How to Motivate Your Workforce: Issues and Challenges

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Concept
Issues/ Challenges
Solutions
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

People are always searching for jobs to acquire money to facilitate basic needs and other wants. This eases the employers’ ability to get employees to work in their firms. The main problem that the employers have is maintaining the morale of their employees throughout their working period. The employees need a motivating factor such as social programs and incentives that includes bonuses to the best employees. A favourable working environment is important as well.

The employees require a controlled environment in which they can express their feelings of frustration, success and open-mindedness. Individual firms need an action plan that appreciates the efforts made by employees as they run the institution’s errands. Employees determine the level of success that a given firm will achieve. They deal with the customers directly and provide all services to clients on behalf of the employer.

The employee links the employer with his desired goal since the employer cannot conduct all activities that will make a firm successful. Motivation means achieving self-drive to perform a given task and willingly performing it without any external force. The employee is paramount to business success or failure, thus motivating this employee should be a priority case for any management.

Employers should evaluate their institutional framework and while governing i is done by the employees. A peer recognition program is essential since it allows employees to familiarize with each other. The employees learn the strengths and weaknesses of their colleagues and are able to assist one another to achieve the desired output. They also appreciate the hardworking employees by congratulating them and learning from how they achieve their success.

This promotes teamwork and active employees as they compete to be the best in their field. The recognition programs should be of affordable expense to the company, and should not drift employees away from performing their duties. It should provide for systems that satisfy both the employer and employee. The employees need to have a working environment that brings them personal satisfaction and pride (Clifton, Edward and Laurie 56).

Concept

The employer needs to create a tranquil working environment for duty performance that will entice the employees to improve their working efforts. Well-organized businesses motivate their employees since they have clear objectives and terms of expectations. The employer’s behaviour set a pace on the way his employees behave.

Dictatorship management does not allow employees to enjoy the working environment. It inhibits them from bringing out their full potential, mostly just to earn their wages. Motivation to employees occurs by attempting to solve their unrealized needs through creating a strategy that assures them of gaining. The managerial team should observe the behaviours of their employees in order to understand their needs and preferences. They can also use clear list of preferences to determine what motivates their workers best.

In today’s market, every employee aims at improving his or her skills to obtain a means of survival in the competitive market. This makes them yearn for developmental opportunities in their career sector that makes them enjoy. All employees deserve payment for their individual efforts in their areas of expertise that is just and equitable to the amount of work done.

They appreciate the recognition of their expertise by the organization and activities that lead to their development. All employees desire a communication network, between them and management, to help them air their comments, complaints or for performance evaluation. Every employee needs to have job security and improvement in their skills to work well. The employer has a duty to respect his/her employees and get involved in issues affecting them.

Issues/ Challenges

The main problem with motivating workforce is that they have varied things that could motivate them and different from the management expectations. The management therefore, has to implement strategies that link its priorities to those of the employees.

The employees should be rewarded for extra effort made towards reaching the firm’s goals. This should be reinforced through providing them with the necessary materials needed to accomplish a given task. The goals should be measurable, specific and realistic. The employees should be actively involved in the goal making process.

The expectations of employers are that the employees will put in all their effort to the production process. This varies with individual workers since not all people have the same capabilities, and the best effort of one may be a weak subject to another person.

The level to which productivity and efforts give a desired outcome depends on the value of the production activity. The value of the outcome also depends on the value of effort given towards the production of the product. When these occur then the whole organization utilizes motivation (Guest and Neil 82).

Employees are easily de-motivated at their workplace by petty issues that discriminate against employees. The employer needs to ensure appropriate communication skills in the firm reflect, as it will ensure effective planning by the employee. Timely payment to employees and ensuring that the wages provided are fair also prevents the workforce from de-motivation.

The employees also require a system that maximises their earnings to a level appropriate in the society. The employees are human beings, prone to emotions, thus treated with respect and maturity. The employer has a duty to ensure that he uses right choice of words while correcting the employees and when addressing them to other people. The employer should also prevent nepotism issues that will make him/her favour some employees.

Difficulty in administering motivation to employees occurs since the managers face a task of learning needs of their workers and attempting to satisfy them in the workstation. They also have to assure the employees that all workers are equal despite their ranks and that all workers receive payments according to their input efforts and outcomes.

The employers also have to set objectives and incorporate employees in their formation. This eases the workers’ ability to accept them and have an understanding of what the management expects from them.

Keeping the work environment formal against relations to employees outside the entity is particularly beneficial. It ensures that employees meet deadlines and ensure prevention of conflicts at the workstation. The management should clarify the nature of work he/she expects from the employee.

He should give specific and clear guidelines to enhance duty performance. The employees also work better when they know that the employer trusts them with the institution’s resources and information. Constant supervision and questioning over minor issues that suggest a lack of trust to the employees will cause them to decline in performance. The management has a duty to learn its employees and respect their personalities so long as they perform the expected duties.

Solutions

Rewards given are either intrinsic or extrinsic. An intrinsic value occurs when social welfare avails itself to a worker looking for the best alternative for himself and seeks approval from the employer. The employer has to implement this to allow customer satisfaction as well as employees’ appreciation.

The first step would be to ensure satisfaction of employees’ needs. People share different personalities and needs. The international approach of quantifying needs such as the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs should be used. Every human being seeks to ensure satisfaction of essential needs of food, clothing and shelter. Next on line of satisfaction are safety needs that emerge by having money to access healthcare facilities, living in a safe environment and having the assurance of job security.

