We all have certain needs which need to be satisfied being treated with respect, doing interesting work, good working conditions and fair pay. These are all motivational factors. Virtually everything we do is to satisfy some need or motive! If you don't do something it means you can see no personal advantage and there is nothing in it for you.
Every person is unique; and as such, every worker is unique in the way they view their position in the workplace.
Some employees have a greater sense of responsibility or motivation than others; and despite all the well intentioned efforts of a supervisor or manager, it is sometimes impossible to change an ingrained attitude which a particular person holds. Motivating yourself and others is a key facet to success.
A supervisor or manager needs to understand and accept the way their subordinates work and perceive work I order to treat each person as an individual. However by reacting differently to each member of a work team a supervisor or manager may risk creating a sense of inequity. This risk needs to be considered carefully with every decision that is made.
Throughout the course of history there have been many attempts to provide a comprehensive answer to the question – ‘What really motivates people’? In other words, what is there in the nature of human beings which makes them behave in certain ways? The true answer continues to elude us and the debate about the motivation of people in their work behaviour still continues. In this lesson different approaches to the question of motivation will be shown, but the main conclusion is that there is no perfect way to design or organise work. Instead, the management must be diagnostic and flexible, accommodating events and their subjective interpretation by the participants in any given situation. In this way a course of action can be decided appropriate to each situation.
What is Work?
It was asked of a cynic "Why do people work"? He replied "For somewhere to sleep and three meals a day." If you consider this statement, is it true? Further thought tells us that there are many more complex reasons for working and that an individual may have several reasons for working. Some of the reasons why a people work are listed below:
- To live in security
- To save money
- To obtain the leisure time to do what they wish; whether these wishes are altruistic or egoistic
- To satisfy ambition or interest.
- To satisfy the hormic urge; that is the urge to be active and participating in communal action
- To satisfy the gregarious instinct
- To express individuality
- To escape from certain physical or mental conditions.
Many people spend time working in order that they may have time and money for "playing" activities. People happily put a great deal of effort, into playing. They will do this almost to the point of exhaustion and though there is no financial reward given for the great effort, they obtain immense satisfaction from the results. The reason is that not only is the period of playing a time of mental relaxation, but playing becomes an intense interest which excludes all other things. This gives the individual a feeling of perfect self expression.
It is evident that for some people it is difficult to differentiate between work and play. To many craftsmen, their work is so real to them and of such absorbing interest that it actually becomes a great pleasure to perform. This, however, is the exception and in general it can be stated that work requires some effort, for which payment is received. This is contrasted with play, which is effort for its own pleasure, without pay. This can be demonstrated by the following - a professional actor works, but an amateur actor plays. A professional sports-person works and an amateur sports-person plays. The skilled craftsman works at his/her job, but if he/she does the same type of work for his or herself, in leisure time, it then becomes play.
Now if incentives can be discovered which can induce the individual to enthuse about their job to the same degree as he/she does over play, then there will be better results in many ways, namely: better timekeeping, higher productivity, greater interest in the work, less boredom hence less fatigue and all this will help the employer/employee relationship to be based on a stronger basis.
There are many theories of motivation, many of them beyond the scope of this course. In fact they are usually associated with degree courses. However, a brief mention will be made of Maslow's ‘Theory of Self Actualisation’.
Maslow's view is that a fundamental motive of man is to express his potentialities in a complete and effective way. He gave five levels of actualisation starting from the lowest level. When an individual achieves a lower level of actualisation he/she then moves to a higher level.
- Physiological needs (hunger, thirst). This is the first need it must be attained in order to exist.
- Safety needs, (security, stability). After food and drink comes shelter ie. a roof, however primitive.
- Belongingness and love need (affection and identification). Once secure, a human require someone to love and to be loved - the affection and closeness of others.
- Esteem needs (prestige and self-respect). After food, shelter and love is secure; competitiveness is next; the want to excel.
- The need of self-actualisation. A rare condition achieved once a person has nothing further to attain and is at peace.
