What factors drive an employee to go further to provide additional services? What influences him to do better than yesterday? Well, without a doubt, it is motivation.
A motivated employee will give his best to achieve organizational goals. According to modern human resources: “Motivation is the inner drive that directs a person’s behaviour towards the goal.”
As a manager of a company, his initial task should be aligning the employees’ goals and the company’s goal together. Once the employees’ goals and organizational goal are the same, his work is half done.
A telecom executive of Bangladesh shared his personal experience. He said: “From my childhood, I was too passionate about sports, and I am so lucky that my company cares about my passion, and they always inspire me to participate in the sports which I love. Definitely, it increased my loyalty and gratitude towards my company, and I often think as they are doing so much for me, I shall do something better for them too.”
Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, many organizations, both in public and private sectors, are careless about motivating employees. They have no strategy to motivate an employee -- as a result, turnover, dissatisfaction, inefficiency is taking place.
Some organizations think designing motivational packages for employees is expensive, but they forget quietly that they are paying much more than that cost. The cost of an unproductive and inefficient employee may not be visible to them, but it’s costing them a lot for sure.
An employee can be motivated by monetary and non-monetary benefits. Monetary benefits like profit-sharing, project bonuses, stock options, and festival bonuses are very common in our country.
But money is not the one and only motivational tool. As we know that, individual preferences are different, so some employees may not be motivated by monetary incentives. They may have a different urges or needs.
The management has to feel the urges of the employee. Sometimes, an employee may be happier receiving non-monetary motivation. To motivate an employee, the manager doesn’t always need to provide monetary incentives.
Promoting a healthy workforce, delivering opportunities to socialize, and recognizing employee accomplishments help to satisfy the employee’s physiological needs, which in turn also enhances their performance.
Positive feedback on a job done well, and appreciation systems by top management inspire employees to do better. The non-monetary incentives could be self-development opportunities, flexible working hours, pleasant working environment, and opportunity to take part in the decision-making process, and so on.
In a nutshell, an employee would love to feel privileged, and certainly, it’s a joyful event for them when they realize their organization cares for them.
In the 21st century, retaining employees is one of the biggest challenges for an organization. If we consider employees as an asset, then we must not lose them at any cost.
Different people are motivated in different ways. Monetary or non-monetary motivations don’t matter; as an organizational manager, one should always try to understand the need of an individual employee and motivate the employee accordingly at the top-most level.
Undeniably, both employees and employers will be benefited by it.
Annur Islam Sifat is a student of business.
