Assignment

Title

One of the roles of management in any industry is the motivation of staff. Explain motivation and outline the methods which can be used. How important is staff motivation to the success or failure of the organisation in your future career area?

Motivation plays an important role in current management, which is defined as

motivation is inspiring people to work and produce the best results (Darlington 2009).

As an effective measure of management, it has been proved that motivation can

improve productivity and keep companies stable and safe. Recently, more and more

companies are expanding throughout the world, so competition becomes increasingly

serious (Yatsuzuka & Taguchi & Tabe 2009). Furthermore, a report of the Conference

Board (2005) pointed out that the numbers of unhappy employees are increasing (in

Kimball & Nink 2006). The result of dissatisfaction crosses all ages and income

levels. Only 14% of them feel very satisfied, while a quarter of employees are not

productive and they are simply there for their wages (Kimball & Nink 2006). Hence,

it is important that managers have to improve staff motivation, thereby enhancing

competitiveness and keeping companies stable.

This essay argues that the best approaches of motivation can be found out by

analysing the real needs of staff. Firstly, the real needs of employees will be

described, and then the way to collect information about staff needs will be discussed.

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Following this, the effective approaches to improve motivation will be explained by

analyzing the staff needs. Finally, motivation strategies are applied in the accounting

profession.

In order to describe how to motivate employees, the staff real needs should be

understood at first. In general, as Kimball and Nink (2006) point out, employees are

able and readily willing to work if they feel they are appreciated for their efforts and

hard work. In contrast, if employees are bored or not even interested in their work,

employee motivation is low but also their productivity. Hence, by identifying staff

needs and desires, the manager can optimize staff motivation. Burack (1983) indicates

that individuals’ needs could be separated into innate needs and acquired needs. Innate

needs include food, safety, sex and enough money to live on. Therefore, they can also

be called physiological needs or extrinsic needs. Acquired needs include esteem,

credit, affection and self- actualization. Similarity, they can be called psychological

needs or intrinsic needs. In addition, the Conference Board Report (in Kimball &

Nink 2006) points out that employees join a company depending on their extrinsic

needs; however, how long they can stay and how productive they are is determined by

the intrinsic needs. It means that employees’ feelings and the relationship with their

managers are much more important than the pay scale. Therefore, managers should

pay more attention to employees’ intrinsic needs.

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Furthermore, in different workplaces, staff needs could be diverse and difficult to

control. Hence, according to Bacal (2004), communication is the key skill to

understand what staff real needs are, which can assist managers in gaining first hand

information and feedback from employees. In contrast, when employees communicate

problems to managers, managers’ behaviours could not be careless or negative.

Because of managers’ negative actions, staff would become hesitant to work even

argue and refuse to communicate. It would be a serious problem when managers

cannot gain any information from employees, because employees avoid

communicating with their managers. Consequently, Silberman (2003) states that

managers need to use correct methods of improving communication. To illustrate,

when conversation is ongoing between staff and managers, managers need to listen

carefully and control the environment. Selecting time and place should depend on the

manager’s purpose, staff’s feeling and the physical layout. More importantly, using

vocal dynamics and questions deductively can achieve better results from

conversation, flowing and interactive. Lastly, before making decisions, Silberman

(2003) indicates that managers need to ask themselves one question “What is in it for

me?”, because the manager should consider what other people are thinking and

feeling. As a result, these skills can enhance manager’s communication capability, and

managers can collect the correct information about employees’ real needs, and thus

they can find the best approaches to motivate their staff.

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By analysing the staff real needs, four types of approaches will be discussed to

optimize employee motivation. Firstly, according to Guthrie (1999), the study shows

that two top factors of prediction are chosen by employees, which are “security” and

“wages”. Thus, utilizing incentive-based compensation would be a suitable method to

satisfy and motivate employees. Compensation, which is one of approaches to

generate staff motivation, can be offered as a variety of benefits, such as higher rates

of pay, promotions, insurance, high call-back pay, job security, and training.

Furthermore, Staren (2009) states that employees usually have a good reaction to

incentive-based compensation when a challenging and high rewarding objective needs

to be achieved. For example, high achievement would bring high reward. In spite of

this, it is important that the objectives should be carried out as the measuring

performance, and only the suitable goals could develop the staff’s capabilities.

However, due to the top two factors belong to extrinsic needs in nature; Smith (in

Guthrie 1999, p.65) states that these factors can “conducive to good business health

but not the cause of it”. In other words, the extrinsic needs could only ensure to

prevent dissatisfaction from employees but could not produce satisfaction by

themselves. The next step, this essay will discuss that some methods focus on intrinsic

needs to generating staff motivation.

Utilizing participative management is one of most positive methods of motivation.

