Motivating Employees and Team building Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Motivating Employees and Team building - Essay Example Motivation is something abstract and the difficulties arise when one tries to explain its meaning and application. A wide variety of assumptions have been made on motivation by observing the resultant behaviour of motivation. Based on these assumptions and research findings, motivation has been defined in a number of ways. Vroom defines motivation as a process, which governs choices made by persons or lower organisms among alternative forms of voluntary activity. (Vroom, 1964 as cited in Putti) Motivations are the act of inducing an individual to follow a desired course of action. The desired course of action may be for the good of the individual or for the one who is inducing the individual towards a desired course of action or both. Zedeck and blood contend that motivation is a predisposition to act in a specific goal-directed way. (Sedeck & Blood, 1974 as cited in Putti) Atchison further defines Motivation as the immediate influence on the direction, vigor, and persistence of beha viour. (Atchison, 1964 as cited in Putti) on the other hand Gellerman defines motivation as steering one's actions towards certain goals and committing a certain part of one's energies to reach them. (Gellerman, 1963 as cited in Putti) In the view of Shartle, motivation is "a reported urge or tension to move in a given direction or to achieve a certain goal. (Shartle, 1956 as cited in Putti) Hence, Motivation can make the employees get all the targets settled by the Organisations. There are several ways by which employees can be motivated the most important is to address the needs of the employees. Just as the definition of basic human needs is a highly complex task, it naturally follows that there are no easy assumptions concerning what employees really want from the organisation. In various surveys, the following are some of the more typically specified wants. The first and the foremost important are pay. This want helps in satisfying physiological, security, and egoistic needs. The design of a monetary compensation system is exceedingly complex since it serves to satisfy multiple needs and cannot alone motivate the whole person. After the payment needs Security of job is another important motivating factor. Because of threats from technological change, this want is high on the list or priorities for many employees and labour unions. The underlying need of general security is also high on the list of priorities in the suggested need hierarchy of Maslow. However management can aid the process by carefully planned and executed induction programs, provision of means to socialise through rest periods and recreational programs, and promoting the formation of work teams through proper work-station layouts and human-related work procedures. With all the above, the provision of credit for work done is also an important motivator. This want issues from the egoistic classification of needs and can be supplied by management through verbal praise of excellent work, monetary rewards for suggestions, and public recognition through awards. Releases in employee's newspapers, and the like. Also, Job enrichment issues from both the need for recognition and the drive toward self-realisation and achievement is an important