Employee Motivation & Empowerment Process

Motivation is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic.[1] The term is generally used for humans but it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation. According to various theories, motivation may be rooted in a basic need to minimize physical pain and maximize pleasure, or it may include specific needs such as eating and resting, or a desired object, goal, state of being, ideal, or it may be attributed to less-apparent reasons such as altruism, selfishness, morality, or avoiding mortality. Conceptually, motivation should not be confused with either volition or optimism.[2] Motivation is related to, but distinct from, emotion.

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that is driven by an interest or enjoyment in the task itself, and exists within the individual rather than relying on any external pressure. Intrinsic motivation has been studied by social and educational psychologists since the early 1970s. Research has found that it is usually associated with high educational achievement and enjoyment by students evaluation theory.[clarification needed] Students are likely to be intrinsically motivated if they:

attribute their educational results to factors under their own control (e.g., the effort expended), believe they can be effective agents in reaching desired goals (i.e. the results are not determined by luck), are interested in mastering a topic, rather than just rote-learning to achieve good grades.

Extrinsic motivation comes from outside of the individual. Common extrinsic motivations are rewards like money and grades, coercion and threat of punishment. Competition is in general extrinsic because it encourages the performer to win and beat others, not to enjoy the intrinsic rewards of the activity. A crowd cheering on the individual and trophies are also extrinsic incentives. Social psychological research has indicated that extrinsic rewards can lead to over justification and a subsequent reduction in intrinsic motivation. In one study demonstrating this effect, children who expected to be (and were) rewarded with a ribbon and a gold star for drawing pictures spent less time playing with the drawing materials in subsequent observations than children who were assigned to an unexpected reward condition. For those children who received no extrinsic reward, Self-determination theory proposes that extrinsic motivation can be internalised by the individual if the task fits with their values and beliefs and therefore helps to fulfill their basic psychological needs.

Small businesses are understandably concerned about having motivated employees who feel empowered to contribute to the company and service customer needs. Researchers have been studying motivation for a number of years and have a solid understanding of what it takes to motivate employees and keep them motivated. Empowerment plays a key role in motivation. History Theorists have been researching motivation for a number of years. From Abraham Maslow to David McClelland to B.F. Skinner and others, what they have found is that all employees have some basic needs that must first be satisfied in order to provide the framework for further motivation and empowerment. These basic needs, according to Maslow, include physiological needs, or the needs for food and water, and safety needs. Both are satisfied in the workplace through a competitive wage and safe work environment. Once basic needs have been met, employee motivation becomes more complex and is highly dependent on individual needs and desires. What motivates one employee may not necessarily motivate another.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Maslow's hierarchy of needs provides a foundational theory for employers today and is the basis of much of the research that has been done on motivation. There are five levels in the hierarchy: physiological needs, safety and security needs, psychological or belonging needs, self-actualization and peak experience. Maslow suggested that employees cannot move to the next level of the hierarchy until the lower-level needs have been satisfied. The highest-level needs, self-actualization and peak experience, are closely tied to empowerment. Empowered employees feel that they can exercise their independent judgment in their pursuit of success for themselves a monitoring Individual Needs

Employee Motivation: How To Make Workplace Rewards More Productive

Employee motivation doesn't come from a year-end bonus that everyone on the payroll gets. It comes from meaningful employee recognition and workplace rewards tailored to the individual. In other words, it needs to be personal to be truly motivational. But when you manage hundreds or even thousands of employees, that personal touch is hard to apply... unless the company's employee incentives plan is automated so compensation adjustments are easier to track and rewards can be customized.

How Employee Recognition Pays Off

There are some commonalities that arise when employees themselves are asked what motivates and inspires them to work hard. Contests are frequently held in which workers get to nominate

and vote for the top ten or top 100 best places to work. The workplaces that come out on top have connected the dots between appropriate workplace rewards and greater employee motivation. They've figured out...

