How managers can motivate their workers (3)

OLUFEMI ADEDAMOLA OYEDELE

The UK Department of Business Innovation and Skills report suggested employees’ motivation levels were negatively being affected, as only 27 percent feel positive about the year ahead. “If leaders don’t explain where the business is going and what it’s seeking to achieve, how can people be motivated or know what they’re meant to contribute? Clear goals are key ingredients for achieving performance and productivity” (D. MacLeod & N. Clarke in “Engaging for Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement”, published by Office of Public Sector Information in London in 2009). Communication of business goals and how to achieve them is essential in employees’ motivation management.

Motivation factors that are affective and effective in one employee or in a group of employees may not be affective or effective in others. This is an area where study, query and feedback will have to be carried out. For example, the issue of individual bonus as motivation factor in employees may spur employees to be ‘distrustful’, ‘self-centred’, ‘selfish’ and ‘individualistic’ instead of working for the collective success of a team. Example is awarding the highest goals scorer in a football match. If the award winner does not manage the award well, it may serve as a disincentive to other team members. The Parliament in the UK enacted an Act to make provision about financial services and markets; to make provision about debt respite schemes; to make provision about Help-to-Save accounts; and for connected purposes on 29th April, 2021. In 2009, Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, came up with the Bank Payroll Tax, which was included in the UK Finance Act 2010, targeting the old bonus system where bank bosses collected bonuses based on percentage of profit, according to a BBC News report.

Bonus can instigate good performance, but experience over the years show that some bank bosses only cover up, produce ‘cosmeticized’ Annual Report and push the ‘bad days’ forward. In trying to get more bonuses, they go into shady deals, they do not write off “Bad Debts” and place them under “Debtors” so that they can have bogus and inflated “Turnover” and “Profit after Tax”. The liability is always inherited by their successors. If employees collect bonuses for exceeding expectations, they should also be fined for receding expectations. For employees to be fully motivated, managers must be aware that human beings are different in the way they think, see, view, feel, do things and reason. Myer-Briggs model (1956) talked about human differences. This model is about personality types. Myer-Briggs identified four ways people differ from each other. These are: the way they think; the way they view; the way they feel/perceive and the way they see things.

To satisfy an individual, you must know what he or she needs either by observation or through interviewing. Psychologist Eduard Spranger stated there are six values in human beings which we all have in varying degrees. They are: theoretical (passion for knowledge), utilitarian (passion for money and what is useful), aesthetic (passion for beauty, balance, and harmony), social (passion for service to others), individualistic (passion for power and control), and traditional (passion for finding the highest meaning in life). He said your top two values are what drive you and must be fulfilled for you to achieve happiness in life. Managers must create time to identify the passions of their workers if they want to motivate them.

Motivating employees begins with recognizing that to do their best work, people must be in an environment that meets their basic emotional drives to acquire, bond, comprehend, and defend (Nitin Nohria, Boris Groysberg and Linda-Elin Lee, 2008). According to Amabile (1989), “in today’s knowledge economy, ‘creativity’ is more important than ever. But many companies unwittingly employ managerial practices that kill it. How? By crushing their employees’ intrinsic motivation, the strong internal desire to do something based on interests and passions (innovate). Managers do not kill creativity on purpose. Yet in the pursuit of productivity, efficiency, and control – all worthy business imperatives – they undermine creativity”. Managers should allow employees to contribute to product design through employee’s inclusion in decision making.

J. M. Mishra and M. McKendall (1993) suggested that employee’s suggestion programmes (ESPs) should be used to involve employees in decision making and motivate them. “An ESP represents an opportunity to tap the intelligence and resourcefulness of an organisation’s employees, and by doing so, reap significant cost savings. Those companies and managers that have an ESP programme, uniformly, list economic advantages first when describing the benefits of their employee suggestion programmes”. Employees’ motives and psyche have changed appreciably in production (manufacturing and service industries). All employees want is the opportunity from the management to prove their worth (employees’ worth). Medium-, and high-, cadre employees no more want to be “driven”, but to be “moved”, not to be “ordered”, but to be “shown the way” and not to be “paid” but to be “compensated”.