Motivating Workers

Motivating Workers

1. Motivating workers is important to businesses in order for them to increase job satisfaction and therefore productivity of their employees. It is also important so that the business can save costs on hiring employees because they have a much lower chance of them leaving their work if they are happy and have secure places.

2. Motivational Theories

   • Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggests that there are different levels of motivation that need to be met, and businesses should focus on meeting the next level for an employee in order to motivate them. Each level must be completed before the next one is looked towards and these are; physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs and self-actualisation.
   • Taylor suggests that money acts as a sole motivator for workers and offering more money for higher output will motivate workers to produce higher output. This is only really applied to jobs such as the assembly line because these ideas are too simplistic and you cannot always measure an employees output.
   • Herzberg's theory suggested that workers have two sets of needs; hygiene and physiological needs. He stated that hygiene needs must be met before motivation can be carried out and they do not act as motivator themselves however, if not achieved, act as de-motivators.

3. Payment Methods

   • Wages
     • Piece rate involves paying workers for their output, following Taylor's motivational theory. This is usually applied to work where output can be measured such as the assembly line of production and usually increases business productivity because workers want to produce more in order to earn more money. However this can compromise quality of the end product and may need some form of quality checks, which adds to business costs.
     • Time rate involves paying workers for their time spent at work and offers overtime payment, usually at a higher rate, for any work done over the necessary hours. This is usually very easy to monitor but does not measure the employees productivity during this time can is unfair for employees who spent less hours but did more work.
   • Salaries
     • Commission is usually applied to sales staff, which means they receive payment on amount of goods they can successfully sell to customers. This means that they are well motivated to increase sales of the product for the business however adds to their stress and can only have a negative effect on customers if they feel like they are being persuaded to buy products all the time.
     • Bonuses are a lump sum of money given to an employee after a period of time, motivating them to keep working for the business and rewarding them for their work done.
     • Profit-sharing allows employees to receive a percentage of business profit. This means they are very interested in making the business successful because they receive a percentage of this profit and will work hard for this to occur.
     • Performance related pay links employee performance to their pay, making them more motivated to work hard to earn more money, however this may be hard to measure and uses a system of apprasial.
     • Share ownership gives employees shares in the business so they are motivated to make the business successful in order to receive dividends and can encourage employee loyalty because they now have much more interest and control over the business

4. Non-financial Motivation

   • Motivational methods can include job enlargement. This involved adding more tasks of a similar status to a workers job description without increasing the amount of work done. This adds diversity to the workers day and makes them feel much more useful in the business, however does not give the worker any more responsibility in the business
   • Job rotation involves moving workers around from task to task, usually applied on the assembly line of production. This avoids specification and gives workers a greater job variety and skill knowledge. This also makes it much easier for businesses to reassign workers if one should be ill because they all know how to do the jobs, however they may not be carried to the same standard as if they were to specialise on one task.
   • Fringe benefits are non-financial methods of motivation given to an employee e.g children school fees paid for, free company car e.t.c
   • Job enrichment involves looking at job descriptions and adding tasks that require more skill and responsibility. This adds diversity to employee work and makes them motivated because they feel as though they are adding more to the company, however can have the effect of stressing them out because of the added responsibility and may require some form of training.
   • Teamworking involves dividing employees into teams to carry out their own work projects. This gives employees a sense of freedom and makes them feel wanted in the business because they are given the responsibility of carrying out tasks for the company on their own regard and increases morale.