Factors Affecting Employee Motivation for Organizational Effectiveness Health Care Employees

Abstract

Motivation has been one of the areas of interests from organizational psychologists and scholars since 1930s. In this competitive environment, the organization should focus on maximizing the human resource at hand. Alert leadership can surely impact the group's dynamics needed for peak performance. This can be best accomplished by motivating everyone to work together. Motivation is the art of creating conditions that allows everyone to get their work done at their own peak level of efficiency (Gellerman, 1992). Through motivation, leaders can make each person feel involved, leading to a greater degree of job satisfaction and making them more successful as individuals.Identifying the factors responsible for employees' work performance is an important aspect for any organization. Motivated employees are more efficient, productive, and help their organizations grow. Research indicates that performance is also assumed to be affected by structural and task characteristics such as whether employees are able to exercise autonomy and discretion in their work, the extent to which their tasks are clearly defined, and whether they are rewarded for hard work (Cheng, et al., 1996).Motivation is one of the highly complex but misunderstood concept. Mills and Forshaw (2006) supported this statement as though there are an abundance of motivational theories; the organizations are unable to apply the best theory of motivation due to human beings complexity and various factors influencing their behaviors. Organizations use different motivation theories for motivating employees. In Hertzberg's theory, management should begin by focusing on hygiene factors such as pay and job security, before focusing on motivator factors which include interesting work and full appreciation of work done. On the other hand, in Adams' equity theory, management should begin by focusing on areas where there may be perceived inequities, such as pay and full appreciation of work done, before focusing on interesting work andjob security. Another theory by Vroom's suggests that management should begin by focusing on rewarding, employee effort in achieving organizational goals and objectives.Of all the complexities, motivating employees holds a prime place for any organization. Some of the ways organizations use to motivate their employees are selectivity in hiring, generous pay and benefit programs, encouragement of long-term employment, flexible implementation of policies, and cooperative unions. A research by Lindner (1998) identified top motivating factors as interesting work, good wages, and full appreciation of work done followed by job security, good working conditions, promotions and growth in the organization. Feeling of being in on things, personal loyalty to employees, tactful discipline, and sympathetic help with personal problems ranked low on the results. Moreover, effective communication, acknowledging efforts of employees, involving them in decision making processes, restructuring jobs, and giving employees diversity of experience are some of the other motivational techniques. Job security is also very important for employees. If internal and external rewards provide the individual with what he or she wants or values or considers appropriate or beneficial, the individual experiences satisfaction with the job (Kleinbeck et al., 1990).Moreover there are individual differences and the same thing is perceived differently by two individuals. Individuals have different needs and expectation which they strive to fulfill in different ways. If these needs and expectations are not fulfilled, it will make them dissatisfied and the consequences are turnover, absenteeism, etc. so motivating employees has been a tough task for managers provided that employees react in different ways in the jobs assigned (Beardwell & Claydon, 2007). Employees become dissatisfied and less motivated when management fails to make employees identify their driving forces. …