Motivators At Work

Question 1

Motivation at work 1

Answer 1

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Pfeffer, 1998)

1. Pfeffer stated that people do work for money - but they work even harder for meaning in their lives.
   > Companies that ignore this fact are essentially bribing their employees and will pay the price in a lack of loyalty and commitment.
2. Internal (intrinsic) motivators come from within and include factors such as enjoyment or a sense of satisfaction or achievement as motivators.
   > This means that motivation comes from the actual performance of the task rather than from the potential consequences of completing the tasks.
   > These potential rewards would be called external motivators.
3. External (extrinsic) motivators create a sense of motivation because of an external reward such as money, promotion and bonuses.
   > Different organisations might offer different types of motivators.
   > Someone who works in finance may experience high levels of external motivators such as the amount they earn and the potential for additional onuses, whereas someone who chooses to work in some aspect of health and social care is unlikely to experience the same level of financial reward but may be rewarded and motivated by different things, such as a sense of helping others and making a difference.

Question 2

Motivation at work 2

Answer 2

Reward systems

1. Vary from organisation to organisation and can include pay, bonuses, profit sharing and performance-related pay.
   > Pay may be linked to performance such that the harder someone works, or the faster they complete tasks, the more money they can earn.
   > Bonuses are sometimes offered in addition to a salary and can be significant sums of money in some sectors, particularly in finance.
   > Profit sharing by an organisation means that a percentage of the company profit is shared among all the workers.
2. This gives workers a stronger sense of belonging to the organisation and can lead to increased motivation.
3. These systems might not be available in all organisations as not all organisations are set up to make a profit.
   > Most health and education organisations for example do not have profit as their primary aim.
4. It is hard to tell if monetary rewards are successful in improving productivity.
   > Waal and Jansen cite studies demonstrating that over half the growth in productivity in Chinese State industries could be attributed to the use of bonuses (Yao) and the studies demonstrating the positive effects of performance-related pay (Belfield, Marsden).
   > Hollowell claimed that those organisations paying their senior executives on high performance-related pay scales maintained strong stock markets presences.
   > However, de Waal and Jansen include contradictory evidence by citing studies which demonstrate that in organisations with very high inequalities, there is also very high turnover of staff.
   > This is also true in baseball where the teams with the highest pay inequalities lose more games (Bloom).
   > This would suggest that any gains in productivity shown by the high performers are outweighed by the costs to the low performers.
   > Finally, research conducted in a number of organisations in the UK (Fattorusso et al.) and Holland (Duffhues and Kabir) found no relationship between the size of bonus payments and performance.

Question 3

Motivation at work 3

Answer 3

Non-monetary rewards

1. Include praise, respect, recognition, empowerment and a sense of belonging.
2. Rewards and recognition are different.
   > In an organisational context, rewards are promised from the start.
   » For most employees, there will be a clear understanding of how much they will be paid, for example.
   » This may affect your extrinsic motivation - you go to work in order to earn a salary.
   ⛄⛄⛄⛄⛄⛄⛄⛄⛄
   > Recognition is not promised from the start and is when a worker is recognised for their contributions or achievements.
   > Giving someone a medal for bravery is recognition for their behaviour. It is not a reward as it was not promised from the start.
3. However, not everyone is motivated by money and not all organisations are designed to make a profit.
   > There are several effective motivators which are not monetary.
   > They can be in the forms of positive reinforcement.
4. Praise, respect and recognition come from other people and can be extremely motivating.
   > This is not quite an external reward like money - this is a reward that makes you feel good about yourself.
5. Achievement of a difficult task or even simply the completion of a task can lead to a feeling of empowerment.
   > Empowerment makes you feel as though you can achieve anything.
   > A sense of empowerment is motivating and can create a sense of belonging, within a team or the whole organisation.
6. Recognition can take many forms.
   > As its simplest, recognition may be the employer thanking an employee for a job well done.
   > This might be made more formal by the employee receiving a formal letter of thanks from their manager or even from someone more senior.
   > More public forms of recognition might be in the form of award ceremonies or ‘employee of the month’ schemes.
7. Rose (1998) estimates that around 75% of organisations in the UK had some form of non-monetary recognition scheme and also noted that these were even more commonly found in organisations that rely heavily on customer contact.

Question 4

Advantages to an organisation of having a non-monetary recognition scheme

Answer 4

1. Can highlight desired behaviours and through recognition, create role models for others to imitate.
2. The recognition may be given immediately, strengthening the association between the behaviour and the consequence, and these schemes are often very low-cost.
3. Evidence suggests that staff turnover can be positively affected.
   > Building positive affective relationships between managers and workers and making sure that workers know that they are appreciated and that their efforts are valued makes people more likely to stay and increases their satisfaction ratings (Brown and Armstrong).
   > Reed found that recognition was rated as the most important factor in achieving job satisfaction, whereas salary was rated sixth.

Question 5

Evaluation

Answer 5

1. Considered motivation in a more practical sense.
   > Rather than the theories that we met in the previous sections, here we have considered what factors may act as motivators in work.
   > This is obviously useful information in several ways.
   > It may be useful to consider what motivates you and this may help you in deciding the type of job that you want to aim for in the future.
   » For example, a monetary award is not always possible and recognising that non-monetary rewards such as praise and recognition can be equally effective (in some organisations at least) may ensure that managers recognise the value of these rewards to endure the motivation of their workers.
2. Behaviourist approach to the topic of motivation.
   > It considers the effect of certain outcomes (reinforcements) on behaviour rather than focusing on the cognitive aspects.
3. Individual differences
   > What motivates one person may not motivate another.
   > Vroom’s expectancy theory, Motivation = Expectancy x Instrumentality X Valence, where expectancy is based on individual’s perception of effort relates to performance and level of confidence.
4. Situational explanation
   > The situation may well interact with the individual in determining the most effective motivators.
   > Someone working in a highly creative environment is likely to be motivated by praise and recognition for their creativity whereas non-monetary rewards may not be as effective in the competitive business world.
5. Lack of empirical (observational) evidence
   > But all these ideas can be tested experimentally to find effectiveness of different rewards.