Sample Research Paper On How Psychology Motivates Work

Abstract

Employee motivation means getting a high level of commitment, and creativity from the workers to apply to their jobs. The paper looks at the psychological aspects behind the employee motivation and how to increase their involvement and empowerment. The aim of this paper is to expand existing understandings of work motivation theories and discuss how emotions, behaviors and development can impact the workers. The role and responsibilities of managers and owners remain as to how to understand their workers wetter, study their behaviors and emotions and give them a proactive environment for further development.

Introduction

Companies are known to motivate employees in order to make them work at their optimum efficiency and encourage them to work harder. The staff is given incentives as well as a positive working condition to keep them motivated. Motivated staff gives it best and makes the extra effort. It is seen that motivated employees take greater pride in their work and the business or company shows a higher level of staff retention. In the increasingly competitive work environment, it is growing concern among many managers on how to find ways to keep their employees motivated. Motivation has been an important area of business research for many years now.
The workers work hard to feel fulfilled. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs explains those needs of an employee and one can motivate an employee by looking after their higher order need. The needs from top to bottom priority for an employee are the need for self-actualization, status, esteem, social, security, and physiological. Thus, the prime reason an employee works is to take care of his physiological needs. The employees can stay motivated if all his needs get fulfilled (Richards, 2015).
People work for different reasons. Most people work to earn money in order to survive while others may work for other reasons. Motivation and this is why managers are looking for ways to motivate workers so as to encourage them to work more efficiency. If a company or business is looking for an increased output, higher productivity and more profits, it needs to keep its employees motivated (Motivation, 2014).Development of a worker What an employee gets motivated by at workplace is not only the monetary rewards, but also a sense of achievement and promotion opportunities as well as get the chance for personal growth. The principles of positive or negative reinforcement impact on the development of the employee motivation and his performance. Motivation can be induced from outside as well as inside. Freedom and involvement make for a more productive environment and get the worker motivated to higher levels. When designing motivational principles, the managers should focus on the overall development of their workers by involving them in participation committees, offering them training programs and opportunities to grow further (Kamery, 2004).
Every employee carries a different set of values and personal experiences and will get motivated by learning and a positive environment. Thus, it should be seen that they are offered regular opportunities to attend workshops, conferences or in-house training programs (Buhler, 1998). The aim of a motivating environment is to encourage every worker of an organization to learn, develop further and feel motivated to contribute his best effort at all times. A motivating environment is made of adequate training, clear objectives, attractive rewards, and effective leadership for the employees (Capozzoli, 1998).
When considering motivators and development, effectiveness and longevity are important. Motivators such as incentives or fear are not only short-lived but can be counterproductive. Focus should be on the motivational factors that come from within. Employees feel motivated and empowered when they assume additional responsibilities and go through job enrichment. They feel better prepared to deal with everyday situations, as well as unfavorable conditions.

