Is money the best way to motivate employees?
There is a huge issue of how to get the most energetic work performance from employees. A lot of people believe that money can help employees to be motivated and to do the job with enthusiasm. The main purpose of this article is to critically debate to what extend the statement: ‘Pay is the best way to motivate employees’ is correct.
What is work motivation?
Nowadays there are a lot of terms of what motivation is and this is logical because there are various theories, programmes, and approaches to it. On average per year, a British worker spends approximately 1676 hours on work, so that motivation of employees plays a crucial role in every organisation. It must be admitted, that there is no universally accepted definition, however many researchers claimed that generally motivation could be defined as the psychological forces that determine discretion of a person’s level of effort. Furthermore, as well as a person’s persistence in the face of different obstacles. The direction of individual’s behaviour refers to various possible actions in which an individual could be engaged in, while persistence attribute to whether or when a person was faced with obstacles. In terms of persistence, the critical idea is an individual’s efforts: keeps trying or vice versa, gives up.
Hence, motivation is essential for working autonomously, as well as for collaboration and efficient teamwork. Furthermore, motivating employees to aim a better performance involves such intrinsic factors as employee engagement, organisational values, management appreciation of work and overall authenticity of leadership. Employees who are highly motivated come to the workplace successful, value-added and express willingness to contribute to decision-making. Despite the fact that motivation is abstract, there are many ways how employers can use motivation indicator.
Motivation could be measurable from the perspective of individual’s work performance, because only in this way employers can observe how hard employees are trying in terms of employee’s effort. However, I can put forward an idea that work motivation as a psychological process can be a consequence of interconnection between an individual and the environment in which he or she presents.It could be defined as ‘a set of energetic forces that originate both within as well as beyond an individual’s being, to initiate work-related behaviour and to determine its form, direction, intensity, and duration’.
It must be noticed, that evolution of motivation is highly essential in understanding the nature of motivation. In first two decades the study of motivation was left to engineers and they consider money as a more prominent source of motivation. Only in the third decade, many surveys showed that people could be happier in terms of job security, status, recognition, rather than just in earning money and getting rewards. Later, industrial-organisational psychologists concluded that a happy worker is a productive worker.
Theories of motivation regarding pay.
A motivated workforce is one of the more significant wish and at the same time complexity for many managers. There has been a lot of theories about how management can engage employees.
One of the most influential theorists in motivation, which has to be taken into account, was Maslow (1943) who defined five basic needs every individual possesses. First of all, it starts with the psychological or survival needs such as hunger, thirst, sleep, and sex. As soon as these necessary demands are achieved, individual can move on to the next level, which is determined as safety level. It means that safety of both emotion and physic must be aimed. Here also an individual’s purpose is to be protected against any danger. If these needs are satisfied the next level required social or belonging needs. It means that an individual wants to feel affection to a member of a family, friends or workgroup. Afterward, the level of esteem or ego-status needs involves the desire for self-respect, and this level is similar to the previous one. The fourth level explained the person’s needs of recognition, appreciation and highlighted that reputation for an individual is enormously significant. Finally, Maslow’s highest point is about the self-actualisation which helps to aim the goal of absolute satisfaction in work-life balance.
A lot of researchers criticized Maslow’s theory because it seemed like it was created only for Western culture and as a result, it is culture-centered. However, Maslow’s theory could be universal. Especially, when it comes to safety-security need satisfaction.For example, the family is the source of protection for people in all over the world so that there is not important which culture someone has. The next concern could be highlighted in terms of biological phenomenon. The problem is about the ignorance of persons’ capacity, a perception of needs and how they actually can meet them. Notwithstanding all the critics, it must be admitted, that in Maslow’s theory pay could not be as a motivator only in a case when people are functioning at the lowest levels of the hierarchy of needs. Money also can help in social recognition, when an individual wants to go for instance, for early retirement or just wants free time to travel. So that, in today’s world many managers perceive Maslow’s theory as a helpful instrument in understanding individuals’ behaviour in the workplace.
Another massive step in theories of motivation was made by Herzberg (2000) who elaborated the motivation-hygiene theory. He made a distinction between intrinsic (motivators) and extrinsic (hygiene) factors. The pay was apparently classified as a hygiene factor. For example, the heating in the office could be good for understanding this theory. When it is cold outside, and inside the building, the heater system is broken, it has a negative effect on motivation. The reason for that is because employees feel freezing temperature and feel themselves in an uncomfortable position. But at the same time, the opposite effect (when the heating system work perfectly) will not motivate employees to work harder. It seems that hygiene factors need to be taken into account because they can quickly change into demotivating factors. Herzberg also found that the opposite of job satisfaction is not job dissatisfaction but, rather, no job satisfaction; and, similarly, the opposite of job dissatisfaction is not job satisfaction, but no job dissatisfaction. So that, from author’s study it is evident, that if organisational payment system designed poorly, it can result in motivation but could not lead to demotivation itself.
Regarding expectancy theory, it considers motivation as a multiplicative function with three elements: expectancy, instrumentality, and valence. The pay in expectancy theory will be an effective motivator to the extent that the person desires it, and they can identify behaviours that will lead to high payment, and they feel capable of performing those behaviours. In terms of the theory of organisational justice, employees will be burdened with the question if their pay is enough rewarded in comparison with other workers. It also involves fairness in the procedure of receiving a salary.
Many researchers claimed that when people answer what motivates them, the most common explanation is responsibility, recognition for achievement, the work itself and challenges at work, rather than payment. As was mentioned above hygiene factors, argued that pay is not a crucial motivator at work. For instance, summarizing 35 years of empirical research on goal-setting theory and task motivation, we can found that difficult goals steadily led to increasing of performance than urging people just doing their best. In other words, when people are asked to do their best, they do not do so, because do-your-best goals have no external referent and thus are defined idiosyncratically. Moreover, regarding monetary incentives, as soon as goals become very difficult to complete, paying employees in case they reach the target could be detrimental in terms of the performance.