According to Staren (2009), participative management means that staff would be

given the decision-making responsibility when leaders empower staff from the lower

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levels. It provides employees with a way to experience authority and control in the

domain of their job. Therefore, employees will feel a remarkable accomplishment

because of empowerment. In other words, utilizing participative management can

meet the needs of self-actualization of employees, which belongs to the intrinsic

needs. In addition, Phillips and Connell (2003) state that when employees are

empowered in their jobs, they will take more responsibility for what they produce and

understand better the difficulties inherent to management. For example, in a study of

30 steel mini-mills (Phillips & Connell 2003), employees’ turnover and motivation are

related to how people are managed and the level of empowerment. When employyees

are allowed to be involved in making management decisions, they create higher

productivity, more initiative and lower waste. In addition, when employees are able to

be involved in decision making and experience greater levels of empowerment,

turnover is reduced.

Demonstrating appropriate interpersonal behaviour is another effective way to

motivate staff and meet staff’s intrinsic needs. According to Phillips and Connell

(2003), employees need to be treated with respect, trust and integrity by supervisors,

which also belongs to intrinsic needs. Hence, firstly, managers need to ensure that

their appropriate interpersonal behaviours could create a relationship to be built on

trust between employees and leaders (Staren 2009). For example, a survey conducted

by Phillips and Connell (2003) asked 655 employees to evaluate 12 different factors

that might influence their willingness to stay with their current employers. Most

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employees chose the factor of trust. It means that employees prefer to work hard in a

trusting workplace, and they believe that they earn trust, but also win respect.

Furthermore, it is necessary that managers’ behaviours include integrity and

transparency (Staren 2009). Communication is the main part of organizational

integrity, which should be timely and accurate. Organizations need to share critical

information as soon as possible with employees. However, if leaders fail to release or

wait to share the information with employees, employees could not only perceive that

they are being kept in dark, but also consider that their leaders either do not care or do

not trust them (Phillips & Connell 2003). Consequently, supervisors utilize the

appropriate interpersonal behaviours to demonstrate a sense of caring about staff,

while managers need to pay more attentions to trust and integrity.

Applying the suitable methods of motivation in a particular department is also very

important. For example, an accounting department is the most important department

in a company. In many cases, staff from accounting department often showed low

productivity, little initiative, had less suggestions and worked mechanically. Only a

few employees can be empowered and win the leaders’ confidence, so they are treated

like insiders by managers. According to Accounting and Tax Periodicals (1999) point

out, when only a few people are given high expectations and most people become

outsiders, employees who are the outsiders will feel uncomfortable and will lack of

confidence in managers. Therefore, in order to improve staff’s motivation, the

methods of motivation can be used to make more outsiders into insiders, which is the

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key for generating motivation in an accounting department. Phillips and Connell

(2003) also claim that empowerment can lead staff to take more responsibility for

what they do. In addition, when employees are put in a position of making decisions,

they would feel that have confidence in them.

In modern society, with competition increasing, management has been become an

important way to promote the development of companies. At the same time,

motivation, as a very important role in management, also has attracted more attentions

by managers. As shown above, staff real needs are the basis for generating motivation.

By communicating with staff, managers can collect the accurate information about

staff real needs. Meeting extrinsic needs can use the approach of incentive-based

compensation, and intrinsic needs can be met by utilizing the methods of

empowerment and demonstrating appropriate interpersonal behaviours. Thus,

different needs would decide to choose the different methods of motivation.

Also, when a particular method of motivation applies in a specific department, the

particular methods should be adjusted according to specific environmental. For

example, as the method of participative management applies in accounting

department, it should not be empowered only in the minority, and it needs to allow

more staff involved in the management because of the particular situation in

accounting department. Consequently, Understanding staff real needs are the premise

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of motivation. Only the methods of motivation base on staff real needs, it can be

effectively increase productivity and employee motivation.

List of References

Accounting Department Management & Administration Report 1999, Accounting &

Tax periodicals, September, pp12-14.

Bacal, R 2004, ‘Manager’s Guide to Performance Reviews’, Tata Mcgraw-hill Pub,

USA.

Burack, EH 1983, Introduction to Management, John Wiley & Sons Inc., Canada.

Darlington, H 2009, ‘Motivation ideas for supervisors and employees’, Kitchen &Bath

Design News, Vol.27, Iss.12, pg.30

Guthrie, YM 1999, ‘Employee Motivation, Satisfaction and Productivity: A Study of

The Workplace’, UMI Company, USA

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Kimball, LS & Nink, CE 2006, ‘How to improve employee motivation, commitment,

productivity, well-being and safety’, Corrections Today, vol.68, pg.66

Phillips, J.J & Connell, A.O 2003, Managing employee retention: a strategic

accountability approach, Franklin Covey, USA

Silberman, M 2003, ‘The active manager’s tool kit’, McGraw-Hill Companies, USA

Staren ED 2009, ‘Optimizing staff motivation’, Physician Executive, vol.35, p74-77

Yatsuzuka, D and Taguchi, Y and Tabe, T 2009, ‘A study on a method of support for

improving the motivation of employees’, Computer Science, vol. 5617, p.197

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