassessing of the deficiencies of need. And there we go back to step one.

The diagram below will give a better understanding of this framework in an organisation, for an employee.

Motivation and its Various Forms

A mother knows how to make her child listen to her, by her abundance of love to convince the child or by frightening with a small punishment. In an organisation, to get the desired performance, the manager also has to act on different modes like encouragement, appreciation, rewards, promotions, incentives and if need arises even with force, constraint or by instilling fear of punishment.

All are various forms of motivation. What are they? Let us examine.

Flippo says “Positive motivation is a process of attempting to influence others to do your will through the possibility of gain or reward”. Mamoria gives an interesting view point on positive motivation that, “People work for incentives in the form of four P’s of m’tivation: Praise. Prestige, Promotion and Pay cheque”. Positive motivation is generally based on rewards. It gives a feeling of happiness to the employees. It improves the performance.

Negative Motivation

Also called as fear motivation, negative motivation is based on fear and force. The fear of consequences acts as a motivator to perform better, just to avoid the unpleasant consequences. The non-performing workers are threatened with the fear mechanism that pushes them to move further in their performance scale.

As the term itself indicates, the negative motivation cannot be used in all situations and it has a lot of limitations. Negative motivation creates an unpleasant reaction inside the minds of the employee towards the organisation; it remains as an insecure feeling. Punishment creates a hostile state of mind, which may affect the loyalty towards the organisation. However, there are some uncontrollable situations that need the management to depend on the “stick” treatment to keep the productivity in control.

Extrinsic Motivation

The motivation that comes from the employer or external factors is extrinsic motivation. Promotion, perks, vacations and other financial rewards fall in this category.

Intrinsic Motivation

The feeling of happiness of achieving or accomplishing a challenging task acts as a motivator to seek for the next challenge. This kind of motivation, that comes from within is called as intrinsic motivation. Appreciation, status, power and recognition are some of the examples of this motivation.

Self Motivation

The best motivation we can get may come from us. Self-motivation. The same way, the demotivation also comes to us from us. A bad day means a lot – power failure, argument turned into quarrel with a friend, news of bomb blast somewhere, heavy traffic and late to office- all makes us depressed. This may lead to poor performance on that day. But, to get a successful career, we should move on. Hence, it is the duty of the employee to get self-motivated, make the life and work more interesting. One simple technique is to fix targets and goals and try to achieve the targets. It is as simple as the great teacher Vivekananda says ‘ Arise‘ awake and stop not till the goal is reached”.

Group Motivation

Two heads are better than one. The enthusiasm, zeal and motivation manifolds if passes through a group. The group plays a vital role in igniting the fire of motivation and keeps it going till the task is accomplished. It is because, the members of the group takes turns to cheer up others. The motivations of looking others perform, competing with others, comparison on the accomplishment all leads to better performance and effective achievements.

Positive Motivation and Performance Management

Motivation certainly induces betterment in the day to day activities and performance of the worker. On the other hand, the system of performance appraisal also gives motivation to the employees. Wondering how? Let us first see how a sound performance appraisal system helps the employees to get motivated.

There is a saying - “ When you start a journey, habit makes you run, Attitude decides your pace and values decides your destination but it is motivation that gets your start with your first step”. Hence, it is motivation that makes the employee think and act towards the betterment of job, and towards what he wants himself to be.

Motivation energizes the employees. It acts as a propeller to push them upwards in their job.

On the other hand, when performance is appraised, positive results in appraisal acts as motivation.

Motivated employees perform well and it helps in building the confidence level of the employees to perform well again

A well performing employee, when appreciated and recognised adequately, transforms into loyal member of the organisation.

If the employees don’t have clarity on their job performance, the scope of rectifying their mistakes is nil. Performance appraisals become the important tool to keep them informed about their flaws and competencies, which is an important motivator.

Performance appraisal is often done on individual basis, and hence, the manager takes time to analyse and reviews the employee’s job details. There will be a sort of personal communication even though the content is official is possible between the superior and the subordinate. The feeling of treated with importance during the performance appraisal creates a sense of satisfaction to the social side of an employee. This recognition itself acts as a motivator, and even the negative remarks will bring positivity.

