Employees Motivation example essay topic

Motivation is defined as, "the reason for the action; that which gives purpose and direction to behavior". Motivation is key in personal life as well as the career world. Motivation in the work place is highly dependent on employers being able to understand the needs and wants of their employees. When employers can understand and satisfy an employee's needs, the employee is more inclined to perform well in his position. "The ranked order of motivating factors were: (a) interesting work, (b) good wages, (c) full appreciation of work done, (d) job security, (e) good working conditions, (f) promotions and growth in the organization, (g) feeling of being in on things, (h) personal loyalty to employees, (i) tactful discipline, and (j) sympathetic help with personal problems". (Accel-Team) In order to achieve all or some of these key motivating factors in the work place, an employee generally will want interesting work, good wages, and recognition from superiors and peers.

Interesting work is most important to employees. Surprisingly it beat salary as a motivating factor. The easiest way to find out what stimulates and inspires an employee to do his best is to simply ask the employee what his interests are and what he enjoys doing. A superior can then take that into consideration when the right assignment for that person comes along. Employers should think long term when hiring an employee in the sense that they need to see the employees motivation and where they stand. If the employee is not easily motivated and the employer finds it a chore to have to keep after the employee to do well on assignments, this can turn into a recurring problem and may cause additional problems in the long term.

When an employee finds his or her work more interesting, the employee wants to be more involved and therefore increases employee productivity. Thus the employee tends to exert an increased amount of effort for longer periods of time towards an individual as well as a company-oriented goal. Companies have begun to realize this and act accordingly to benefit the company and its desired long-term objectives. There are plenty of employees that just "punch the clock". They go to work just for the paycheck and nothing else. Not only are these employees hurting themselves, they are hurting the company.

It is no longer a 9-5 workday world. Many of today's jobs demand more than 40 hours a week. Many employees spend more time with office co-workers than they do with their own families. Therefore with this constant demand on employees, it's crucial that they are happy and content with their workload. Another motivating factor, and the most obvious, is wages. This includes, but it not limited to salary, benefits (including medical and dental), bonuses, stock options, and 401 K plans.

Employers motivate employees with these incentives to make them want to come to work everyday and perform their tasks well. Incentives like a 401 K plan can also motivate employees to not only come in everyday, but also grow within that company. For instance, at places such as assembly plants, persons who have been there for a good length of time know how each station operates and is able to move around more freely and teach newer employees the way things work. As a personal example, I was recently awarded a bonus from my company because of a major deal that we just completed.

It felt good to be given a monetary reward. It also felt great to know that my ideas and input helped to bring this deal to a successful close. Before I received my surprise bonus I was planning on taking a day off "just because". However, since I have received the bonus, I decided against it. People want to feel self worth and feel like they are needed or "in the loop". Employee motivation is basically a cycle.

Interesting work motivates the employee. When the employee is motivated, it increases that employee's productivity. When the productivity increases, this generates higher earnings for the employer. When there are higher earnings for the employer, he can then pass it back to the employees.

Employees, as well as any individual, yearn for recognition for tasks that they feel are worthy of praise. Employees need the "atta boy" from superiors to let them know that they have done something good and to keep it up. Recognition in the form of money or bonuses is definitely a plus, but employers can get potentially more benefits from forms of recognition that are personal, creative and fun. For instance, my father is a lieutenant and the watch commander for the 911 system with the Atlanta Fire Department. He works in communications and dispatches 911 emergency calls. When one of his dispatchers or shifts does something praise worthy, he will post it in the weekly bulletin.

He will also make a copy of the bulletin and put it in each employee's file so that when review time comes around; he can look back at these records and remember the times when this person or shift stood out with excellence. Since my father started recognizing and praising his dispatchers for outstanding performance in critical situations, the size of the weekly bulletin has increased. Not only do captains and chiefs in the field call on a regular basis to praise these dispatchers, they have started congratulating field personnel for their performance at various incidents. Therefore, this has helped to increase moral throughout the fire department.

(Malone, Thomas) Employers can also do things such as taking a deserving employee to lunch or praising the employee in front of other co-workers. Recognition in the company of other co-workers not only helps the employee being praised, but also can encourage co-workers to strive to do better so that they can be the next to be recognized for doing something well. It will also gain that employee's respect from peers. In major corporations where there are many employees, people there more than ever, need to hear that they have done a good job and for a gleaming moment stand out in the crowd of many. Something that I think is a good motto to live by is, "if you see someone doing something good, copy it and make it better". I think this holds true in one's personal life as well as the corporate world.

People are motivated to do better and advance themselves. Each person has an inner drive to meet an un achieved goal. Drive varies among different people. Whether it is the single mother working at K-Mart who is working to make more money to give her child a better life and better opportunities or it's that one researcher who finds a cure for cancer and yearns to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his achievements, thus gaining notoriety. Everyone has their sights set on something better for them. The parents of today want more for their children today than they had, just as our parents wanted something better for us.

A lot of this motivation opened up doors politically so more people were able to attend college not just upper class, but people of all backgrounds and economic classes.