The Relationship between Motivation, Employee, Happiness, and Productivity
Discuss about the Constitutionality Of Solitary Confinement.
Organizations profitability depends mostly on the employee’s performance. An organization that has weak workforce tends to have low productivity, low percentage of market share and financial instability. When an organization reaches the stage of financial instability, it has high chances of collapsing. However, a firm might have the financial stability and good mangers that are result oriented but might still fail when the employees decide so. In most cases, organizations fail as a result of stiff competition, small market, low raw natural and many others but it is very rare to come across a collapsed industry as a result of the employee’s inactivity.
The notion that ‘better pay motivates employees to be more productive’ and ‘happy employees are productive employees’ directly affects the productivity of the every business organization, however the effect is relative in terms of the employee and the work done (Sultan 2012). It is very convenient that human being performs an activity in a better way when appreciated and well-paid workers tend to get happy and satisfied with the assigned task, doing it to the best hence resulting into productivity (Mazahir & Khalid 2017). The proof of the role of employee motivation on the performance is well illustrated below. The paper illustrates the points that support that better pay and motivate employees that tend to be happy in doing their job, resulting in the productivity of the entire organization, with theoretical support.
First, we must understand the relationship between motivation, employee, happiness, and the productivity. As briefly elaborated above, employees are the backbone of every organization and their performance mostly depend on the attitude, strength, emotional stability, health status, social stability and many others factors. A healthy employee tends to have more energy that unhealthy employee hence have the high-performance ability, likewise a mentally stable employee tend to dedicate more of the time to accomplish a task than a mentally unstable employee(Evans & Olumide-Auko 2010). A happy employee tends to feel positive, more creative resulting in better performed. These two factors are enough to explain the difference in employee’s performance. Motivation is also a factor in an organizational setting that affects employee’s performance. Motivation refers to the psychological induction of a person to make a movement or an action. In an organization setting, motivation means the process of making an employee act in the desired direction of an organization. The process of motivation, therefore, entails putting inputs that are significant in making an objective achieved through changing the attitude and willingness of the workers to perform the designated task.
The Various Types of Motivation in the Workplace
The most common employee motivators include incentives, profit sharing bonuses, promotions, appreciations and many others. The use of money tends to redirect the efforts exerted by employees toward a designed task. Efforts directed towards particular task are categorized into effort direction, efforts duration, and effort intensity. The efforts direction refers to the task an individual decides to engage into. In such situation, when the monetary level tied to the activity is high, then the individual tends to have a high level of engagement. These effects are observable in workplaces where pay is done per the number of tasks accomplished versus an organization that salary is not dependent on the amount of the tasks accomplished per individual. Performance is perceived to be higher in work piece payment
The effort duration refers to the length of time an individual engages with the task assigned. It is very clear that incentives contracts that tend to have a longer period and are paid on the performance measures are quite different with permanent jobs. The contractual jobs tend to have higher performance since the motivator is always money.
Finally, effect intensity entails how deep individual attention to a particular task. It is very clear this task of the same level with different pays tend to attract different intensity from different workers. Employees that are well paid tend to give full focus to the assigned task leading to quality work than those that are underpaid.
The various type of motivations that are intrinsic and extrinsic. The intrinsic motivation happens when a person needs an immediate satisfaction and always performed for self-gain, on the other hand, the extrinsic motivation results from the external forces (Hendijani et al.,2016). This kind of motivation that is used by most employers and organization use to achieve better performance form the employees(Heejung 2018). Various motivations methods include an appreciation of achievement, incentives and many other activities that positively affect the psychological status of the employees. Several theories have been used to describe the psychological and physiological changes during motivation that results in performance increases. These theories include
Having understood the overview of the relationship between employee, motivation, and performance, it is imperative to examine the models and theoretical framework behind the motivations and performance. Several theoretical works have been done to elaborate the role of motivation.
Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory is among the most known motivational theory since it is based on the human needs. According to the theory, human needs are categorized into different heights starting from the lower to higher experience and believes that once a particular level of need is achieved, then the motivation aspects expires(Harrigan ,Lamport & Commons 2015). The theory insists that an individual only works harder to achieve a higher level. This only happens as a result of motivation. The general human needs are in the following levels:
Theoretical Framework of Motivation and Performance
Physiological needs- the physiological needs are important to the human life and entails basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, water and any other life necessities. These necessities have influenced the survival of human life, and tend to influence the human life. In work setting such necessitates such provision of morning tea, lunch, protective gears and many others are motivational elements. Employees that have numerous favors such as food from their employers tend to work more freely and smarter than those that do not get or depend form their pockets.
