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Table of Contents

Table of Contents ..............................................................................................................................1

Topic: Motivation - Introduction .....................................................................................................3
Motivation - Theories ........................................................................................................................4
Motivating employees - financial rewards .....................................................................................6
Motivating employees - non financial rewards .............................................................................8

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Topic: Motivation - Introduction

It may seem obvious, but why do we want a highly motivated workforce?

Motivation is the will to work. This comes from the enjoyment of the work itself and/or from the desire to
achieve certain goals e.g. earn more money or achieve promotion.

Managers spend considerable time working out how best to motivate their workers and there are a number
of different opinions about how this can be best done.

A well-motivated workforce can provide the following advantages:

Better productivity (amount produced per employee). This can lead to lower unit costs of production and
so enable a firm to sell its product at a lower price
Lower levels of absenteeism as the employees are content with their working lives
Lower levels of staff turnover (the number of employees leaving the business). This can lead to lower
training and recruitment costs
Improved industrial relations with trade unions
Contented workers give the firm a good reputation as an employer so making it easier to recruit the best
workers
Motivated employees are likely to improve product quality or the customer service associated with a
product.

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Motivation - Theories

There are a number of different views as to what motivates workers. The most commonly held views or
theories are discussed below and have been developed over the last 100 years or so. Unfortunately these
theories do not all reach the same conclusions!

Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 – 1917) put forward the idea that workers are motivated mainly by pay. His
Theory of Scientific Management argued the following:
• Workers do not naturally enjoy work and so need close supervision and control
• Therefore managers should break down production into a series of small tasks
• Workers should then be given appropriate training and tools so they can work as efficiently as possible
on one set task.
• Workers are then paid according to the number of items they produce in a set period of time- piece-rate
pay.
• As a result workers are encouraged to work hard and maximise their productivity.

Taylor’s methods were widely adopted as businesses saw the benefits of increased productivity levels and
lower unit costs. The most notably advocate was Henry Ford who used them to design the first ever
production line, making Ford cars. This was the start of the era of mass production.

Taylor’s approach has close links with the concept of an autocratic management style (managers take all the
decisions and simply give orders to those below them) and Macgregor’s Theory X approach to workers
(workers are viewed as lazy and wish to avoid responsibility).

However workers soon came to dislike Taylor’s approach as they were only given boring, repetitive tasks to
carry out and were being treated little better than human machines. Firms could also afford to lay off
workers as productivity levels increased. This led to an increase in strikes and other forms of industrial
action by dis-satisfied workers.

Mayo
Elton Mayo (1880 – 1949) believed that workers are not just concerned with money but could be better
motivated by having their social needs met whilst at work (something that Taylor ignored). He introduced
the Human Relation School of thought, which focused on managers taking more of an interest in the
workers, treating them as people who have worthwhile opinions and realising that workers enjoy interacting
together.

Mayo conducted a series of experiments at the Hawthorne factory of the Western Electric Company in
Chicago. He isolated two groups of women workers and studied the effect on their productivity levels of
changing factors such as lighting and working conditions.

He expected to see productivity levels decline as lighting or other conditions became progressively worse

What he actually discovered surprised him: whatever the change in lighting or working conditions, the
productivity levels of the workers improved or remained the same.
From this Mayo concluded that workers are best motivated by:
Better communication between managers and workers (Hawthorne workers were consulted over the
experiments and also had the opportunity to give feedback)
Greater manager involvement in employees working lives (Hawthorne workers responded to the
increased level of attention they were receiving)
Working in groups or teams. ( Hawthorne workers did not previously regularly work in teams)
In practice therefore businesses should re-organise production to encourage greater use of team working
and introduce personnel departments to encourage greater manager involvement in looking after
employees’ interests. His theory most closely fits in with a paternalistic style of management.

Maslow

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Abraham Maslow (1908 – 1970) along with Frederick Herzberg (1923-) introduced the Neo-Human Relations
School in the 1950’s, which focused on the psychological needs of employees. Maslow put forward a theory
that there are five levels of human needs which employees need to have fulfilled at work.

All of the needs are structured into a hierarchy (see below) and only once a lower level of need has been
fully met, would a worker be motivated by the opportunity of having the next need up in the hierarchy
satisfied. For example a person who is dying of hunger will be motivated to achieve a basic wage in order to
buy food before worrying about having a secure job contract or the respect of others.

A business should therefore offer different incentives to workers in order to help them fulfill each need in
turn and progress up the hierarchy (see below). Managers should also recognise that workers are not all
motivated in the same way and do not all move up the hierarchy at the same pace. They may therefore
have to offer a slightly different set of incentives from worker to worker.

Herzberg
Frederick Herzberg (1923-) had close links with Maslow and believed in a two-factor theory of motivation.
He argued that there were certain factors that a business could introduce that would directly motivate
employees to work harder (Motivators). However there were also factors that would de-motivate an
employee if not present but would not in themselves actually motivate employees to work harder (Hygiene
factors)

Motivators are more concerned with the actual job itself. For instance how interesting the work is and how
much opportunity it gives for extra responsibility, recognition and promotion. Hygiene factors are factors
which ‘surround the job’ rather than the job itself. For example a worker will only turn up to work if a
business has provided a reasonable level of pay and safe working conditions but these factors will not make
him work harder at his job once he is there. Importantly Herzberg viewed pay as a hygiene factor which is
in direct contrast to Taylor who viewed pay, and piece-rate in particular

Herzberg believed that businesses should motivate employees by adopting a democratic approach to
management and by improving the nature and content of the actual job through certain methods. Some of
the methods managers could use to achieve this are:
Job enlargement – workers being given a greater variety of tasks to perform (not necessarily more
challenging) which should make the work more interesting.
Job enrichment - involves workers being given a wider range of more complex, interesting and
challenging tasks surrounding a complete unit of work. This should give a greater sense of achievement.
Empowerment means delegating more power to employees to make their own decisions over areas of
their working life.