Individual reviews on performance help the employees to develop on their weaker areas of job, and this helps them develop their individual competency level. Their personal career goals also get achieved through the understanding and improvement of their job. This boosts the confidence level of the employees and in turn helps the organisation through increased productivity.

For the organisation, the performance appraisal reports give a clear picture of their employee’s competencies. If the overall picture is poor, then the organisation may take it as an alarm and reenergise and restructure the strategies and policies of the organisation to improve the productivity. If the report is positive, still, the organisation can strategise itself to sustain the performance and push itself forward.

Negative Motivation and Performance Management

There is always another side for every river. Right? When we say positive motivation impacts performance, then so do negative motivation– in its own way. Negative motivation gives a sense of insecurity to the employees and make them work towards changing the situation into secured. As To prevent the unwanted consequences, the employee moves to the zone of expected performance, this stick approach helps many times in real world, as the heterogeneous group of employees often contains “problem child” here and there.

The points to be noted while using negative motivation as a tool to increase the performance of the employees are:

The employee turnover should be taken care of, as sometimes employees who are not able to cope up with the pressure situation resort to quitting the job than to struggle and rise.

The manager who uses negative motivation methods is often seen with the glasses of hatred. In long run, even though the motivation is rewarded with good performance and good performance rewarded sufficiently, the bitterness caused during the process remains down and turns into hatred. This spoils the harmony of the work place.

Negative motivation can give wrong or misinterpreted signals to the employees. For example, a punishment for not finishing the assigned project module may induce the employee to fabricate and manipulate the module with compromise in the quality in future. A boost in incentives for more sales may give a signal to the sales person to sell more products at any cost to earn more incentives than creating a satisfied clientele and improve the sustainability of business.

To conclude, we can see that both the methods work and increases performance. But, positive motivation do good for long term as it increases loyalty and negative motivation do have side effects like turnovers and hatred in the work place. Nowadays, it is suggested that both the approaches are to be used together, side by side, well balanced to get the desired effect. First of all, we should remember that, employees commit mistakes as every human comes with flaws. It is the duty and responsibility of the manager or leader to first help them rectify it – by training or any other technique to teach them how to do it right rather than saying that wrongly done.

I remember a quote from a blogger Dragosroua “The difference between negative and positive motivation is the difference between surviving and living”.

Theories of Motivation

There are a lot of motivation theories contributed by great philosophers, sociologists, psychiatrists and Management gurus. We will be discussing some of the important motivation theories now.

Adam’s Equity Theory

Developed by a workplace psychologist, John Adams, Equity the-ory tries to assert that employees seek a balance between the inputs they put into a job, and the outcomes they receive from the job. It further briefs that either an under-rewarded or over-rewarded employee go through distress, and this leads to restore the balance in the relationship. According to this theory, an employee who is not recognised or rewarded sufficiently for his performance of job gets into the phase of anger and frustration. The employee, who is rewarded high, out of proportion, more than he deserves, goes through guilt phase and not motivated with the rewards.

It is true that, employees wants to be rewarded with pay and if underpaid, they lose their interest to perform better, thinking that however they perform well, their pay is not going to be equal to their input of performance to the job. It will result in performance deteriorations. On the other hand, if the employee feels that he is being noticed for his better performance and is recognised, his job satisfaction increases and indicates a better performance.

The inputs mentioned in the theory are listed as,

Time spent on the work place

Competency /skill utilised for the job

Sincerity and commitment

Determination to achieve the goal

Personal sacrifices in order to perform the job (like overtime work sacrificing the time with the family)

Obedience to the superior

Cooperation with the peers

Leading the subordinates

Enthusiasm, morale and zeal

Knowledge, skill and experience

The results or outcomes are listed as,

Salary and other monetary benefits

Job security

Recognition and rewards

Sense of being in a team

Sense of belongingness to the organization

Sense of belongingness to the organization

Reputation

The outcomes are often perceived into two divisions by an employee positive and negative. If the input and outcomes does have close match, it brings out positivity and, if there prevails a larger gap between what is given into job and what he gets back, then obviously the feeling is of negativity.

