MotivationDiscuss the various theories to explain motivation at work. There are many ways in which to motivate a worker in the workplace. Motivation means getting the worker to focus and put his/her all into the work they do. It sets the worker in the same direction as management and gets everyone working for the business goals. F.W Taylor (1910) was one of the first people to study motivation. He saw what a lot of us now take for granted, money is a motivational factor. If you give someone more money to do a job they will out more effort into it. Piecework does this in an even stricter way because money was given can be taken for granted. Piecework avoids this by awarding money for each unit produced. The scheme may even set boundaries for workers to try and achieve and for every unit produced over that boundary the worker will get a bit more money per unit produced e.g. for each unit produced over 100 units the worker will receive 20p more. This however does create pressure for the worker to get to these boundaries and this can be demotivating if the boundaries are set too high for the worker to achieve them. After Taylor came Elton Mayo (1924-32) whom looked beyond money and started to look into the human side of mo
tivation. We are all human and management needed to see that a little bit a human kindness would go along way. He went to a factory (Hawthorne Ltd) and studied the workers there. He alternated the breaks, gave more frequent breaks and upgraded working conditions to make work a bit more pleasant. He found that the overall productivity of the workers was higher after the changes. This was known as the 'Hawthorne Effect' project, which proved his theory. Abraham Maslow (1954) developed the human side of motivation in creating the 'hierarchy of needs' which showed the five stages in an employees life. An employee would start at the bottom and work their way up the pyramid of needs until they had reached the top. However just because an employee had reached the top didn't mean they would stay there. The five levels were;· Physiological· Security· Social· Esteem· Self-ActualisationIf the company can offer the employee to gain each level of this hierarchy then it will motivate them to do whatever is required to reach it. For example if a firm offers a good rate of pay and working benefits this will provide Security, obtaining the security needs level. If the firm offers good working conditions and opportunities to socialise this will satisfy the workers Social needs and could even lead onto the esteem level being reached where the employee has had enough chances to progress through the company and earn status in the company to develop Esteem. Self-Actualisation is very hard to reach but when it is reaches it means that the worke
Example Essays Home
