Factors Influencing Employee Motivation In The Workplace

Motivation is defined as “Processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.” – Robbins & Judge 2012. There are many factors which may influence an employees enthusiasm for their work and their workplace. Many believe it all comes down to the employees perception of their environment. Perception is defined as a ‘process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment’.

Content theories of motivation such as, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, Alderfer’s existence relatedness and growth theory, Douglas McGregor Theory X and Theory Y and Herzberg’s two factor theory try to identify certain different things

It is very similar to a skill-based pay system, but Jon Clark(1995) found this system caused many problems as employee’s wanted to be functionally flexible quickly in order to secure more money but managers worried this would compromise their quality. Competency based pay takes into consideration the persons skills but also to the outcomes seen to be related to competencies. So when the performance is being evaluated, the focus is not just on what has been achieved but how it was achieved and also the behaviours used. Managers should offer some incentivised pay, to get more from their workers, in return the workers can earn extra money for their skills and

Managers should share information like goals and targets with staff, so they get an understanding of what they are working towards. By doing simple things such as, hanging charts up or holding 5 minute morning meetings all help put the goal in perspective for every member of staff. The cognitive goal setting theory by Locke(1968) has had the greatest influence on work based practises. It uses principles of information processing approaches and of reinforcement, especially social learning theory, to show how set goals can be used to motivate people. Locke discovered that people are satisfied when they achieve certain goals and that more difficult goals people used more effort on them and get a greater sense of satisfaction once the goal is achieved. The fact that humans find striving for certain goals rewarding is similar to Maslow’s theory and Herzberg’s motivating factors of self-actualisation. The fact that we need goals to be complex to acquire motivation is related to the concept of self-efficacy by Bandura (1977). Self-efficacy is the belief that we are capable of achieving desired behaviours. Although the goal setting theory is simple, the principles are based on more fundamental processes governing human behaviour. Research that has been in done in various different situations has proven that setting goals and targets does have a huge effect on a persons