In the classification above, the terms lower and higher merely indicate that certain needs appear earlier in the development process. In other words they are more closely linked to biological necessities and are narrower in scope. Maslow, who wished to stress the development nature of motivation, stressed that a lower need must be satisfied, before the next higher need can fully emerge in a person's development. A person cannot devote him/herself to ensuring his/her safety until insistent physiological requirements are met. Only after a basic sense of security is attained can relations of love and belongingness with other people reach their full extent. An adequate degree of satisfaction for a person’s need for love then permits full fledged striving for esteem and self respect. Finally and only after all of the preceding levels have been successfully achieved can the tendency towards self actualisation be realised.
This development is not, of course, a matter of short discontinuous steps. Each lower need does not have to be completely gratified before the next higher need emerges. The development is more in the nature of a succession of waves, in which emphasis on the different needs slowly shifts from one to another.
This natural course of development can go wrong if there is insufficient gratification of needs at any given level. If this happens the next higher needs are prevented from full emergence and the higher needs may never appear. The person whose life long environment provides only the barest essential for physical survival is not likely to develop pressing needs for achievement, esteem and beauty. A chronically hungry person will never seek to build a brave new world or a "new South Africa". He or she is much too concerned with satisfying urgent and immediate hunger needs. Only an individual who is freed from the domination of lower needs can become motivated by drives other than deficiency based drives.
The ideal physical and social environment is the one which makes possible the gratification of each level of needs as it reaches its crest in an individual. This is the vision of Abraham Maslow, and in order for maximum satisfaction to be obtained it is an ideal which should be carried forward into both our working and social lives.
Overall Incentives
Incentive can be illustrated by use of an animal example.
A hungry rat, if placed in a maze, will quickly learn to make those turns which lead to food. This is a reaffirmation of Maslow's physiological level. The rat will not take the particular route if the food is not there, (insufficient quality and quantity to provide incentive for the rat to go to the food). Thus incentives can be regarded as a pulling force, and can be compared with a drive which is a pushing force.
The incentive for an individual to work may be innate, or it may be acquired.
Two most powerful innate incentives are:
a. To stay alive; this is work to provide food (Maslow's physiological level).
b. To provide for your family; to provide a home (Maslow's physiological level).
In both of these cases the financial incentive is very important. The necessity of earning enough to satisfy your physiological and security needs is a strong incentive to work.
Workplace Incentives
There are other incentives apart from those already stated. These incentives are mainly connected with the type of work which the individual does. These incentives are:
1. Pride in Workmanship
Individuals find great satisfaction in a piece of work well done. This pride occurs not only in work which could be termed "craftsmanship" but also in work of a routine nature and which to an outside observer may not be the type of work to inspire pride.
2. The Desire to See a Thing Through
This is sometimes revealed in a statement such as "I have done all that". The individual has a pride in the things accomplished and does not wish to leave a task unfinished.
3. Competition with Oneself
Individuals sometimes set their own standards and rate of working. By doing this they are issuing a challenge to themselves and thus providing incentive.
4. Subconscious Satisfaction in Having Power
This occurs if the power is over people or even if it is over a machine.
5. The Symbolism of the Aggressive Instinct
This is symbolised in doing work that involves a lot of noise, for example, banging, cutting, etc.
Incentives are also provided within the working environment. These incentives are external to the individual, but within the sphere of his work. These incentives are tabulated below:
1. Part of the Whole
An individual gains satisfaction by being part of the working team. However this depends on the management keeping the workers in touch with the organisation as a whole and letting each individual know how he or she fits into the whole.
2. Ambition for Promotion
If there is a possibility of promotion this can affect the incentive situation. Not everybody is desirous of promotion, but many are and if it is made known to the staff that possibilities of promotion exist then the incentive of work will increase. Of course these promises of promotion must be real or else they run the risk of "backfiring".
3. Personal Relationship
Some individuals prefer working near other individuals or groups and if management fails to set up these human relationships they will lose much willing work. It has been found that some workers prefer monotonous work because it gives them greater opportunities for conversation with their colleagues.