Once satisfaction occurs, the human being seeks to fulfil the desire of belonging to society through increased social relations, friendship and affection from loved ones. The next step would include esteem needs, which acquire satisfaction through positive remarks to a person, receiving recognition for various deeds and acquiring an overall social status. The final stage asserts the need to develop oneself and an urge to achieve a new thing in life.

In any work environment, there are drivers that motivate employees to do well in their duties. The compulsory conditions only motivate people at lower levels. These are factors such as wages and salaries, bonuses, company policies and administration practices. This is because monetary issues are a means of fulfilling basic desires, but with time, one requires greater fulfilment of higher desires.

The motivators in a working environment are higher indicators of personal growth. They include recognition, achievements, accountability and responsibility over one’s actions that prove a person’s worth. They indicate a hike in level of responsibility. Employees are then able to seek greater job positions that will lead to job security and more responsibility.

Human needs continue to grow after the satisfaction of the current need. They emanate from a person’s own life experiences. People start by the need to achieve goals, desires for success and skills to cope with life. The desire to develop trust among people through the creation of relationships with other people follows. This is necessary for teamwork as well as creation relations among colleagues. The final stage completes by the need to acquire power that enables them to assume responsibility over their actions.

External factors also cause employee motivation. This happens by reinforcing personnel towards achieving desirable or undesirable behaviour in the institution. The positive reinforcement action occurs when action to award positive practices in the business environment takes place. The second strategy of reinforcement action is negative or avoidance reinforcement.

It occurs when practices that avoid inappropriate behaviour in firms make some workers be rewarded. It can also take the form of punishment, where employees receive punishment for committing undesirable behaviour in terms of fines. The final form of reinforcement is by extinction that declines the giving of gifts to people who have portrayed undesirable behaviour. The main disadvantage of this method is that it lacks to prove the ability to prove the employee’s ability to comprehend his scope of work.

Intrinsic factors also motivate employees. They focus on the personal perceptions of the employee’s regarding motivation. The Adams Equity theory presupposes that when individuals have the perception of fair treatment in their workstations, then they become motivated to work for better results.

It prompts managers to impose equality to all its employees in order to create a tranquil, working environment. The Looke’s goal setting theory asserts that individuals operate by their personal goals. It encourages employers and employees to set short and long-term goals that urge them to achieve the laid down goals.

Managing employees in a manner that satisfies them and making them set personal goals is an impossible task. This is because it requires their willingness to participate in self-esteem boosting activities that can only occur after they have satisfied the basic needs. For new employees, this is a hard task as they still are in the early development stages of personal growth (Whiteley 65).

The management can also play a key role in developing motivation to employees. It uses instilled strategies to motivate its workers such as placing a human resource department and creating the most suitable form of working environment. In the scientific management theory, the management has the role to implement the most effective strategy to conduct job processes for the workers to use.

This will enhance their ease in productivity as well as the overall performance of the institution. Employees receive awards for their hard work and motivation. The theory bases itself on an assumption that all workers acquire motivation by ease in production processes. In the long run, the scientific theory proves inefficient as the workers will result to a stagnant stage of production.

The McGregor’s theory of X any assumes that management in a firm divides its rule into two portions. The first views the worker as a being in need of safety and, therefore, uses the human resource mechanism to focus on basic needs of the worker. The second part of management views workers as a means to an end and creates the sufficient environment and processes to help them bring out their best.

The final management theory, Ouchi’s theory Z, asserts that workers acquire motivation to increase productivity in companies that recognize and appreciate their efforts. Employers should award the hardworking workers as well as provide working incentives such as promotions from within the firm workers. The management should be well conversant with the requirements of their workers, thus acquiring knowledge on how to improve the working environment.

The management theories show the management’s involvement in creating motivation strategies to employees, thus assisting their workers to grow as well as developing their company production levels. The issue of giving to the workers to receive from them reflects from motivation practices. It argues that the management has to show care and concern to its workers so that in return, they can also use their skills to promote the company. The employees have to be satisfied with the management efforts of equality in order to be committed.

Conclusion

The management using the theory strategies discussed above can solve the challenges in motivating workers. Most management does not understand the concept of motivation. They view that workers need more money in order to improve production and service delivery. They also tend to use what would personally motivate them to represent the whole firm. This leads to decline in company performance as the management only solve their needs, neglecting those of workers.

The management has to take time and learn what its workers need through interaction and observation. A satisfied employee has self-motivation to provide the best-desired output from their potentials. The management should also bear in mind that employees hold different character traits. It should incorporate the use of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation strategies to fit in all workers.

All people, irrespective of their character traits, have the ability to become motivated and to motivate others. The management should have a positive attitude towards its efforts to motivate its workers. This helps them to spot the benefits of their strategies and ignore the fact that motivation is an added expense to the company, especially at its initial stages.

Works Cited

Clifton, Donald O., Edward Anderson, and Laurie A. Schreiner. StrengthsQuest: discover and develop your strengths in academics, career, and beyond.. 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: Gallup Organization, 2006. Print.

Guest, David, and Neil Conway. Employee motivation and the psychological contract: the third annual IPD survey of the state of the employment relationship. London: Institute of Personnel and Development, 1997. Print.

Whiteley, Philip. Motivation. Oxford, U.K.: Capstone Pub., 2002. Print.

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