...Motivating Employees Durrell L. Burkes MGT/312 November 24, 2014 When it comes to motivation, there are many things that set people apart as far as what motivates them. For some, it’s the feeling they take in after they have accomplished a daunting task. For others, it’s simply what rewards or accolades they will receive after they have accomplished their feat. Whatever the motivation, top companies are finding that having the right mindset and figuring out what keeps employees motivated to perform at their highest abilities is proving to keep them successful as well. A company that has picked up on finding ways to keep their employees motivated to perform efficiently is the SAS Institute. Their growing numbers accompanied with a low turnover rate shows the company is doing something right in getting and retaining the best people. Since its inception in 1976, the SAS Institute has grown into the largest privately owned software company with over two billion dollars in total revenue. While many software companies experience high turnover rates in the 20% range, SAS has been able to keep their turnover rates at less than five percent. The way they have done this is how they are able to keep their employees motivated to perform at a high level while still enjoying their work. SAS allows for much autonomy on the job, encouraging employees to enjoy what they do. They do much development of new products in house, which encourages the employees to be creative and open-minded...
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...1 Motivating Employees Case Study Camden Ripley MGT/312 13 April, 2015 Frank Fletcher 2 How does SAS motivate its employees? The company has a reputation as a pioneer when it comes to the perks it offers employees, but these perks are not given with a mentality of offer everything but the kitchen sink. There is careful thinking and planning behind the choice of perks the company offers. SAS conducts regular employee satisfaction surveys, and any future benefits and perks offered are planned in response to the results. The company wants to eliminate stressors and anything that dissatisfies from people’s lives. To keep employees healthy and fit, there are athletic fields; a full gym; a swimming pool; and tennis, basketball, and racquetball courts on campus. Plus, the company offers free on-site health care for employees, covers dependents at their fully staffed primary medical care center, and offers unlimited sick leave. The company understands that employees have a life and encourages employees to work reasonable hours and then go home to their families. In fact, a famous motto in the company is, “If you are working for more than 8 hours, you are just adding bugs.” (SAS website) SAS is truly one of the industry leaders in leveraging its treatment of people for continued business success...
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...Motivating Employees in the Workplace Aimee Ecton South Texas College HRPO 2301 Human Resource Management Mr. Frank Gomez December 12, 2012 Motivation helps guide people towards a specific goal and pushes people to push their efforts until they reach that goal and relates that wide range of psychological processes. It has been determined that employees who are motivated produce higher and greater quantities, work harder, and stay with organizations longer. People desire different things and have different satisfaction levels so it is important for an organization to consider many things when trying to motivate their employees. First of all there is the need based theory of motivation. Needs are the physical and psychological requirements that must be met to ensure survival and well-being. Abraham Maslow derived a hierarchy of needs that suggests that people are motivated by these needs. Then there are process theories and these theories are based on how people become motivated. Finally, of course there are the rewards. All motivation leads towards some sort of reward and they consist of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. Needs are the phsycological and or physical requirements that need to be met in order to ensure well-being and survival. A need that is capable of motivating behavior is called prepotent. Abraham Maslow came up with a hierarchy of needs that describes the fundamental theories of personal needs. He suggests that each need has to be satisfied a substantial amount...
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...Motivating Employees Motivated and well-trained employees who care about their work product are the keys to success in any business. An investment in employee motivation will pay divideds in terms of productivity and longevity of employment, which leads to more experienced workers who feel more successful. (Inc.com) It is important to empower employees to be innovative and to solve problems creatively (Strauss). Everyone has something that motivates them. Primary school teachers know this. (Anderman & Midgely, 1999). Withholding recess from an anti-social child probably will not encourage her to do her homework. However, giving the same student one-on-one attention for good work might be the right motivation to keep her on the right track. Employers, too, must recognize that different people are motivated by different things. One employee might be motivated by praise while another is motivated by materialistic compensation. A smart manager will recognize the differences in motivation factors and will find ways to address them on multiple levels and using a wide variety of motivational tools. This requires spending the time to discover each worker's values, priorities and hopes for the future (Inc.com). Extrinsic motivation can come in many forms, including the most basic, money. Salaries, bonuses and promotions aren't the only way to provide extrinsic motivation to employees. Non-cash rewards such as movie tickets, lottery tickets, company products, luncheons and time off...
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...Motivating Employees Zachary Parker Instructor: Joan Mason Behavioral Science 225 Axia College at University of Phoenix November 24, 2011 According to Ray Williams co-founder of Success IQ University, motivating people to do their best work, consistently, has been an enduring challenge for executives and managers (Ray Williams, February 2010). Many individuals may believe that managers can make there employees do what they want by simply demand or with extrinsic motivation. As one may learned that demanding anything from someone will only only last so long before the subordinate questioned or the authority. Extrinsic motivation strategies seem to carry similar results in terms of length of success. For example, a manager may offer his or her employees a breakfast or dinner at a restaurant as a reward for completing a specific task or meeting a goal. Unfortunately in this case employees will look forward to receiving a reward for doing their job, so when there is no reward to obtain employees may loss motivation to work their best. Some employees will associate hard work with constant reward and may not be motivated by anything else. For this reason, managers can not do anything thing that will motivate employees to consistently put forth their best efforts. Employees must find something within themselves that will fuel their desire to be hard workers on a consistent basis. These desires may consist of taking pride in their job, appreciating their role in...