What Employees Really Want:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. To receive fair pay and benefits To receive time and attention from supervisors To feel their contribution to the company is valued To be trusted to make decisions and have some control over their work To have clear goals set out by management To be treated with dignity and respect To receive recognition, even for everyday tasks To receive training / mentoring / leadership development

As you can see from the above, many of the top motivating factors involve workplace rewards, whether they be in the form of money, employee recognition, greater responsibility, training opportunities, promotions, etc. The key, according to HR professionals, is to personalize the rewards. Ask what your staff want from their work, what inspires them, and what would make the working environment more conducive to productivity. Then implement their ideas. Because when they succeed, your business succeeds.

Employee Motivation Automation

As mentioned above, automating the employee evaluation and compensation adjustment process is the best way to ensure employee performance is reviewed and rewarded in a manner that inspires each individual to achieve his/her personal best. Halogen's performance management software is the paperless solution that makes that process run smoothly... so employees get what they really want and are motivated to give you, the manager, what you really want. Halogen's comprehensive Employee Performance and Talent Management Suite provides a total solution, from employee appraisals and rewards to training and succession planning. Modules include: eAppraisal,

Motivation at work Companies are increasingly becoming aware of the fact that only a motivated person can do full justice to his/her work. Having a driven workforce also acts as a key differentiator, giving companies an edge over others

In turbulent times, every organisation counts on the performance of its employees for growth and success. Keeping an employee working at full potential is the best way to achieve results. It is the ultimate goal of employee motivation programs.
Fun @ work

Fun at work is fast becoming the corporate buzzword, with most companies adopting unique approaches to motivating employees through fun activities. Tavant Technologies, for instance, has instituted a wide range of initiatives to encourage and foster employee motivation at workplace. Krishnan PP, Chief Delivery Officer (CDO) and HR Head at Tavant explains, In addition to our rewards and recognition programs such as the Tavant Excellence Awards, I made a difference spot award scheme and Best Interviewer Award, we also have many unique Fun at Work schemes. Our Killing Geeks Boredom (KGB) forum conducts various fun activities such as Tavant Premier League (TPL), Ping Pong Wars and online games such as KodeBrk and Pehchaan Kaun. Other means of motivation include mentoring and grooming initiatives such as discussing career paths through programs like 1 UP - Career Development initiative and Individual Development Plan (IDP). We encourage work-life balance and a flexible leave policy. We support an open communication channel through open house sessions, monthly newsletter from the CEO, etc. We value good health of our employees through stress management, health camps, parenting, personal counseling, nutrition, yoga, etc. Synergy, our month long sporting event, covers various indoor games and outdoor sports. On similar lines, Mohammed Shahber, Head- Human Resource, Aviva Life Insurance adds, Some of the key initiatives to motivate employees include our Fun at work program in which we create a Base Camp a challenging, fun and organised series of spaces, events, and initiatives. The Base Camp has seven peaks starting from Community Climber-Activities for CSR exposure, Financial Climber Activities for providing tax and legal assistance, Career Climber Activities on presentation skills, time management skills, grooming, etc, Fit Climber Activities like marathons, cricket tournaments, Adventure clubs, Social Climber stage for Kids Day, festivals etc, Personal Climber Activities to create a fit mind through life skills workshops, personal counseling sessions and Possibility Climber Activities to create a forums for expression such as My voice portal. We have also launched CEO Awards program, IDEAs interactive channel for inviting ideas and Talking Talent initiative for identifying, building and managing the strong performers.
People motivate people

For many companies motivation programs are built into the system, in everyday practices. The key drivers for motivation in such a case are transparency, stability and wellbeing of employees. Anand Talwar, HR Head, ITC Infotech elucidates, Our approach to employee motivation is to first encourage our business practice heads to become completely transparent in their dealings. This ensures that employees at the lower end of the pyramid get the correct picture about the organisation. Next, we identify a small percentage of our workforce as positive people who can carry positivity in the company. Stable careers for our people have been our core motivational factor. We have been regular in our bonus payments, reinforcing our commitments. We are now investing greater effort, time, energy and bandwidth into multiple training initiatives especially in soft skills such as yoga and stress management. Motivation should be targeted at not just work engagement but also overall wellbeing.

