Motivation

Motivating employees is a major problem for many managers. That is ‘How can I motivate my staff when all they want to know is what it is need for them?’

The employee think,

            “Only time my boss takes an interest is when things have gone wrong”

            “The management is care less about us. They never shown any interest.”

            “There’s no quality in the work. The only thing is leave on time at the workplace”

So management need to consider the below two parts.

1. How to identify the motivational needs of employees.
2. How to motivate by meeting this need.

Identifying Motivational needs.

Needs

Maslow has suggested that people needs can be grouped 5 levels.

Basic needs

The need for food and water to stay alive. Basic need for survival.

Security needs

The need for safe and stable home and a job or employment. The need to have some permanent in life and freedom from threats.

Belonging needs

The need to be a part of a social unit. To have friends and colleagues and regular contact with them. To be a part of a working team or family group.

Esteem needs.

The need to be a respected what we are and what we stand for to help in esteem for quality of our work, our position in life and the status of our job.

Self fulfillment

The need for interesting, challenging and satisfying work to be able to achieve something and fully used our skills and abilities to do fulfilling’s work.

The five levels are like a five ladder as we meet our need of a one run, we go on to the next.

If we have a secure job a feel confident in our ability to perform it (security), we then want to satisfy needs for belongings to do this be concentrate on developing relationship and team spirit. If we can satisfy these needs, we then become concern about esteem being praise for our work perhaps quality or work quantity. But, over run are threaten we have rapidly down the ladder.

If we are at the level of self fulfillment (that is we are predominantly concerned with doing interesting and challenging work) and suddenly there is possibility of our needs quickly change. We stop caring about doing interesting work and become worried about security, our behavior become change and concerned about protecting our position rather than producing new ideas.

Individual need can be identify by looking for evidence in individuals behavior.

General signs of need not been met- that is motivational problem.

• Poor time keeping or punctuality
• High absenteeism
• High labour turned over
• Poor quality of work
• Complaining about nothing
• Bad industrial relations
• Low moral
• Meeting the motivational needs

Ex.

A manager has a new project for a group task. He ‘sells’ it to them by emphasizing that it is a completely new area which is very challenging and will provide opportunity to expose to senior management (Self Fulfillment). His approach fails disastrously because the group of task are worried about being plucked from their usual work and concern their ability to do this new task (Security). His selling has grammatically intensify their fears and droughts.

        Motivate by emphasizing at too or low level, a manager is concerned that is department should have good moral that he should get on well with each individually need. He devote part of his day to having a chat and a joke with each member (Belonging).

       His attempt fails with several individuals who recent is inclusion. They feel he is wasting time and stopping them getting on their work with find more interesting and satisfying then idle (Self Fulfillment).

Below are listed some options available for motivating staff

Self-fulfillment

• Involve staff in decision making and consult them where possible.
• Allow staff the freedom where it is feasible to plan and conduct their work in their own way.
• Provide more stimulating and challenging work.
• Create solutions where the skills and capacities of staff and used to their fullest.
• Involve staff in new areas requiring creativity and original thinking.

Esteem

• Help staff to see how important and demanding their work is.
• Encourage the staff to think of themselves as the ‘experts’ or ‘best’ at their work.

Belonging

• Be personal and sociable with staff.
• Show an interest in staff as individuals.
• Encourage staff to function as a team and spend time together outside work.
• Develop a good working atmosphere.

Security

• Reassure staff
• Minimize criticism and support individuals.
• Only give tasks at which they can succeed.