Employee Motivation

MOTIVATION

Viteles defines motivation as, “Motivation represents an unsatisfied need which creates a state of tension or disequilibrium, causing the individual to move in a goal directed pattern towards restoring a state of equilibrium, by satisfying the need.”

In simple, motivation is the process of arousing and sustaining goal-directed behavior.

Motivated people are in a constant state of tension. This tension is relieved by drives towards an activity and outcome that is meant to reduce or relieve such tension. The greater the tension, the more activity will be needed to bring about relief and hence higher the motivation. Thus the basic motivation process can be depicted as follows:

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The concept of motivation has 3 basic characteristics, they are:

• Effort:

The amount of effort put into the activity identifies the strength of the person’s work related behavior. Hard work usually reflects high motivation.

• Persistence:

Motivation is a permanent and an integral part of a human being. Its second characteristics are persistence in the efforts. Motivation is continuously goal directed so that once a goal is achieved, a higher goal is selected and efforts are exercised towards this higher goal.

• Direction:

Persistent hard work determines the quantity of effort while direction determines the quality of the anticipated output. All efforts are to be directed towards the organizational goal. This would ensure that the persistent effort is actually resulting into accepted organizational outcomes.

Motivation process involves the following steps:

1) Analysis of situation: The situation that needs motivational inducement must be sized up so to ascertain the motivational needs. From organizational behavior point of view, it must be recognized that since the needs of different employees differ both in nature as well as intensity, a composite view of the collective needs of the group is established with appropriate...