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...Motivating Employees - Empowered and Appreciated Question 1: According to Maslow's hierarchy, which basic needs did Shank's old boss fail to meet? Explain why the needs have not been met. What could be done to meet these missing needs? (25 points) Answer: The levels of esteem, safety, belonging, and self actualization were all failures. She mentions being made to feel like simply a number which affects the sense of belonging and esteem. The belonging is something she really likes at Flight 001 because they feel friendly and like a family where her last job did not. The self actualization was the lack of motivation because the former boss said she could be replaced at anytime, she was just a number. The sense of safety is also crushed when one is told they could be replaced at anytime. Showing appreciation for work done, spending time with employees by management and not making comments about replacing people and lowering their value all would have made Amanda feel more motivated, safe, and allowed her to grow and become more confident. Question 2: Use the Expectancy Theory and/or the Equity Theory of motivation to explain how feeling underpaid might affect the work of a Flight 001 associate and what a manager can do to increase the employee's motivation. (25 points) Answer: Expectancy theory states that a person’s behavior is influenced by the expected outcomes. In this case, low pay would lead the person to feel like no matter what they did, their efforts would not be...
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...There are many existing theories and models that argue the various approaches to "what motivates us?" A few include Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs," (Starling, 2011) which encourages employers to enable their employee’s potential, Frederick Herzberg's job enrichment theory that addresses certain factors that cause satisfaction and dissatisfaction at work (Starling, 2011). In addition there's Elton Mayo's approach (Starling, 2011) to participative management that suggests workers are motivated when they believe that their organization or manager cares about them. Finally there is Dan Pink (2010) who proposes that money is not what motivates us, but “it’s the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world” (Daniel H. Pink Drive 2011). In his video, Dan Pink (2010), identifies these three factors as, Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. It’s interesting to note, that Maslow’s Hierarchy was developed during the 1940’s - 1950’s. Frederick Herzberg’s motivational theories were developed in 1959 and Elton Mayo’s studies were conducted between 1927 - 1932. I say this because their theories seem to be more pertinent today than ever. Money is important, but we all want and need more than compensation alone. There is a sense of fulfillment that needs to be reached that money can’t replace. People need to be recognized and feel they are part of a winning team or part of something that makes a difference. They...
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...Motivation is the key to keeping employees interested in working hard and meeting daily demands from a company. In my point of view managers must be able to successfully motivate their employees in order to prevent high turnovers, satisfy employee needs, and keep an overall good reputation for the company. With a happy employee you will have happy customers as well. Motivational Strategies I believe that in order to properly motivate your employees a manager must first find out how and what different strategies will work for which employees. There are many ways to motivate workers, but I think there are more effective strategies that work on some workers than others. That being said I believe that managers must get on some sort of personal level with their workers in order to efficiently motivate them to work harder and reach the company’s goals. Money The most controversial idea of motivational strategies is money. I personally think that if an employee is not being paid what they believe to be suitable the will be unhappy regardless of any other motivator. Unless the need or want for money is being met, the employee will most likely feel unappreciated and unhappy regardless of any other motivation strategies that an employer might use. A personal example I would like to use is when I worked as a receptionist at Supercuts, I was held responsible for doing a lot of managerial work, without being compensated for it. I soon became overloaded with work, tired, and I was still...
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...of forces that cause people to behave in certain ways. A motivated employee generally is more quality oriented. Highly motivated worker are more productive than apathetic worker one reason why motivation is a difficult task is that the workforce is changing. Employees join organizations with different needs and expectations. Their values, beliefs, background, lifestyles, perceptions and attitudes are different. Not many organizations have understood these and not many HR experts are clear about the ways of motivating such diverse workforce. Nowadays employees have been hired; trained and remunerated they need to be motivated for better performance. People are motivated rewards something they can relate to and something they can believe in. Times have changed People wants more. Motivated employees are always looking for better ways to do a job. It is the responsibility of managers to make employees look for better ways of doing their jobs. Individuals differ not only in their ability to do but also in their will to do, or motivation Managers who are successful in motivating employees are often providing an environment in which appropriate goals are available for needs satisfaction. Retaining and motivating workers requires special attention and the responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of HR as well as managers and supervisors at all level. They have to create a work environment where people enjoy what they do, feel like they have a purpose and have pride...
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...Motivating Employees I believe that it is possible for a manager to motivate and employee. When it comes to intrinsic motivation it means that a person is going to be motivated when they do something and they see the benefit from it. For example, if you going out and go to the beach you are going to want to continue to do so just because it was something that you thought was fun and you got satisfaction out of it. So when it comes to a manager trying to motivate their employees this way it would work. If a person does something and gets a sense of satisfaction out of it then they are going to continue to do so. So if a manager has a system where if an employee does a certain thing that they may get a reward or something to that extent the employee is going to do so. They know that in the end there is a good outcome people tend to do so. Also with jobs with people who work with special needs or want to work with special needs I believe that there is a lot of intrinsic motivation with that. When helping someone do something that they cannot do themselves there is such a sense of happiness that employees are going to continue doing these things. When it comes to extrinsic motivation that is where a person does something because in the end they are rewarded somehow. For example, children might not like doing their chores but in the end they are going to do them because they know that in the end they are going to get rewards, whether it be money or being able to do something...