Clearly, the definition of motivation is broadening for most companies. Physical, psychological and social wellbeing of the employees is the crux of motivation initiatives. After all, a workforce that looks the picture of health is motivated to work as well!

THEORIES APPLIED
Some attempts to bolster employee motivation still consider only extrinsic rewards. Endless mixes of employee benefits such as health care and life insurance, profit sharing, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), exercise facilities, subsidized meal plans, child care availability, company cars, and more have been used by companies in their efforts to maintain happy employees. Although some experts argue that many of these efforts, if only directed at motivating employees, are just a waste of company money, it is clear that for certain individuals in certain scenarios, monetary incentives can stimulate better job performanceat least for a while. The debate, rather, has been over whether such material factors have more than a superficial impact on motivation. Many modern theorists propose that the motivation an employee feels toward his or her job has less to do with material rewards such as those described above, than with the design of the job itself. Studies as far back as 1924 show that simplified, repetitive jobs, for instance, fostered boredom and the taking of frequent, unauthorized breaks by those who performed them. In 1950 a series of attitude surveys found that highly segmented and simplified jobs resulted in lower employee morale and output. Other consequences of low employee motivation include absenteeism and high employee turnover, both very costly for businesses. "Job enlargement" initiatives began to crop up in major companies in the 1950s, with one champion of the cause being IBM founder Thomas Watson, Sr. On the academic front, Turner and Lawrence proposed task attributes that characterize jobs that motivate. Turner and Lawrence suggest that there are three basic characteristics of a "motivating" job:
1. It must allow a worker to feel personally responsible for a meaningful portion of the work accomplished. An employee must feel ownership of and connection to the work he or she performs. Even in team situations, a successful effort will foster an individual's awareness that his or her contributions were important in accomplishing the group's tasks. 2. It must provide outcomes which have intrinsic meaning to the individual. Effective work that does not lead a worker to feel that his or her efforts matter will not be maintained. The outcome of an employee's work must have value to him or hers and to others in the organization. 3. It must provide the employee feedback about his or her accomplishments. A constructive, believable critique of the work performed is crucial to a worker's continuance or improvement of that which has already been performed.

In 1971 Hackman and Lawler tested these ideas. Using a telephone company as a test site, they surveyed 200 employees to determine relationships between employee attitudes and behavior and the characteristics of the employee's job. The study also assessed whether an employee's reaction to his or her work was dependent upon particular kinds of satisfactions valued by the employee. Positive correlations were found to exist between the quality of an employee's job,

with quality jobs meeting the three criteria above, and positive employee attitudes and behavior. Further, "doing well" at a job was interpreted by the employee as having put in a high quality performance, rather than a high quantity performance. Employees felt positively when they had accomplished something they felt was meaningful, and strove to do so if given an encouraging opportunity.

MOTIVATION TOOLS
The methods of motivating employees today are as numerous and different as the companies operating in the global business environment. What is the nature of the company and its industry? Is it small or big? What kind of culture is fostered? Is it conservative or innovative? What is important to the employees? What steps have been taken to find out? The best employee motivation efforts focus on what employees deem to be important. It may be that employees within the same department of the same organization will have different motivators. Many organizations today find that flexibility in job design and reward has resulted in employees' increased longevity with the company, increased productivity, and better morale. Although this "cafeteria-plan" approach to the work-reward continuum presents variety, some strategies are prevalent across all organizations that strive to improve employee motivation.
EMPOWERMENT.

