Money, Power, and Compliments?
What truly motivated employees? Is it as simple as material goods, or perhaps an underlying trace of intrinsic motivation that pushes the common worker to their best? A Human Resources Article I found distributes motivation into 8 diverse categories which I interprated may be generalized into two basic classifications: Extrinsic and Intrinsic. I refer to intrinsic as an employee’s internal desire to do something arising from interest, satisfaction, or pleasure. This topic arouses my attention for it covers both the matters covered in the Oct 14 class for Comm 101 about people,culture and teams as well as interconnecting to many Organization Behaviour theories we learnt along the year.
Ideally, from an executive’s perspective all employees would be intrinsically directed placing valence on compliments and verbal recognition rather than shares in company stock or fat paychecks – after all it’s cheaper! However, this is not the case, employee motivation ranges from specific cases ranging from both extremes of the spectrum. It is therefor important to consider both varieties of potential workers and specify managerial techniques to match each employee’s expectations specifically. In return higher employee productivity, loyalty, emotional identification will result, while decreasing turnover. A win-win.