How to Motivate Your Employees Essay

Introduction

Employees form the most important part of any organization. According to Chopra (2002), employees are the most important assert within an organization. Employees will determine success or failure of an organization based on the approach they give to the various tasks assigned to them.

Employee motivation is therefore, very important in ensuring that employees achieve desired result in various tasks assigned to them in order to ensure an overall success of the firm. Motivated employees tend to give their best effort in all that they do. The work with very little supervision, and do not wait to be directed to perform given tasks. They work with the vision of the organization in their heart, always determined to see success in all that they do.

It is because of this that various firms have come to appreciate the need to have a group of motivated employees. Firms are currently struggling to ensure that they offer their employees the best working environment that will ensure that they are constantly motivated. Employees’ motivation always has a direct impact on the success of the firm in the given industry. This paper focuses on ways in which employees of a given firm can be motivated.

The Need for Employee Motivation

For a long time, labor has not been given its rightful position in many organizations. Many of the managements have not thought of viewing their employees as very important asserts. However, the happenings of the recent past have proven that labor force is one of the most important asserts to any given organization.

When the management lays down objectives to be achieved, it is always the employees who are expected to implement the policies that would bring the desired results. It is this work force that would be expected to turn the policies from paper to reality. Therefore, retention of employees is very important. Employees should be retained within the organization to ensure that the firm’s operations are consistent.

High turnover rate of employees is not healthy for the firm’s prosperity (Anderson, 2004). This is because it does not only affect the smooth implementation of policies within the firm, but also leads to increased cost of training new employees. It is even worse that the employees would go away having learnt the strategies of the firm, making the firm vulnerable to its competitors.

The management should therefore device methods of hiring qualified employees and retaining them within the firm. One of the best ways to achieve this is through motivation. It is through motivation that employees will feel attached to the firm and therefore feel committed to the firm.

Relationship between Employee Motivation and Success of a Firm

Armstrong (2002) says that employees are the implementing arm of the organization. While the top executives formulate the policies to be implemented by the organization, most of their tasks always end in the paper. It is upon the employees to make these blueprints a reality.

In his words, employees are the engine of the organization. When well taken care of and put in a proper condition, they would always give the best of the results to the organization. However, when they are neglected and left to ‘rust’ they will always give leap service and the output will be very disappointing.

Motivating employees within the organization is very important. There is a direct link between employee motivation and success of a firm. It is very important that a firm increases the rate of employee motivation because of a number of reasons. In most of the occasions, policies are always developed to last for one whole year. However, these policies are always units in the larger vision of the firm.

A vision may be developed to be achieved in a time span of say thirty year or so. This duration is long and the firm may not take a direct approach towards achieving this vision. It therefore has to split this vision into yearly strategic objectives. When the year begins, the firm would plan with its current work force.

When some of the employees leave along the year because of lack of motivation, it would be a blow to the success of that year’s strategic objectives. The firm would be forced to look for a replacement and train them and make them understand the objectives to be achieved (Barrows & Powers, 2008). This is time consuming and costly venture that would reduce the success of the organization.

Changing the employees on a yearly basis is not good either. This is because in so doing, the vision of the firm will be lost. It will not be possible to realize the vision because every year, the firm would be forced to start with new employees who may not understand the vision, and how it was developed in the first place. This minimizes chances of achieving expected goals within the organization.

Retaining employees through proper motivation is another way of cutting cost. It is always necessary to train new employees to the firm on how to manage various forces that affect the organization. It would cost the management time and money to ensure that new recruits understand the working environment and are able to perform what is expected of them. Retaining employees would eliminate this cost.

It is also easier to form a community that understands itself with a workforce that last for over five years within the firm. Everyone would know exactly what is expected of him or her, and therefore the task of directing them would be much easier. This can only be possible if the employees feel motivated within the firm.

Employee Motivation in the 21^st Century

The core of this research is to determine how best a firm can motivate its employees. Having categorically looked at the importance of motivating employees, it is prudent to determine ways through which a given firm can ensure that its grip on its employees is not shaken.

However, there are some factors that must be considered before determining how best a firm can motivate its employees. It is an acceptable fact that for a firm to motivate employees, it must start by employing some of the best talents that would help it achieve its goals.