Giving employees more responsibility and decision-making authority increases their control over the tasks for which they are held responsible and better equips them to carry out those tasks. Trapped feelings arising from being held accountable for something one does not have the resources to carry out are diminished. Energy is diverted from self-preservation to improved task accomplishment. Empowerment brings the job enlargement of the 1950s and the job enrichment that began in the 1960s to a higher level by giving the employees some of the power to expand their own jobs and create new, personally identified challenges.
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION.

At many companies, employees with creative ideas do not express them to management for fear of jeopardizing their jobs. Company approval and toeing the company line have become so ingrained in some working environments that both the employee and the organization suffer. When the power to create in the organization is pushed down from the upper echelon to line personnel, employees are empowered and those who know a job, product, or service best are given the opportunity to use their ideas to improve it. The power to create motivates employees and benefits the organization in having a more flexible workforce, using more wisely the experience of its employees and increasing the exchange of ideas and information among employees and departments. These improvements also create an openness to change that can give a company the ability to respond quickly to market changes and sustain a first mover advantage in the marketplace. Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co., better known as 3M, has fostered company wide creativity for decades. Its relentless support of new ideas has paid off in profitability and loyal employees who are so motivated that they have the most nimble and successful new product development system in the industry. MCI (now part of MCI WorldCom),

too, encourages employees to develop new ideas and take chances with them. A top manager there stated, "We don't shoot people who make mistakes around here, we shoot people who don't take risks."
LEARNING.

If employees are given the tools and the opportunities to accomplish more, most will take on the challenge. Companies can motivate employees to achieve more by committing to perpetual enhancement of employee skills. Accreditation and licensing programs for employees are an increasingly popular and effective way to bring about growth in employee knowledge and motivation. Often, these programs improve employees' attitudes toward the client and the company, while bolstering self-confidence. Supporting this assertion, an analysis of factors which influence motivation to learn found that it is directly related to the extent to which training participants believe that such participation will affect their job or career utility. In other words, if the body of knowledge gained can be applied to the work to be accomplished, then the acquisition of that knowledge will be a worthwhile event for the employee and employer.
QUALITY OF LIFE.

The number of hours worked each week by American workers is on the rise again and many families have two adults working those increased hours. Under these circumstances, many workers are left wondering how to meet the demands of their lives beyond the workplace. Often, this concern occurs while at work and may reduce an employee's productivity and morale. Companies that have instituted flexible employee arrangements have gained motivated employees whose productivity has increased. Programs incorporating flextime, condensed workweeks, or job sharing, for example, have been successful in focusing overwhelmed employees toward the work to be done and away from the demands of their private lives.
MONETARY INCENTIVE.

For all the championing of alternative motivators, money still occupies a rightful place in the mix of motivators. The sharing of a company's profits gives incentive to employees to produce a quality product, perform a quality service, or improve the quality of a process within the company. What benefits the company directly benefits the employee. Monetary and other rewards are being given to employees for generating cost savings or process-improving ideas, to boost productivity and reduce absenteeism. Money is effective when it is directly tied to an employee's ideas or accomplishments. Nevertheless, if not coupled with other, nonmonetary motivators, its motivating effects are short-lived. Further, monetary incentives can prove counterproductive if not made available to all members of the organization.
OTHER INCENTIVES.

Study after study has found that the most effective motivators of workers are nonmonetary. Monetary systems are insufficient, in part because expectations often exceed results and because disparity between salaried individuals may divide rather than unite employees. Proven nonmonetary motivators foster team spirit and include recognition, responsibility, and

advancement. Managers who recognize the "small wins" of employees, promote participatory environments, and treat employees with fairness and respect will find their employees to be more highly motivated. One company's managers brainstormed to come up with 30 powerful rewards that cost little or nothing to implement. The most effective rewards, such as letters of commendation and time off from work, enhanced personal fulfillment and self-respect. Over the longer term, sincere praise and personal gestures are far more effective and more economical than awards of money alone. In the end, a program that combines monetary reward systems and satisfies intrinsic, self-actualizing needs may be the most potent employee motivator.