Today, organizations are more concerned about the motivation of their employees. Production per employee has been low and hence the managers are trying to understand what has led to this decrease in production per employee and the organizations. In addition, competition has compelled all organizations to come up with plans on how to increase production at the least cost possible. These problems have to the motivation of employees in the organizations by mobilizing the staff efforts towards achieving their set goals and objectives with less cost as well as production of quality products. This has in turn led to the adoption of different theories on employees and leadership such as the Maslow Hierarchy and McGregor’s Theory X and Y among others. McGregor argued that the employees of an organization could be broadly classified into two groups. Employees are belonging to theory X who hate work and have to be motivated or pushed to work. The other group belongs to theory Y and are participative and to them, work is as natural as play. These do not require any motivation to work. Abraham Maslow on the other hand developed the hierarchy of needs of a human being. Maslow indicated that when a need is not satisfied, then it needs motivation.
Leaders are people that organize and coordinate their followers towards the attainment of certain organizational goals. The healthcare industry also requires leaders and that is why we have a Nursing-officer-in charge or an in-charge physician in all healthcare centers. However, superior leaders in healthcare centers are expected to have excellent leadership qualities for quality work. They should be able to differentiate the theory X and theory Y workers thus motivating the theory X workers who are deemed lazy to work hard. The leaders should be able to mobilize the other workers and motivate them by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for output maximization.
Motivation refers to doing something to entice an employee to attract his or her attention to do the work better and increase production. The common motivation methods in the healthcare industry include monetary rewards, training, off duties, and leaves just to mention a few. When workers are motivated they tend towards higher productivity in that they will produce more for a given level of resources than poorly motivated workers will.