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Motivating employees - financial rewards

In reality, despite the views of Herzberg that monetary methods of motivation have little value, firms still
use money as a major incentive. There are a variety of payment systems that a business could use to
motivate its employees.

Wages and Salaries

Wages are normally paid per hour worked and workers receive money at the end of the week. Overtime is
paid for any additional hours worked during the week. However salaries are annual (based on a year’s work)
and are paid at the end of each month.

Advantage Disadvantage
Workers may resent being paid the same as a
Simple and easy to use for businesses
colleague who they feel is not so productive

Piece-rate
Piece-rate is paying a worker per item they produce in a certain period of time. It was recommended by the
motivation theorist Taylor and had close links with working on production lines.

Advantages Disadvantages
Workers do not concentrate on quality of work as
Increases speed of work and therefore productivity
emphasis on speed of work
Often workers not entitled to sick pay or holiday pay Workers may ignore company rules, such as Health and
which reduces cost safety issues, in they try to speed up output

Fringe Benefits
These are often known as ‘perks’ and are items an employee receives in addition to their normal wage or
salary e.g. company car, private health insurance, free meals.

Advantages Disadvantages
Encourages loyalty to a company so employees may Widespread use to a majority of employees will
stay for longer increase costs sharply

Helps meet a workers human and social needs

Performance-related pay
This is paid to those employees who meet certain targets. The targets are often evaluated and reviewed in
regular appraisals with managers. It is system that is being increasingly used in businesses in the UK.

Advantages Disadvantages
It can be difficult to measure the performance of
Easier for managers to monitor and control their staff
employees in service based industries
Reduces the amount of time spent on industrial It does not promote teamwork and can lead to
relations (negotiations with trade unions) workers feeling they are treated unfairly if colleagues
are awarded more

Profit sharing
This is a system whereby employees receive a proportion of the company’s profits. This means staff are in
the same position as shareholders.

Advantages Disadvantages

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Should improve loyalty to the company and break The share given to employees is often too small to
down the “them and us” barrier if all staff given same provide a worthwhile incentive
amount

Workers are more likely to accept changes to their Workers may feel that however hard they work it will
working practices if they can see that it may decrease not have a noticeable effect on the company’s profit
costs and so increase profit level, so therefore no incentive

Share ownership
This is a common incentive for senior managers who are given shares in the company rather than a
straightforward bonus or membership of a profit sharing scheme. It means that some staff are also
shareholders.

Advantages Disadvantages
Employees will work harder as they have a stake in Often only available to senior managers so can cause
the company, just like a shareholder has resentment among other staff.
Workers are less likely to leave the firm

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Motivating employees - non financial rewards

Job enrichment
Job enrichment means giving workers more interesting, challenging and complex tasks. Workers should also
be given the opportunity to complete a whole unit of work rather than individual separate tasks.

This is motivating for several reasons:

• It gives workers the chance to test themselves and use their full range of ability
• It is more motivating than job enlargement or job rotation (see below) as it increases the complexity or
challenge involved in the task, rather than just simply providing more variety to the work.
• Workers should obtain a greater sense of achievement and possibly more praise or recognition of their
work when they have successfully completed a tougher task
• Workers respond better as managers have shown trust in the fact that they possess the ability to handle
the increasing complexity and pressures of the work.
• The managers need to judge carefully however what an appropriate task is for a worker to handle- if it
is too complex for the workers or they do not posses the correct skill level, then expensive mistakes
could be made.

Job enlargement
Job enlargement means simply giving workers more tasks to do of a similar nature or complexity. This will
reduce the monotony or repetition involved in a persons work but over time this will not increase a person’s
satisfaction or sense of achievement.

Job rotation
Job Rotation is a part of this and involves having a wider variety of tasks to do, perhaps rotating jobs with
other members in your team, but not increasing the challenge of the job.

Teamworking
Teamworking is where employees work in groups or teams. This can meet a worker’s social needs as a
person can more easily build friendships and feel a sense of belonging to a unit or group and hopefully to
the business as a whole. This applies in much the same way as being a member of a sports team or any
other team representing a school or college.

A business can create a number of different types of team; examples include production teams (often
known as cells), quality circles and management teams.

Teamworking has other advantages to a firm over and above improving motivation. It can lead to greater
flexibility of production, as employees are likely to be multi-skilled (able to do more than one persons job)
as they have learnt from other team members or undertaken formal job rotation. This means they can cover
any absences and can quickly adapt to a new production technique.

Empowerment
Empowerment is like delegation. It is when power or authority is given to employees so they can make their
own decisions regarding their working life. For instance workers have control over how to use their time and
deciding the priority of tasks that need to be done. They are encouraged to consider problems they face and
come up with some solutions.

For empowerment to be successful, workers must have adequate training and/or good skill levels in order to
be trusted to make the correct decisions. If they do not, then expensive mistakes can be made that could
affect the whole business. It is the manager’s job to judge whether a subordinate can cope with more
authority and decision-making power. It should be noted however, that even if managers pass down
authority to their subordinates, they are still responsible for the work that is done by them.

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