Introduction to Employee Motivation

Overview 

Most organizations nowadays are looking for ways to keep its employees motivated. These series of blogs elaborate an overview of employee motivation, some motivational scholarly theories, importance etc.,

My employer Trident Technology Services offers B2B services to it’s leading international IT vendor partners to grow & manage their business by offering Sales, Marketing, Channel & Technical services in the middle east & African region. Trident’s employees at all levels should maintain high level of energy & commitment to its partner’s clients. Therefore, employee motivation in Trident is a crucial element.

The term ‘motivation’ derives from the Latin word for movement (movere). A motive is a reason for doing something. Motivation is the strength and direction of behaviour and the factors that influence people to behave in certain ways (Armstrong, 2014). Motivation is something that energized individuals to take action and which is concerned with the choices the individual makes as part of his or her goal-oriented behaviour (Wregner and Miller, 2003, cited in Kian et al, 2013). According to Huczynski & Buchanan, (2013) this can be looked into by three different but connected perspectives, which are goals, decision & influence. It is the cognitive decision-making process through which goal directed behaviour is initiated, energized, directed and maintained.

Motivation is goal-directed behaviour. People are motivated when they expect that a course of action is likely to lead to the attainment of a goal and a valued reward – one that satisfies their needs and wants (Armstrong, 2014). Armstrong (2014) further explains motivation is the power that keeps energized, directs, and supports positive behaviour. Highly motivated people deliver best performance without them being forced or tasked by their superiors. They are known to work independently and overachieve.

“Motivation is the willingness to exert high levels of effort toward organizational goals, conditioned by the effort’s ability to satisfy some individual need.” (Robbins, 1993, cited Ramlal, 2004)

Motivation is the potential power that inside a person that can be developed by some outside force/essentially revolves around the monetary or non-monetary rewards that can influence the results of the performance of both positive and negative, and it really depends on the situation and condition of the person. (Risambessy, 2012).

References:

Armstrong, M. (2014). Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 13th Edition. Kogan Page.

Huczynski, A.A. and Buchanan, D.A. (2013). Organizational behaviour. 8th ed. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

Kian, T.S., Yusoff, W.F.W. and Idris, M.T.M. (2013). Herzberg’s Two Factors Theory on Work Motivation: Does it Work for Todays Environment? Global Institute for research & education, 2(5), pp.18–22.

MacPherson, A. (2019). Motivating Millennials: the journey to project success. ResearchGate.

Ramlall, S. (2004). A Review of Employee Motivation Theories and their Implications for Employee Retention within Organizations. The Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge, pp.55–56.

Risambessy, A. (2012). The Influence of Transformational Leadership Style, Motivation, Burnout towards Job Satisfaction and Employee Performance. Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research, 2(9), p.8835.

Robbins, S. (1993). Organizational Behavior 6th Edition. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.