What Motivates an Employee to Work

What Motivates an Employee to Work

Motivation deals with complex human behavior in order to determine the factors which drive an individual to do his best. Various factors which dire an individual to work have been discussed under Maslow and Her berg models. In order to motivate the workers, management must, first of all, know what are the motivational factors influencing the behavior of persons. Though it seems to be simple, but it is not true to say that motivation is merely a relationship between efforts and rewards. According to this view, a higher ay will motivate the workers strongly. But this is true only in case of those workers who are not getting wages or salaries which are sufficient to fulfill their physiological needs. Money is not the only motivating factor in case of all workers in all circumstances. Many people are motivated by the desire of self realization, achievements. etc. In order to understand the behavior of people, the organizational psychologists have classified employees into three types, namely (Economic man, (ii) Social man, and (UI) Self actualizing man.

The assumption of economic man is derived from the philosophy of Hedonism and the economic doctrines of Adam Smith. According to this,, every individual calculated the actions that would maximize his own self interest Thus, man is firstly motivated by economic incentives and rewards. If a person is not getting sufficient money to afford his family or is temporarily employed, he will certainly be motivated by the desire to earn more money or by job security. He will do everything to get the greatest economic gains and, thus organization buys the obedience of workers for economic rewards. But in the modem age, the assumptions of economic man do not hold good. Man works not only for economic gains to fulfill his physiological needs but also to satisfy social needs, to achieve recognition and to fulfill his egoistic needs. Under the theory of social man, is basically motivated by social needs and attains his basic sense of identification through relationships with others. Man is more responsive to the social forces of peer groups than to the incentives of management.

Man is responsive to the management to the extent the latter can achieve his social and affiliation needs. But it should be noted that man does not live to fulfill his social needs only, though it is true that man cannot live without social relations because social relation give him identification and also a sense of be Self-actualizing theory talks of intrinsic rewards inherent in the task performance such as job satisfaction, feeling of achievement, etc. This induces a moral rather than calculative, involvement of the workers in the organization. The evidence of se man is most 'commonly found among managers and professional workers.