Meaning Of Employee Motivation

Motivation is the process of influencing an individual as to act or behave in a certain way.

Motivation was defined by Weihrich and Koontz in their book Management A Global Perspective as” a general term applying to the entire class of drives, desires, needs, wishes and similar forces”. (Weihrich and Koontz, 1994, p 462)

Motivation can also be defined as “the psychological forces that determine the direction of a person’s behaviour in an organisation, a person’s level of effort, and a person’s level of persistence in the face of obstacles”. (Ezigbo, 2012, p 115)

There are different types of motivational incentives which can either be financial or non-financial that can influence an individual or employees behaviour.

According to Erbasi and

“(Erbasi and Arat, 2012, p 136)

In terms of participation, this is whereby employees are given the opportunity to get involved with the management. “The encouragement of participation creates an environment of affiliation, acceptance, and importance and gives employees a sense of accomplishment”. (Weihrich and Koontz, 1994, p 478)

“Job enrichment is related to Herzberg’s Theory of motivation, in which factors such as challenge, achievement recognition and responsibility are seen as the real motivators”. (Weihrich and Koontz, 1994, p 479)

Job enrichment is usually used as a medium to motivate employees by giving them more responsibility which is usually meant for employees who perceived to be in higher levels in an organisation.

The purpose of job enrichment is to give employees more freedom in decision making, encouraging participation of employees and lastly makes the job more challenging. (Weihrich and Koontz, 1994, p 480)

Enhancing a sense of belonging is very vital because it would make the employees feel like they are important and appreciated in their work

When employees are motivated they would be inspired to put in all their effort as to enhance the business thereby increasing their level of performance, it reduces employee’s turnover because when employees are motivated they tend to work longer thereby reducing the rate of employee’s turnover. (Pujari, 2012). Lastly, it increase productivity.

The four major motivational theories includes, Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, expectancy theory, goal setting theory and lastly McClelland motivation theory. (Ezigbo, 2012, p 115)

Abraham Maslow was trying to illustrate in his theory that individuals would always aim at satisfying the lower needs in the hierarchy first before pursing for the higher needs in the hierarchy.

According to Forsyth, he stated that “people’s needs move up the column, with concentration being on the more basic things first, then finally on all those things that reflect our satisfaction with fulfilling our potential”. (Forsyth, 2006, p 21)

In the expectancy theory Victor H. Vroom was trying to demonstrate that people would only be motivated to do certain things as to attain a goal when they can have trust in the worth of that goal and when they can perceive that what they would do would enable them to achieve that goal. (Weihrich and Koontz, 1994, p