Chapter 9: Motivating the workforce

Summary – 9 SAT (Business)

To achieve organizational objectives, employees must have the motivation, ability (appropriate
knowledge and skills), and tools (proper training and equipment) to perform their jobs.
What motivates employees to perform on the job is the focus of human relations, the study of the
behavior of individuals and groups in organizational settings.
In business, human relations involves motivating employees to achieve organizational objectives
efficiently and effectively.
Motivation is an inner drive that directs a person’s behavior toward goals. A goal is the
satisfaction of some need, and a need is the difference between an actual state and a desired state.
The Motivation Process:
• Effectively motivating employees helps keep them engaged in their work. Engagement
involves emotional involvement and commitment.
• Being engaged results in carrying out the expectations and obligations of employment.
Many employees are actively engaged in their jobs, while others are not. Some
employees do the minimum amount of work required to get by, and some employees are
completely disengaged.
• *Motivating employees to stay engaged is a key responsibility of management.
One prominent aspect of human relations is morale on an employee’s attitude toward his or
her job, employer, and colleagues.
High morale contributes to high levels of productivity, high returns to stakeholders, and
employee loyalty.
Low morale may cause high rates of absenteeism and turnover (when employees quit or are fired
and must be replaced by new employees).
➢ An intrinsic reward is the personal satisfaction and enjoyment that you feel from attaining
a goal. For example, in this class you may feel personal enjoyment in learning how
business works and aspire to have a career in business or to operate your own business
one day
➢ Extrinsic rewards are benefits and/or recognition that you receive from someone else. In
this class, your grade is extrinsic recognition of your efforts and success in the class.
MORALE BOOSTERS:
➢ Respect, involvement, appreciation, adequate compensation, promotions, a pleasant work
environment, and a positive organizational culture are all morale boosters.
How to retain good employees:

Classical Theory of Motivation:

According to the classical theory of motivation, money is the sole motivator for workers.
Taylor suggested that workers who were paid more would produce more, an idea that would
benefit both companies and workers.
Taylor also believed that incentives would motivate employees to be more productive. Some
companies let people bring their pets to work as an added incentive to make the workplace feel
more friendly.
He developed the piece-rate system, under which employees were paid a certain amount for each
unit they produced.
The Hawthorne Studies:
Elton Mayo and a team of researchers wanted to determine that Productivity increased regardless
of the physical conditions such as light and noise levels.
Also social and psychological factors could significantly affect productivity and morale.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
A theory that arranges the five basic needs of people—physiological, security, social, esteem,
and self-actualization—into the order in which people strive to satisfy them.

• Physiological needs are the most basic human needs to be satisfied—water, food, shelter,
and clothing.
• Security needs are the need to protect oneself from physical and economic harm. EX.
Reporting a dangerous workplace condition to management, maintaining safety
equipment, and purchasing insurance with income protection in the event you become
unable to work.
• Social needs are the need for love, companionship, and friendship—the desire for
acceptance by others. EX. To fulfill social needs, a person may try many things: making
friends with a co-worker, joining a group, volunteering at a hospital.
• Esteem needs are the need for respect—both self-respect and respect from others.
• Self-actualization needs : are at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy, and mean being the best
you can be. Self-actualization involves maximizing your potential.
Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory:
Frederick Herzberg proposed a theory that focuses on the job and on the environment where
work is done.
Herzberg studied various factors relating to the job which are: hygiene factors and motivational
factors.

Hygiene factors, which relate to the work setting and not to the content of the work, include
adequate wages, comfortable and safe working conditions, fair company policies, and job
security.
Motivational factors, which relate to the content of the work itself, include achievement,
recognition, involvement, responsibility, and advancement.
McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y
McGregor contrasted two views of management—the traditional view, which he called Theory
X, and a humanistic view, which he called Theory Y
Theory X assume that workers generally dislike work and must be forced to do their jobs. They
believe that the following statements are true of workers:
• The average person naturally dislikes work and will avoid it when possible.
• Most workers must be coerced, controlled, directed, or threatened with punishment to get
them to work toward the achievement of organizational objectives.
 • The average worker prefers to be directed and to avoid responsibility, has relatively little
ambition, and wants security.
Theory Y view assume that workers like to work and that under proper conditions employees
will seek out responsibility in an attempt to satisfy their social, esteem, and self actualization
needs. In a Theory Y organization, managers focus on assumptions about the nature of the
worker
McGregor describes the assumptions behind Theory Y in the following way:
• The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest.
• People will exercise self-direction and self-control to achieve objectives to which they are
committed.
• People will commit to objectives when they realize that the achievement of those goals
will bring them personal reward.
• The average person will accept and seek responsibility.
• Imagination, ingenuity, and creativity can help solve organizational problems, but most
organizations do not make adequate use of these characteristics in their employees.
• Organizations today do not make full use of workers’ intellectual potential.

Theory Z is a management philosophy that stresses employee participation in all aspects of

company decision making.
In a Theory Z organization, managers and workers share responsibilities; the management style
is participative; and employment is long term and, often, lifelong.
Equity Theory:
An assumption that how much people are willing to contribute to an organization depends on
their assessment of the fairness, or equity, of the rewards they will receive in exchange.
Expectancy theory:
Which states that motivation depends not only on how much a person wants something, but also
on the person’s perception of how likely he or she is to get it.
Goal-Setting Theory:
Goal-setting theory refers to the impact that setting goals has on performance.
Behavior modification involves changing behavior and encouraging appropriate actions by
relating the consequences of behavior to the behavior itself.
Job rotation is movement of employees from one job to another in an effort to relieve the
boredom often associated with job specialization.
Benefits of Job Rotation:
➢ Exposure to a diversity of viewpoints
➢ Motivating ongoing lifelong learning
➢ Preparing for promotion and leadership roles
➢ Building specific skills and abilities
➢ Supporting recruitment efforts
➢ Boosting overall productivity
➢ Retaining employees
Job enlargement adds more tasks to a job instead of treating each task as separate.
Job enrichment incorporates motivational factors such as opportunity for achievement,
recognition, responsibility, and advancement into a job.
flextime is a program that allows employees to choose their starting and ending times, provided
that they are at work during a specified core period.
Flextime provides many benefits:
➢ It gives employees more flexibility in choosing which hours they work.
➢ Improve the ability to recruit and retain workers who wish to balance work and home life
➢ Customers can be better served by allowing customer service over longer hours,
workstations and facilities can be better utilized by staggering employee use, and rush
hour traffic may be reduced.
➢ Flexible schedules have been associated with an increase in job satisfaction on the part of
employees.
Compressed workweek is a four-day (or shorter) period during which an employee works 40
hours.
Job sharing occurs when two people do one job.
Job sharing gives both people the opportunity to work as well as time to fulfill other
obligations, such as parenting or school.