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...University of Colorado Boulder Guide to Motivating Employees Developed by the Department of Human Resources Updated July 2012 University of Colorado Boulder Guide to Motivating Employees Table of Contents I. Introduction................................................................................................................. 4 II. Elements of a Successful Motivation Program......................................................... 6 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. General Principles of Motivating Employees ................................................... 6 Employee Involvement ..................................................................................... 7 Business Literacy .............................................................................................. 7 Vision and Values ............................................................................................. 7 Work-life Initiatives .......................................................................................... 8 III. Practices to Inspire Motivation in Your Work Unit ................................................ 9 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Say “Thank You” .............................................................................................. 9 Get to Know Employees ................................................................................... 9 Developing a Flexible Work Schedule for Your Unit ..................................
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...Motivating Employees Motivating Employees BEH/225 07/26/2013 Gigi Sofia Motivating Employees Page1 Can a managers motivate employees? Yes, but first what is motivation? Motivation is “Internal and external factors that stimulate desire and energy in people to be continually interested and committed to a job, role, pr subject, or to make an effort to attain a goal.” (Business Dictionary) We all know that we have to have motivation or desire in order to get work or extra work done. Motivation is important in the workplace. Motivation with values and rewards that are depicted by intrinsic elements and by extrinsic factors . Intrinsic Motivation What is intrinsic motivation? It is motivation by rewards that are largely intangible. We all enjoy when our supervisors and bosses treat us with care and consideration or feeling that we are appreciated for the work that we do, and having a general enjoyment in our work, and this is linked to our feelings. Extrinsic Motivation What is extrinsic motivation? It is motivation that is external or tangible rewards. Employees are motivated to perform and extrinsic motivations are fringe benefits. Employees are motivated by salaries and that they can provide for their family and what they can give their families...
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...CHAPTER 10 - MOTIVATING AND REWARDING EMPLOYEES LEARNING OUTCOMES After reading this chapter, students should be able to: 1. Define and explain motivation. 2. Compare and contrast early theories of motivation. 3. Compare and contrast contemporary theories of motivation. 4. Discuss current issues in motivating employees. 5. |Opening Vignette – Best Practices at Best Buy | |SUMMARY | |Do traditional workplaces reward long hours instead of efficient hours? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a workplace in which “people can | |do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done?” Well, that’s the approach that Best Buy is taking.1 And this | |radical workplace experiment, which obviously has many implications for employee motivation, has been an interesting and enlightening journey | |for the company. | |In 2002, then-CEO Brad Anderson (now the company’s vice chairman) introduced a carefully crafted program called ROWE (Results-Only Work | |Environment). ROWE was the inspiration of two HRM managers at Best Buy, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, who had been given the...
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...the employer’s tactics and motives for motivating an employee You have to keep certain things in mind such as is the employee already angry and upset, if so it would be better to wait on that person. However, if that person is not angry then yes I think the employer can motivate the employee. To accomplish the Intrinsic motivation the words need to come from the employees own personal feelings. The employee needs to get some enjoyment from doing a good job or trying to do better. A prime example of intrinsic motivation is an employee climbing the corporate ladder. This type of motivation has to come from within from that employee. Extrinsic motivation is a way to motivate employees. At this time of year most companies have incentive programs for the sales employees. For example at the car dealerships, the sales person with the highest sales will get 3 days off with pay. T-Mobile associates are participating in an incentive program during the holiday season. The program is giving the top-seller in each store a 5-day vacation for two to anywhere in the Continental United States. This type of motivation offers a reward when something is accomplished. Employees are subjected to extreme amount of competition for this reward. Using this type of motivation you have to be careful so the employees do not become dependent on it for there motivation. It has been my experience that if you offer incentive programs with money employees do seem to get more motivated. People...
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...a fresh graduates from college, there is no much training for both new and existing foremen. There is no standard authority with a lot of responsibilities and the foreman really has a little control over the authorities and with their own staff. Company Perspective: A hectic work schedule of 12 hours shift with just two breaks and an half hour meal time. An "us" versus "them" relationship distance between foreman and managers which always had a conflicting expectations. Oppurtunities: According to Fredrick Herzerg and Abraham Maslow value theory, the company should create an environment of self actualization with esteem and love/belonging nature of relationships and strives to take care of safety and physiological needs of their employees to become a most efficient company. According to Livingston with improved training and recruitment process and support from seniors will make the company a better place to work . Suggestions: Mentoring program: The foreman mandatorily needs more guidance, support and training to work along. The company just estimated looking only at upfront costs and not being able to see the big picture, A formal training with a little upfront expense would probably give a little maturity. Employee feedback program: there is a communication gap between lowlevel and higher...
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