Let’s take the data from 200,000 American employees. Those of them who had a vast interest in intrinsic motives the level of engagement was three times more strongly in comparison with extrinsic one. Thus, if an employee has no interest in external rewards (for instance, salary), the intrinsic motivation has a relatively positive effect on the engagement level. So, the impact of intrinsic motives could disappear in case an employee concentrates on external rewards. Thus, employees with intrinsic motivation are three times more could be engaged.
Notwithstanding the fact that pay is not an only motivator, pay is often underestimated. The reason for that is because there is a well-known fact that money can largely influence on employee behaviour and in turns, on motivation in the workplace. That is why, performance-related pay is a useful tool for managing employees because it links salary to the assessment of worker’s performance and employees are inspired to work with passion. It seems that performance-related pay approach can increase employee’s satisfaction, work-life balance, and engagement. But still, there is a huge question concerning equity and fairness, because various managers perceive and measure performance in different ways and sometimes it cannot adequately reflect the employees’ effort. However, PFP approach could motivate employees more efficiently in comparison with a fixed-pay method because PFP help workers to observe a link between extra effort and salary.
Other ways to motivate employees.
In today’s world due to globalisation and rapid changes in a technological and social world the emergence of new ways how to motivate employees always interested many researchers and practitioners. For example, we can take into account the psychological contract theory, which implies an additional nonfinancial motivation. The psychological contract is mutually unwritten and informal obligation which demonstrates how both could perceive beliefs and expectations: an employer and an employee. In case an employee does not fulfil the part of the psychological contract, he or she could feel the obligation to change that by working much harder in order to demonstrate the result to an employer. It means that employees can motivate themselves to increase performance.
At the same time, family support can alter the way an employee’s work makes it more meaningful and motivating. Managers elaborate such events as ‘bring your child to work’ days which give an opportunity for an employee to bring home life to the workplace. It also allows workers to manage their schedule.
We shoud provide employees with flexibility. For example, the company which implements a ‘paid-time-off’ policy. The idea behind it is about a half-hour slots which allowed employees to leave the workplace and sort out employee’s families’ issue such for instance, taking a child from school. Furthermore, employees had a unique app on their phones where they can put their flexible schedules in advance so that managers could be informed about working hours. As a result, employees in this company reported that they were more satisfied and motivated to work with full energy. So that, flexibility can massively increase the level of motivation.
It is important to demonstrate the relationship between employee engagement and motivation. In order to motivate employees managers should pay attention to empowering their workers to make decisions and shape their jobs. It helps in creating channels for employee voice, fair treatment of employees and finally, communications which could help workers be informed with purposes of the company.
Let’s please present couple recommendations for creating theories of motivation, rather than using existing ones. One of them is about identifying general variables such as personality get applied to and are mediated by task- and situationally specific variables, how they are moderated by situations, and how they affect situational choice and structuring. In other words, managers should identify a ‘Big Five’ personality traits and then observe how this trait reflects on worker’s tasks. Managers should find an individual approach to each worker.
Interpersonal skills are crucial in motivation because sometimes employers do not pay attention to a human side of learning people. The principal idea is managers could be as motivational mentors for their employees. What is more important, individuals who have a willingness to teach others can reach it not because of their position, but because people’s aspiration to follow them.
In order to understand the sources of motivation, we can described two of them: passion and addiction. Both of them are significantly linked with hours worked and job involvement. Passion could be correlated with favorable work characterized by psychological well-being outcomes and less obsessive job behaviours. In contrast, addiction is correlated with extra work and less favorable work. Employees who scored on addiction are more perfectionistic. Such employees reported that they are less satisfied with their job and what is more important, their stress level was high.
Another way how employees could be motivated was delivered by Parker (2014). His research proved that job design could be a useful tool for employees’ development, satisfaction and motivation. He claimed that job design could promote such motivational states as ‘can do’ and ‘energized to do.’ As a result, it helps to increase proactivity and engagement. Moreover, challenging tasks and variety of them can allow a worker to improve its self-efficacy. Parker noted that stressor factors such as time pressure in deadlines, for example, can also be as a reason to be proactive and in turn, motivated. From the article, it is clear, that the main Parker’s idea is about allowing employees to redesign their work through job crafting, because only in this way individuals can increase their effectiveness and improve skills. Such employees have more flexible schedules, they are more educated, and their career progression can change quicker.
Furthermore, 71% of employees prefer to work with an employer who can provide rewards such as gift card. So that, various vouchers and prepared cards are effective method to motivate employees an opportunity for sincere thanks for performance. Especially, if the gift is signed by an employer, a worker can feel that he or she is recognised individually. Such approach is not time-consuming and will not cost employers a lot of money.
Conclusion.
Money cannot be the only motivator and cannot be applicable to everyone. All theories have their pros and cons. Undoubtedly, money affects motivation, but from the accumulation of various articles, it is clear that employers’ overemphasis on financial reward undermines autonomy and as a result intrinsic motivation. Moreover, if an employee has a high salary or always being rewarded but at the same time, the certain circumstances in which he or she works are poor, such employee cannot be motivated enough. As was mentioned above, pay as a motivator could be observed as a suitable mechanism in order to meet basic needs. Moving on to the present days, employers should consider both financial and nonfinancial mechanisms for motivating employees. Therefore, managers should take into account variety of theories and have to take consider the differences in personality in order to deliberate a successful motivation programme.
