Employee motivation

Employee motivation, i.e. methods for motivating employees, is an intrinsic and internal drive to put forth the necessary effort and action towards work-related activities. It has been broadly defined as the "psychological forces that determine the direction of a person's behavior in an organization, a person's level of effort and a person's level of persistence". Also, “Motivation can be thought of as the willingness to expend energy to achieve a goal or a reward…Motivation at work has been defined as ‘the sum of the processes that influence the arousal, direction, and maintenance of behaviors relevant to work settings’.”

The design of an employee’s job can have a significant effect on their job motivation. Job design includes designing jobs that create both a challenging and interesting task for the employee and is effective and efficient for getting the job done. Four approaches to job design are:

Several studies validate the effectiveness of using job design techniques as an employee motivation technique. A study conducted by Campion and Thayer used a job design questionnaire to determine how job designs fostering motivation affected employees. Campion and Thayer found that jobs with more motivational features have lower effort requirements, a better well-being, and fewer health complaints. The study also found that jobs scoring high on the motivational subscale of the questionnaire contained employees who were more satisfied and motivated, had a higher rating pertaining to job performance, and had fewer absences. Hackman. conducted a study pertaining to work redesign and how redesigning work could improve productivity and motivation through job enlargement or enrichment. The study’s results found that redesigning a job can improve the quality of the product or service that is provided, increase the quantity of work, and can increase work satisfaction and motivation. The last study on job design was conducted by Dunham who wanted to determine if there was a relationship between job design characteristics and job ability and compensation requirements. Dunham believed organizations were overlooking job ability requirements and compensation when they enlarged or enriched employee’s jobs. The study found that organizations were not taking into account the increased job ability requirements that job enrichments or enlargements entail nor were the organizations increasing compensation for employees who were given extra tasks and/or more complex tasks

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