There are certain assumptions in the application of this theory. They are

Equity Norm: Expectation of the employees for a fair and justreturn of outcomes or results for what they contribute for the job

Social Comparison: The expectation of the employees is basedon comparison of their input and outcomes with their co-workers input and outcomes of their co-workers.

Cognitive distortion: In case of inequitable situations, i.e.; if theemployee thinks that the outcomes is not a fair result of the input they have contributed, then they create distortion of the inputs (deform the existing contribution to job) in their minds. This happens as a way to make the inequitable outcome balanced. In simple words, if the output is not as big as input, the mind starts thinking of decreasing the input to match the output.

The relationship of motivation and performance of the employee is thus explained through this theory.

Maslow’s Theory of Hierarchy of Needs

A theory you would have heard often in your first year of this course – Hierarchy of needs.

Abraham Maslow is the man who has contributed this wonderful yet simple theory to understand. It is about the steps of needs, that to be satisfied before stepping on to the next step. The step of need that motivates the human to climb up.

This hierarchy of needs is built on five steps as follows:

Physiological Needs

It is the most basic level need in the hierarchy. One has to fulfil this level to be in existence. It includes the basic needs like Water, food, clothes and a shelter to sleep. A man who is in extreme hunger will not get satisfied with a bar of gold at that moment, is it not? The satisfaction and happiness he will attain with a bowl of rice would be immense in that situation. That is what meant by this step.

Security Needs

The assurance for future is the base for this step. When one gets the confidence of his safe and secured future, he will be free of his tension of physiological needs. The fear of losing the regular availability of physiological needs will not allow a man to think about further achievements. This is about possessing of resources always and getting the physiological needs fulfilled.

Social Needs

It is often said that “man is a social animal”. Man has to belong to other human beings, that is, a society. It’s the belongingness that gives satisfaction to the thirst of soul. Love, affection and affiliation is the need that drives a person to next step, once his physiological and security needs are fulfilled.

Self-Esteem Needs

If Social Needs is about the other people loving us, then, self -esteem is the need is to be proud of one’s own doings. Self esteem needs exhibits Power over things or people, may be with money, control, authority, designations etc. Self-esteem is finding the recognition from within.

Self-Actualisation Needs

The top step of this need structure is the need of self-actualisation. From “what they are” to becoming “What one is capable of” is self actualisation. It refers to the desire of self-attainment, the desire to convert the age old question -”what one can be” to “what he must be”. It might be anything, like achieving a bigger goal, becoming a great leader, or even renouncing all that earned through the way.

Self-actualisedpersona feels realistic about them and about everything. They accept whatever comes on the way, more often concerned about problems of their external world also and helps in solving them, and they act upon the personal responsibility and values. They tend to become continuously inspired, joyful and peaceful with even small things that happen around them.

Generalisation and the Exemptions of the Theory

When understanding this theory of needs, you should also know that, it is not necessary that it is not a generalised theory and all of us don’t go through all these steps. The group of people in each of these steps are different. For example, Middle level managers tend to have the needs of self-esteem and self-actualisation rather than the lower needs. Whereas, the labourers in the same organisation feels the needs of physiological, safety and social needs more as they cannot think or need the higher steps without feting the lower needs fulfilled. Higher level managers, who may have achieved the self-esteem step, may be looking for the need to optimise his self ability.

Still, you should also understand another paradox in the theory, that, it is not always necessary that one should fulfil the need steps one by one, some people also jump these steps, and some people may supersede them.

Application of Motivation Theory in Performance Management System

Now, we will discuss the application of motivation theory to our performance management system. The performance management can be strategized with the help of theory, like for

Those people who are to fill the need of physiological needs, we can think of a reward based performance system.

A pension plan and permanency of job may sound as a motivation for those employees who are in contractual jobs.

If a personnel manager finds an employee is in need of social affiliation, placing him in a team based assignment may help him satisfy his need of social recognition.

Again, for the fourth step, a star performer of the organisation may be having the thirst of power, who may be motivated through a promotion with authority.

