Employee motivation and strategic management

Employee motivation and strategic management 

By Juma CJO

Enhancing employee productivity is one of the main goals in strategic management. Motivation may be broadly described as the inner force that drives employees to desire to achieve personal and organizational goals. The dominant theories relating to employee motivation were formed rather recently and were as a result of the analytical and descriptive skills of some of the management gurus such as Dr. Abraham Maslow in 1943, Fredrick Herzberg in 1959, Prof. Victor H. Room in 1960, John Stacey Adams in 1963, and Burrhus Fredric Skinner. These five distinguished theorists were instrumental in the development of several theories relating to employee motivation. These theories have mostly been named after the theorists as follows: Adam’s Equity theory, Maslow’s Need-Hierarchy theory, Vroom’s Expectancy theory, Herzberg’s two-factor theory, and Skinner’s reinforcement theory.  Maslow held the view that the greatest motivator for human needs is unsatisfied needs and that these needs would need to be satisfied in such a way that recognizes the hierarchy that he designed. Lower needs would have to be satisfied before the higher needs for any motivation programs to have their desired effect. He identified these needs as physiological needs (water, air, food, and sleep), safety needs (financial reserves, job security, safety of residence and medical security/ insurance), social needs (friendship, giving and receiving love, and belonging to a group), esteem needs (attention, recognition, self-respect, social status, and accomplishment), and self-actualization (meaning, wisdom, justice, and truth) respectively.

The Maslow’s need- hierarchy theory states that the needs of the employees shift to the next level upon satisfaction with one level of needs and their desire to satisfy their needs progress until they reach the level of self-actualization.  However, the self-actualization needs do net get fully satisfied unlike the other levels of needs. This is because people graduate into new psychological realms from time to time and requiring an adjustment of the actualization needs. A strategic management response to this continuous shift is to not only understand and adapt to such shifts, but also be in a position to influence the change. The most important element is therefore understanding. Experts argue that the understanding of employee’s needs by managers helps in raising their motivation levels more effectively and efficiently. The emergence of subsequent theories was as a result of the weaknesses observed in the need-hierarchy theory. These weaknesses stemmed from the inadequacy of the theory to cover cultural backgrounds where some cultures would tend to put social needs above other needs and the fact that there was little evidence to prove the need to satisfy one level of needs before attempting to satisfy the others. The Herzberg’s two factor theory can also be called the motivator-hygiene theory. It concentrates on identifying the motivating factors and the hygiene factors where the two terms refer to factors that enhance satisfaction and factors that prevent dissatisfaction respectively.

The two-factor theory identifies some of the hygiene factors as reasonable wages; offering of fringe benefits such as medical insurance; job security; flexible and reasonable administrative and company policies; safe, clean and hygienic working conditions; and recognition and retention of status within the organization. The motivating factors have been identified as recognition of employees’ achievements; responsibility and ownership of work; meaningfulness of work; and a sense of achievement promoted by the organization. Job-enrichment is the thrust of this theory. Advocates for this theory advise that an organization should ensure the promotion of motivating factors to heighten motivation levels while keeping an eye of the hygiene factors to guard against erosion of any gains that may have been achieved as a result of good application of the motivating factors. With proper application in strategic management, the two-factor theory can be used to create a workforce that is highly committed to the organisation hence higher productivity and competitiveness. Vroom’s expectancy theory states that the level of motivation a person has is dependent on their perception of how an action would lead to the attainment of a given result and their desire to realize the identified result. This theory factors in an equation which makes it easier to derive comparative analysis that would enable a management team to provide motivational factors more decisively. This theory adopts the formula: motivation = Valence x Expectancy x instrumentality, where valence refers to the level of desire for a perceived reward; expectancy refers to the probability that the action to be taken may lead to the identified reward; and instrumentality refers to the level to which an employee believes that attaining the identified task could lead to the identified reward.