Studying Behaviorism

Human motivation and what makes people to act in a certain way, as well as the whole human behavior plays a fundamental importance in the management of human resources. The hereditary combination and development forms the basis of human behavior. Earlier it was believed that the only motivational factors at work were rewards and perks. However, the current theory differs and every individual carries different intensity levers that can impact the motivational factors. Every person carries different perspective on his or hers motivation as his behavior is different. Professional motivation will rely on the managers’ capacity to satisfy a personal need of his employees as well as how well he understand the basis of the employees’ behavior. A smart manager will first try to understand the behavior of his subordinates before designing the motivational plans for the organization (Popovici et al., 2015).
The relationship of a worker with his colleagues, relations with other departments, responsibility, shared values, general satisfaction, work environment, etc., impact the behavior and the level of motivation among the workers. The quality of communication and collaboration among workers and other departments needs to be looked into. The behavior of an employee is correlated to how he perceives responsibilities associated with work and the freedom of decision making. His behavior will also impact on how he perceives the professional accomplishments at the work and the level of personal satisfaction obtained. How the employees look at their appreciation by their bosses and employees will be different. Every workers’ perception towards company policies and procedures differs and how they look at the safety and stability of the workplace.
The final productivity at a workplace will rely on a lot on the behavior of all the workers of the organization. In order to improve motivation, managers must develop different forms of motivation to face meet the different needs of their workers. They also need to assure that professional development and evolution of the worker’s is a continuous process. To achieve high effective objectives, they must study the behavior of their workforce and exploit their creativity, knowledge and competence. The psychological and neurobiological theories carry direct and indirect paths on work motivation. The learning, development, behavioral outcomes affect goals and goal commitment among employees (SEO, Barrett & Bartunek, 2004).Emotions of an employee Emotions have been a neglected topic in organizational behavior, and it could be primarily because exhibiting emotions at work place is not looked upon as positively. However, management scholars find that work-related emotions deserve much more attention. Emotions at work can be streamlined into expression, exploitation, and management. The emotional intelligence of a worker casts an impact on the organizational performance. The study of emotions is still neglected at workplace, and this is why it is not easy to explain as to why people behave in particular ways in their workplaces. What motivates people to work hard and put in the consistent effort is naturally a subject of great interest to employers and business owners. The current work environments and the recent global economic crisis is pushing the employers harder towards ways of how to motivate their workers in order to gain the full potential from their employees (Sheedy, 2009).
When one looks at the motivational theory models, it is seen that they have been cognitively based motivation theories that comprise of certain beliefs, perceptions, and goals. Recent empirical advances state that work motivation cannot be understood in full unless and until human emotions are considered or if they are incomplete. An analysis of the broad emotion-related phenomena represents the faculty of the mind or body. Core affective feelings are universal and primitive, and are based on the constant stream of patterned alterations in neurophysiological states. For example, emotional episodes such as moods are short-lived responses. The core affective feelings influence work motivation directly and indirectly. Indirectly, one sees their influence on work motivation via how they influence judgment components. Discrete choice processes involving beliefs influence work motivation in organizations directly (SEO, Barrett & Bartunek, 2004).
What a person does, how hard he works and for how long are the three major behavioral outcomes in work motivation. The direction, intensity, and persistence are the important outcomes of motivation. People get influenced by core affective experiences as they go through processes of goal setting and their emotional state influences the next subsequent states. Individuals differ in their tendency to experience certain pleasant or unpleasant states as well as how they incorporate the experiences into conscious emotions. These individual differences in emotions can have different implications for work motivation.

Conclusion

The employers and managers need to follow much more flexible approach when designing motivational principles for their company and employees. They need to accept that every individual will carry different needs because of his different behaviors and perceptions.Thus, it is getting very critical to understand as to what motivates employees at work at and how to keep them at their top level efficacy. Building of a motivational synergy goes much beyond the earlier conceptualizations. Certain types of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation combine synergistically with each other and thus could lead to a high levels of employee satisfaction and performance. The motivation-work cycle match, the influences of the work-environment and the personality play an important role in the final outcomes. The managers must keep in mind that each worker is different and what might make one employee tick may need to excite the other in the same way. They need to understand each employee and offer a wide range of motivational techniques in order to achieve motivation.

References

Buhler, P. (1998). Motivating the employee of the 90s. New York: Irwin Publishers, 8-11.
Capozzoli, T.K. (1998). Creating a motivating environment for employees. New York: McGraw- Hill Inc., 16.
Kamery, R. H. (2004). Employee Motivation As It Relates To Effectiveness, Efficiency, Productivity, And Performance. Allied Academies International Conference.Academy of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues.Proceedings, 8(2), 139.
Motivation. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/business/people/motivationrev1.shtml
Richards, L. (2015). Theories of Motivation at Work. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/theories-motivation-work-1889.html
SEO, M.-G., Barrett, L. F., & Bartunek, J. M. (2004). The Role Of Affective Experience In Work Motivation. Academy of Management Review. Academy of Management, 29(3), 423– 439.Sheedy, C. (2009). Motivation redux. Management Toda, .54(May 2009), 14-15.
Popovici, N., Criveanu, I., & Munteanu, I. (2015). Motivation In Work. University of Constanta