e and the manager tries to reduce this gap. It is inducing others in a specific way towards goals specifically stated by the motivator. Naturally, these goals as also the motivation system must conform to the corporate policy of the organization. The motivational system must be tailored to the situation and to the organization. In one of the most elaborate studies on employee motivation, involving 31,000 men and 13,000 women, the Minneapolis Gas Company sought to determine what their potential employees desire most from a job. This study was carried out during a 20 year period from 1945 to 1965 and was quite revealing. The ratings for the various factors differed only slightly between men and women, but both groups considered security as the highest rated factor. company - proud to„h type of work „h advancement „hThe next three factors were; work for Surprisingly, factors such as pay, benefits and working conditions were given a low rating by both groups. So after all, and contrary to common belief, money is not the prime motivator. (Though this should not be regarded as a signal to reward employees poorly or unfairly.) Another survey also revealed that workers were actually motivated by different things to what management thought motivated them. Workers were more motivated by appreciation and the feeling of being "in on things" (Involved in the decision making processes of the organisation), than they were with money wheras management often based most of their staff motivation practices on very nearly the opposite. It just goes to show that it is wise to ask rather than assume! Managers need to provide the right organisational climate to ensure that their employees can see that by working towards the organisational goals they are also achieving some of their own goals. These goals could be such things as financial rewards or personal rewards such as the respect of their colleagues or job satisfaction or a combination of any number of things that the employee considers to be important. It is no good giving someone a pay rise if they are dissatisfied with the job and they do not see money as a very important factor in their working life. Yvonne McLaughlin suggests that there is an equation which gives a good model of the basic requirements and how they relate to each other in order to achieve the best staff performance in your organisation. Performance = Ability x Effort x Organisational support The performance of your organisation's staff is an equation of their ability to do the job (what they can do) multiplied by the effort that they are actually willing to put into the job multiplied by the amount that the organisation helps them to achieve their tasks. The job of a manager in the workplace is to get things done through employees. To do this the manager should be able to motivate employees. But that's easy said than done! Motivation practice and theory are difficult subjects, touching on several disciplines. In spite of enormous nature , basic as well as applied, the subject of motivation is not clearly understood and more often than not poorly practiced. To understand motivation one must understand human nature itself and there lies the problem! So in this discussion I will focus on the the needs theories, Cognitive theories and the Reinforcement theory whch are the tools the manager need. APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING MOTIVATION Theories are ways that we try to explain and understand complex and abstract issues and ideas. Abstract ideas are ideas like truth or love. They are very difficult to talk about because they are very hard to describe and define. They are not clear cut or concrete. Motivation is a fairly difficult area and there are a number of theories which have been developed to try to explain why people behave in the ways that they do and to try to predict or guess what people actually will do, based on these theories. Basically there are two general approaches to motivational theory. Content theories -

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