As such, it is important to understand how best a firm can recruit new employees. After recruiting the best of the employees, as per the measures that have been put in place, it is also important to appreciate that not all of them would leave up to the expectations (Chuang & Liao, 2010).

As such, it would again be appropriate to determine who to retain because a firm can only retain the best of the workforce in order to be in a position to achieve the maximum. It is upon the determination of the best workforce to retain that a firm can now develop the best ways to motivating such employees.

Strategies of Employee Motivation

To ensure that there is a constantly motivated workforce, it would require the management to employ the right strategies that would ensure that it succeeds in this. It may appear as a simple task of making employees happy. However, it goes beyond this.

To motivate employees within the firm, there are a series of strategies that a firm should employ in order to ensure that employees are constantly satisfied. The secret behind this retention lies in ensuring that the employee is satisfied and feels challenged with the present task. This will cause the drive in him to want to come tomorrow and beat the challenge. The recommendations below gives a detailed strategy of how to employ the right individuals to the firm, and how such individuals should be retained, once employed.

Recommendations on How to Motivate Employees

This has been the core of this research. The researcher was interested in determining how best to motivate employees within a given firm. According to Griffin and Moorhead (2009), the secret behind the motivation of employees within a firm is through understanding their special needs. Human being by nature wants to be appreciated. This way, they feel that their effort is recognized. They feel motivated, and this way, they are in a position to perform better within the firm. Motivation comes in various forms.

1. Promotion in the place of work. People always feel so much appreciated if they are made to raise a step or two in their workplace. However minimal this rise may be, it would be appreciated by the employees and this would make them work harder in order to be given even higher ranks the firm. They would remain in the firm with the hope that one day they would rise to the highest position in the firm
2. Giving employees financial incentives. Although there are many factors that would encourage an individual to get employment, the ultimate goal is to earn good salaries that would enable him or her be in a position to take good care of the family. Financial incentives are some of the best ways through which a firm can ensure that they make employees feel that their efforts are appreciated. It would motivate them to work harder and will not make them think of leaving the firm.
3. Personal appreciation from the management team would be a high motivation to the employee. It would go a long way in ensuring that the employee is motivated within the firm.
4. Public praises. It is important that when an employee performs exceptionally well, the management should praise such employees publicly. Such public praises will make the employees attached to the firm.
5. High involvement and clear communication. The management should always ensure that employees are involved. They should be made to feel that they are responsible for every task they have to undertake. This way, they would always want to see their departments excel, a fact that may make them stay motivated within the organization.
6. Team building seminars. One of the best way of motivating employees and ensuring that they work as a team is by organizing team building seminars. Though such seminars, employees would form very strong bonds amongst themselves and with the firm. As such, they would not think of leaving the firm for another because the bond would always keep them together.
7. The management should also foster trust. The employees should have trust in employees. They should be made to feel that the management is caring. The management should always ensure that they keep trust by always honoring their promises.
8. Challenging experience. Human being, under a normal circumstance, work best when provided with challenging tasks. They feel that they have something to accomplish tomorrow, because they feel that today’s work is not satisfactory. Such an employee would always be thinking of ways to beat the deadlines other than engaging in unconstructive tasks because of lack of motivation.

Conclusion

Employees are very important to an organization. Success of organization will start by having employees who feel that there is need to succeed. Success can be achieved with motivated employees. Motivated employees will always work as a team and be committed to their tasks in order to foster success to the organization.

There are various ways of ensuring that employees are constantly motivated within the organization. One of the ways through which this can be achieved is through promotion at workplace. The employees feel that they are valued in the firm. Another prominent way of motivating employees is through good remuneration. This makes them feel that the firm cares for their families. There are many other motivational methods that ensure that employees work within the expected limits.

References

Anderson, T. (2004). Research Methods in Human Resource Management. London: Chattered institute of Personell Management Publishing.

Armstrong, M. (2002). Employee Rewards. Trowbridge: CIPD Publishing.

Barrows, C., & Powers, T. (2008). Introduction to Management in the Hospitality Industry. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons.

Chopra, S. (2002). Motivation in Management. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons.

Chuang, C., & Liao, H. (2010). Strategic Human Resource in Service Context: Taking Care of Business by Taking Care of Employees and Customers. Personell psychology , 63(1), 153-196.

Griffin, R., & Moorhead, G. (2009). Organizational Behavior: Managing People and Organizations. Mason: Cengage learning.