Still for those who is motivated by self actualisation may be provided with challenging jobs to enable them understand themselves and get self- actualised.

Often, employers get themselves into a wrong notion that monetary incentives only will lead to employee satisfaction. Money is not the only motivation for the employees. When the physiological needs get satisfied, the employees yearn for the fulfilment of next need. As McGregor rightly pointed out, “a satisfied need is not a motivator of behaviour”. Hence, the employer and managers should understand that the employees need opportunities to move on to their further needs.

Managers, who are in the task of performance management, should use this opportunity to provide them a challenging playground of work field, where higher targets, better performance may be fixed. Thus, the theory of hierarchy of needs opens up a wonderful platform for understanding employees and motivates them to enhance and improve their performance, which will result in achieving the organisational goals.

Herzberg’s Hygiene- Motivator Factors

Popularly known as two-factor theory of motivation, this theory classifies the human behaviour into two major factors-

Hygiene/ maintenance factor and

Motivation factor.

Hygiene factor is the basic needs, without which the motivationto achieve higher will not work out. The maintenance factor acts as the foundation to aim higher. The motivation factor, on the other side, acts as the intrinsic and intricate desires of employees to take up challenging jobs, reach higher levels, learn and acquire complex processes etc.

As to performance management, this theory helps us to identify and understand the importance of maintenance factors, so that, the employees may be motivated to perform more efficiently in their jobs. The absence of maintenance factors, often act as demotivators, and thus resulting in decreasing of performance. Hence, we should ensure the provision of hygiene factor to maximise their performance.

Existence-Relatedness-Growth Theory (ERG Theory)

Alderfer’s ERG theory is the next interesting theory of motivation we are going to discuss. You would have noticed that, in the above theories, a common phenomenon of getting the basic needs fulfilled is necessary to go further. This theory also is similar. Often people compare this with Maslow’s theory, as it looks like a simplified version of that theory.

Existence

This need is about the basic requirements like food and safety, that is, the needs of existence.

Relatedness

When existence needs are compared with physiological and security needs as in Maslow’s theory, this is similar to the Social needs. The need of interpersonal relationships.Getting recognised as a member in the society.

Growth

The growth factor in this theory refers to the elevation in the career, personal growth, acquiring more knowledge etc. This is similar to self-esteem and self-actualisation needs in Maslow’s theory.

ERG theory emphasise that there may be more than one need existing at one point of time. Performance management implications is as we have discussed in previous topics – existence need can be dealt with rewards as motivators, relatedness need with team based performance development techniques and growth need can be handled with challenging assignments, training or career elevations.

Murray’s Manifest Needs Theory

The next need theory is Murray’s Manifest Needs theory. This theory proposes greater variety of needs and believes that any number of needs may influence behaviour at the same time. Murray didn’t place the needs in any order, but postulates that each need has two principal components called as Direction and Intensity. Direction is the person who has to satisfy his need and Intensity is the relative importance of the need.

McClelland’s Achievement theory

David McCleland found that people are different from each other based on the behavioural traits like

Calculated risks taking

Challenging jobs

Path breaking/ setting new standards

Better performance

He believed from his study that people can cultivate and acquire the need for achievement (nAch), need for affiliation (nAff) and the need for Power (nPow).

All the above theories are need based theories of motivation which helps us understand what motivates a person. But, you may be thinking on the lines of how a person reacts to these needs and what is the change in his/her process of work. To answer that, now we move on to process theories of motivation. These theories help us understand how a personbecomes motivated to perform in a particular way. Let us see one of thosethories.

Reinforcement Theory

Reinforcement is a process theory associated with Skinner, proposes that behaviour or response is the consequence of any stimulant form the environment and behaviour leads to consequences following as outcomes of the behaviour. The response given to the stimulus is often the expectations of the person, or you can say it is through some previous experience of the person who is responding to the environmental stimulus.

Let us try to understand this through an example. When a machine operator finds that his machine is making a creaking noise, it is the stimulus that is pulling some response/behaviour from him.

Now, when the same scenario happens again, that is, if the machine makes noise again after some days,