Employee Motivation

• Motivation is the internal force that drives a worker to action as well as the external factors that encourage that action.
• Ability and skill determine whether a worker can do the job, but motivation determines whether the worker will do it properly.
• The four individual differences that are most related to work motivation are personality, an intrinsic motivation tendency, self-motivation, and the need for achievement.
• The five main personality dimensions are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and stability.
• The types of self-esteem are chronic, situational, socially influenced, and organization-based self-esteem (OBSE).
• The Work Preference Inventory (WPI) can measure an individual's orientation toward intrinsic motivation (enjoyment, challenge) and extrinsic motivation (compensation, outward orientation).
• The Self-Regulation Process

  1. Choosing and setting goals
  2. Planning how to accomplish those goals
  3. Taking action towards the goals (goal striving)
  4. Evaluating progress and maintaining, revising, or abandoning goals
• For job expectations, it is important that applicants be given a realistic job preview (RJP).
• Job characteristics theory (Hackman & Oldham, 1976) suggests employees are motivated by jobs that offer meaning, autonomy (control over their work), and feedback, and jobs high in motivation potential allow them to use a variety of skills (skill variety) and see their work through to completion on tasks that feel important (task identification & significance).
• Age has surfaced as a complicated factor as well when considering the motivation potential of a job. Researchers have identified that older employees who have higher intrinsic motivation also have jobs with a higher motivating potential score (Boumans, De Jong, & Janssen, 2011). Younger employees, however, tend to have jobs with a higher motivating potential score when they view that their jobs offer more career growth.
• Three theories focus on employees’ needs and values: Maslow’s needs hierarchy, ERG (existence, relatedness, and growth) theory, and two-factor theory.
• Perhaps the most famous theory of motivation was developed by Abraham Maslow (1954, 1970).
• Basic Biological needs - survival needs for food, air, water, and the like.
• Safety Needs - concerning the need for security, stability, and physical safety.
• Social Needs - concerning the need to interact with other people.
• Ego Needs - concerning the individual’s need for recognition and success.
• Self-Actualization Needs - concerning the need to realize one’s potential.
• The three levels are existence, relatedness, and growth — hence the name ERG theory.
• Herzberg (1966) believed that job-related factors could be divided into two categories — hygiene factors and motivators — thus the name two-factor theory.
• Hygiene factors: are those job-related elements that result from but do not involve the job itself.
• Motivators: are job elements that concern actual tasks and duties.
• Needs for Achievement, Affiliation, and Power

  • A theory developed by McClelland (1961).
  • Suggests that employees differ in the extent to which they are motivated by the need for achievement, affiliation, and power.
• Need for achievement - are motivated by jobs that are challenging and over which they have some control, whereas employees who have minimal achievement needs are more satisfied when jobs involve little challenge and have a high probability of success.
• Need for affiliation - are motivated by jobs in which they can work with and help other people.
• Need for power - are motivated by a desire to influence others rather than simply to be successful.
• For Needs for Competency, Autonomy, and Relatedness, we have the self-determination theory, competency, autonomy, and relatedness.
• Self-determination Theory was developed by Ryan and Deci (2000) and proposes that people have innate needs for three things: competency, autonomy, and relatedness.
• Competency is the need to feel that we have the ability to perform the tasks that are important to us.
• Autonomy is the need to have the freedom to make decisions about what we are going to do and how we are going to do it.
• Relatedness is the need to feel connected to others.
• The Four Drive Theory of Human Nature is the drive to acquire, drive to bond, drive to learn, and drive to defend.
• Drive to acquire is a drive to seek, take, control, and retain objects and personal experiences that humans value.
• Drive to bond is a drive to form social relationships and develop mutual caring commitments with other humans.
• Drive to learn is a drive to satisfy curiosity, to know, to comprehend, to appreciate, to develop understandings or representations of their environment and of themselves through a reflective process.
• Drive to defend is a drive to defend themselves and their valued accomplishments whenever they perceive them to be endangered.
• Goal Setting is a method of increasing performance in which employees are given specific performance goals to aim for.
• SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
• Specific - Properly set goals are concrete and specific (Locke & Latham, 2013).
• Measurable - The purpose of setting goals is to identify a specific target to reach.
• Attainable - Set goals HIGH, but not too high nor too low.