Sheet 68
STAFF MOTIVATION
To motivate employees is an important role of a supervisor. In order to motivate them, a supervisor has to know what they want from work and to take appropriate measures to fill their needs. Let's think about motivation.
1 Needs of Employees
The reason that employees work to begin with is because the work itself in some way fulfills their needs. People rarely work simply because they are ordered to. If supervisors know what their employees wish to achieve from this work and try to meet these needs, they will be able to motivate them to work more effectively.
Every employee has different needs. The same person may even have different needs in different situations. When circumstances change, employees' expectations often change accordingly. The level of compensation that employees demand for doing work varies according to the energy that they spend in performing the work. There is a direct correlation between what they want and what they do.
Pay or promotion are often quoted as the main motivation factors in work. One study shows, however, that financial incentives, rather than being a major source of motivation, are, on the contrary, a major source of complaint. If staff feel that their pay does not reflect the quality or quantity of the work that they do, they will become increasingly dissatisfied and lose their motivation for work. On the other hand, however, a pay increase may not necessarily in itself raise the motivation of staff.
Another major factor in motivating employees is the level of job satisfaction that they achieve. A poll conducted by a Japanese consulting firm showed that employees want greater job satisfaction more than high pay or fast promotion. It also showed that this trend was more conspicuous among government employees than in the private sector.
2 Measures to Motivate Employees
Once the needs of employees have been fully ascertained, supervisors must take appropriate measures to encourage them to work. They will be motivated more by signs of appreciation or a desire to accomplish a program that they themselves were involved in the planning of, than by pay or other working conditions. Job satisfaction such as this may be greatly enhanced by the individual efforts of each supervisor.
The role of supervisors is to ensure that not only are staff motivated to work but that they are provided with a sense of job satisfaction in the process. Since job satisfaction does not always materialize, supervisors must consider how to appease any sense of dissatisfaction that may arise and how to prevent staff from giving in to the frustration that may accumulate as a result of this discontent.
When a good relationship based on mutual confidence is established between a supervisor and their staff, employees tend to feel a sense of job satisfaction just by working towards achieving the objectives outlined by a supervisor that they admire.