4. Financial
In the nineteenth century industrial revolution it was often expressed that the financial incentive was the only important one when considering work. This has since been proved wrong. The financial incentive can not be viewed in isolation; it must be considered along with other incentives such as working conditions, fringe benefits and medical aid. When considering financial incentives it is necessary to take the age, sex and temperament of the individual into consideration.
External Incentives (outside the work environment)
Certain incentives are caused by environmental effects which take place outside of the workshop environment. There are three main cases which are tabulated below:
1. The Incentives Provided by the General Economic and Social Situation
The general social environment can cause incentive or disincentive. If the country is involved in a war, if there is widespread unemployment or any other crisis there is a movement in the social structure or the community which tends to frustrate or stimulate the will to work.
As an exercise you should consider the effect of a war or unemployment on the incentive to work.
2. The Effect of the Culture Pattern
The social background to which one is accustomed has a large effect on a person’s incentive to work. In the nineteenth century, especially among the puritanical religious groups there was a general belief in the fact that work was good for the soul and that work in itself could save one from the devil. This was the Protestant work ethic and work continued every day from dawn to dusk, with the exception of the Sabbath day. To idle around was considered to be the work of the devil and was not tolerated in this society.
In more recent times certain occupations have a higher prestige value than others and people will work harder to enter the more valued occupations and, when in these occupations, they will work hard to retain the position. Domestic service has suffered in this respect, mainly because the community at large tends to look down on such servile work. Other trades are also looked upon as inferior. The fact that these communal ideas may be irrational is of no consequence to their importance; and resentment about a low social status often has important social consequences.
3. Routine Work
It is recognised that some people will be content to work in a position where only routine work is performed. They are happy to do this in order to earn enough for what they consider the necessities of life, and to pursue their chosen work during their leisure hours. The routine work allows them to leave their minds free to carry out creative and interesting work as a pleasure.
Goals as Incentives
An important part of motivation is the value of the goal, object, situation or type of activity toward which the motivated person is striving. In animal research, the quantity of food in the goal ox will determine the speed of a rat through the maze. This may seem obvious, but is it not a fact that we all work harder for greater reward? This is the relational character of incentives and unfortunately it is often overlooked.
Crespi in 1942 demonstrated that rats ran much faster after being shifted from four units of food up to sixteen units, than after a shift from sixty four units down to sixteen units. Some rats even refused to eat after this cut in reward.
The same kind of disappointment was illustrated more dramatically by Tinklepaugh in 1928. He trained a monkey to retrieve food which it had been allowed to see placed beneath one of two boxes. Tinklepaugh allowed the monkey to see him place a banana beneath one of the boxes, but then he surreptitiously substituted a piece of lettuce for the banana. When the monkey was allowed to choose between the two boxes it correctly selected the one which was supposedly concealing a banana. Finding only lettuce, the monkey turned over the other box, which was empty. The frustration was too much for the monkey; it then threw the lettuce at Tinklepaugh - lettuce is just not good enough when the expectations are for a banana.
Students should have little difficulty in remembering similar examples from their own experience.
This demonstrates that we evaluate incentives in accordance with how they compare with our expectations.
Social Reinforcers as Incentives
In human motivation, social reinforcers such as verbal praise or other expressions of approval, like a reassuring smile are much more common incentives than food and water, which are so important for motivating a deprived animal in a laboratory. Parents, teach, friends and employers all use social reinforcers to motivate for greater effort. Even when money sometimes seems the primary incentive for hard work, social approval may be just as important.
The motivating power of social incentives tends to lose its value if used in an indiscriminate manner. A teacher that praises everyone and each level of performance finds that such praise subsequently becomes ineffective as a motivator.
When an individual knows that the set standard is high, then the smallest morsel of praise becomes a high compliment and much effort is put into the task in order to receive this compliment. it is not the absolute amount of praise or approval which we receive that establishes the level of motivation, it is how the amount compares with what has been received in the past or what one could reasonably expect to attain.
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