This theory has received praise from many scholars as a breakthrough in identification and recognition of individual differences within the same staff clusters in an organization. This theory also tends to provide the link between the organizational goals and individual employees’ goals hence offering a platform for the harmonization of the two variables. The theory further gives the management teams to recognize the level of importance that the employees attach to the various components of their work reward systems enabling the organization to lay emphasis on the most critical areas to ensure higher productivity. Adams Equity theory advocates for a balance between the input an employee puts into an organization and the output (reward) that they get from the organization. The inputs include factors such as skills, loyalty, tolerance, determination, personal sacrifice, trust in superiors, adaptability, commitment and hard work while outputs include salaries, financial benefits, job security, growth opportunities, praise, recognition, responsibility and sense of achievement. The equity between the inputs and outputs for employees motivates the employees to work more diligently as it also raises their expectation that further inputs are likely to lead to higher levels of outputs. From the strategic management perspective, Adams Equity theory can be exploited most effectively if the HR managers are able to emphasise on the kind of inputs that are most relevant to the overall goals of the organisation. Skinner’s reinforcement theory states that humans’ actions are a function of the perceived consequences of such actions. This theory concentrates on creating understanding on how to ensure effective control over people’s behavior and completely ignores their internal states of mind.

Skinner’s reinforcement theory identifies positive reinforcement tools as the granting positive responses to an employee’s desirable behavior and negative reinforcement as giving negative responses in reaction to an employee’s undesirable behavior. The theory reinforces the role of leadership in strategic management of the organisation.This theory also advocates for punishment to discourage repetition of undesirable behaviors and possible lack of response for employees that are yet to learn their lessons. Proper understanding and application of this theory ensures that the employees learn desirable behaviors leading to higher motivation levels in the long-run. These motivation theories are critical in examining the level of employee motivation in any organization as they enable researchers to identify the critical areas for examination when carrying out the analyses.  A 2008 Study on the UAE national carrier- Etihad airways was able to reveal some of the expectations that the employees had on their organization, citing promotion and career development with an impressive 68% of the employees interviewed stating that they were impressed with their employer and were highly motivated. This had also coincided with the introduction of online training programs that had significantly ignited employee satisfaction due to the realization of their knowledge needs. However, a 32% disapproval rating among their employees indicated that there was a substantial unexploited potential that could be attained by moving the one third of the employees into a highly motivated and satisfied category. A survey of several organizations in 2010 revealed that most of the organizations surveyed continued to exhibit various symptoms that led to employee dissatisfaction in their companies (Abu Dhabi University, 2010).

These factors included a perceived lack of career growth and personal development; inadequate teamwork and collaboration or its lack thereof, inadequate performance culture, negative manager behavior, unfavorable working conditions such as unfriendly and rigid shifts, unrealistic promotion expectations, and inadequate coaching and mentoring culture. Some of the suggestions made to counter these inadequacies were as follows: placing emphasis on employees’ career development, realigning organizational practices to cultural structures considered crucial by the employees, creating clear performance indicators and management of expectations, offering mentoring and coaching support, increasing employee autonomy in execution of their duties, and encouraging open and candid communication between employees and between them and their bosses. These recommendations seem to be in consonance with the recommendations of Samuel (2001) in his article in the Journal of the American Chiropractic Association when he emphasized the importance of proper staff training, conducive and safe working environments, clarity of objectives and management of staff expectations, fair management practices, and the recognition of employees’ contributions and efforts. Griffin and Moorhead (2009) concur that fairness and adequate reward systems are crucial in ensuring employee retention and enhanced motivation in organizations. Studies have also provided ample evidence that link employee motivation with productivity levels in any organizations.

Strategy management scholars are of the view that in the increasingly competitive business environment, the idea of using human resources are a source of competitive advantage is fast becoming the most convenient card that organizations are likely to use for survival and market dominance. Employee motivation is especially critical in service-oriented organizations such as Etihad airways. Surveys have revealed that satisfied employees are ten times more likely to generate high levels of customer satisfaction than unmotivated employees. Staff motivation is therefore at the heart of any growth or survival strategies that organizations may come up with. This calls for the according of enhanced importance to the human resource management functions of the organizations which have in many cases been left out of strategy planning in many organizations. The inclusion of Human resource functions in strategic planning brings in the useful insight on how the employees can be motivated in realizing the organization goals. The fitting the motivation factors and human resource practices into the overall organizational strategies is also very critical. The motivating factors need to bear some level of synergy and sequence centered on the organizational generic strategies in order to achieve the desired results.