Safety needs- the safety needs entail the social interaction, companionship among others. The safety needs tend to motivate employees in the sense of creating a mutual relationship between employees and the employer. It is observable that employees that have strong and mutual relationship with the employers feel the sense of belonging to the organization that eventually translates into better performance, unlike organizations that employers act like bosses and dictators. Is such organizations, employee’s performance might be high in the presence of the bosses in the workplace, and drops when the bosses leave since there is no sense of safety and belonging that motivates the employees.
Esteem needs- refers to the self-respect that includes achievement, confidence, and independence. Most of the employers use self-esteem to motivate employees by helping them to grow and promote them into a higher level, making the employee feel achievers, this results into more effort impacted by the employees. Self-actualization needs refer to the culmination of the lower, intermediate, and higher needs of human being that result into self-reality.
The theory was developed by Fredrick Herzberg; a psychologist is well known as a dual theory as it contains the motivator’s factors and the hygiene theory. The motivators factors tent to lead to satisfaction and tend to influence employees to work harder, these motivators include feeling recognized by the employer, a psychological achievement that changes the need to do more than expected(Kellerman, 2014). The hygiene factors tend to lead to dissatisfaction thus reduces the motivational level, and include such as low salary, hard policies, and little benefits. Both the motivator and hygiene factors work independently and influence the employees level of motivation.
Expectancy theory refers to the set of a set of decisions theories of motivational and performance. According to the expectancy theory, perception plays a major role in cognition ability to anticipate the possibility of an occurrence of a behavior. The theory assumes that individuals have perceptions about the particular consequence that is dependent on the behavior and individuals have effective reactions toward particulars reactions(Jie, Min-Shi & Wen-Bin,2017). According to the theory, a person gets induced to do a particular task as a result of two expectancies, which are: the power invested will yield to a desired outcome and the probability that particular performance will result into the preferred outcome. In this theory, the motivational factors are being expectant, a virtue that is always created by the external forces such as reward, incentives, and punishment. Consequently, motivation in this regard can be developed from the intrinsic whereby the behaviors depend and shaped by the enjoyment of the task itself.
Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory
Equity theory refers to the degree of perceived fairness of an individual. The theory suggests that every employee gets motivated through the fair comparison of the input and the output, for example, when the labor is too heavy, and the payment is too low, there seems to be no equitability, thus resulting into low motivation(Sihag, 2016). On the other hand, when the amount of labor required is more comparable with the output that the pay, then the employee’s motivation level tends to rise and is more when the inputted workforce is less than the output. (Irfan & Marzuki, 2018)The equity theory is even more evident among employees of the same kind of job description and same organizational rank and receives a different amount of money. The ultimate results are the inequity perception that eventually affects the level of motivation. For this equity theory, it is evidential that money makes people happy and the happiness affects the level of motivation that translates into either poor performance of a better performance.
Having looked at the theories that support that motivation is a positive influencer of the performance, it is imperative to look at those theories that opposed the use of motivation as a tool for improving performance. This kind of work is not elaborate as more scholars have worked on the effect of motivation as a positive influencer of performance. Considerable work was done by Alphi Kohn, who objected the use of incentives as the tool for improving the performance of an employee in the organization.
Others theorist such as Alfie Kohn argues that incentives are not the ultimate motivators of performance. The theorists argue that rewards and punishment can motivate an employee to perform a task but does not get employees to continue doing that work for quite a longer period. (Ahluwalia & Singh, 2015)Psychological research tends to prove that rewards provide temporal compliance to the direction since they do not affect the attitude of an individual. It is in the attitude of an individual that these psychologist bases their argument since it is attitude and behavior are inseparable, and behavior are the elements of the performance.
Positive response is directly linked to higher motivation that leads to higher performance and poor behavior is linked to low motivation that results in lower work performance. Surprisingly, the theorist comes into conclusion that the real motivators, what they catalyst factors include things that enable progress in work such as the provision of clear vision, goals for a specific work and availability of resources required to accomplish sp-specific work. These factors tend to support the inner work lives of employees and comprise actions like emotional support and showing respect.
Herzberg’s Dual Theory
Conclusion
Both motivation and payment level affects the effects exerted by employees on different assigned task; a proof that is supported by various theoretical works such as the Maslow and many others. As proven by Kohns work, it is evidential that payment only alters performance for a short time and emotional support and respect are psychological effects that foster long term performance. The positive change in the psychological nature of human beings leads to the improvement of the motivation level that eventually improves the productivity of the single employee and the entire organization. The motivational theories by Maslow, expectancy theory among others prove that peace, emotions and need for self-respect leads motivation that leads to long-term performance than and payment induced motivation . Therefore in conclusion ‘happy employees are more productive than better paid employees.
References
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