Theories of Motivation and Their Applicability in the Modern Workplace

This essay discusses various theories of motivation, including Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Herzberg's theory, and Vroom expectancy theory, and how they can be applied in the modern workplace to improve employee performance and satisfaction.

Individual Essay

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................3
TASK.................................................................................................................................................3
Discuss theories of motivation and how to apply then in the modern workplace.........................3
...........................................................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Motivation can be defined as the element of management that is used by the organisation to
encourage their employees to achieve ultimate goal. It helps to build strong relation between the
employees and employers and increase productivity and efficiency of the organisation. Highly
motivated employees are the asset for the organisation and contributes in higher growth
(Beckmann and Heckhausen, 2018). It avoid employees turnover, conflicts and misunderstanding
and bring harmony and peace at workplace. Motivation helps to deal with the challenging
environment where employees put their all efforts for the better performance of the business. This
report will analyse the importance of motivation and its applicability at workplace.
TASK
Discuss theories of motivation and how to apply then in the modern workplace.
Motivation is the fundamental tool that help to encourage, inspire the employees in order to
satisfy their needs Employees can be motivated by offering them incentives, appraisal, promotion
at workplace that they get motivated. Motivation helps to create positive environment at
workplace and improve work performance. The organisation used various methods to provide
training and skill development programmes to boost the morale of the employees. Motivation is
used as a method to satisfy the needs and demand of the employees so that they can work with
more efficiency. There are various theories of motivation that need to be fulfilled by the
organisation to improve the physiological and social behaviour of an employee.
Many theories of motivation includes :
Maslow's Hierarchy of needs: This theory was first introduced by the famous American
psychologist known as Abraham Maslow in the year 1943 and formulate the basic neeeds
should be provided to secure their interest in the organisation. These basic needs are the
primary factors that primarily motivate the employees. It includes food, clothes, love and self
esteem. It is necessary to earn the basic livelihood (Bushi, 2021).
Maslow's hierarchy needs deals with the progress of the employees by different ways:
Psychological needs: It is considered as the primary needs which is required to survive in the
society. It includes necessary need like shelter, food , water ,health etc. In order to meet such

needs, the employee salary must allow them to consider these needs on priority basis.
Employees cannot be satisfied until these primary needs are not fulfilled.
Safety needs: Another important needs followed by the basic needs includes security of life. This
need can be fulfilled when person feel itself secure and protected in the existing environment.
It is the duty of the organisation to provide safe and healthy environment to its employees to
get motivated to put their efforts with full efficiency.
Love and belongingness needs: The third level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs deals with
important aspect of employee which includes social interaction and feeling of belongingness
can be achieved when organisation used motivational technique to avoid conflicts and
indifferences among the employees (Fellmeth, 2021).
Esteem needs: The fourth level of needs includes reputation , recognition and social status of
employees in the society . Employees are motivated when they get respect and incentives
from the organisation.
Self- Actualisation Needs: The final hierarchy of needs includes self actualisation and ability to
work in the healthy environment. IT can be developed by giving them training and skills
development program,mes so that they explore their skills at workplace.
Herzberg's theory of motivation
This theory is based on the two factors that make influences in the process of motivation in the
organisation and these two factors are motivators and the hygiene factors .
Motivating Factors
These factors are contributing in motivates the employees in the process of working harder.
There are various things that motivates the employees in achieving the organisational goal these
factors are given below:
 Achievement- There is must be a sense of achievement in doing the tasks as fulfilling a
difficult tasks and perform better is an achievement in the work. This helps in doing more
work and sense of satisfaction (Navy, 2020).
 Recognition- A job must provides its employees a recognition in their working , this can be
come from both the superiors and the colleagues. This helps in maintains the continuous
motivation.

 Responsibility- The work and the task employee is completing is their own work there is a
need to take the responsibility of their work as being responsible makes them feel that they
are doing their own works instead of managing others work.
 Growth- In the process of completing the task the job should provide different
opportunities to the employees in the process of learning new skills. This can be on job and
the formal training.
 Advancement- there is a need of the opportunities that provide multiple opportunities for
the advancement in the career of the employees.
Hygiene factors- These are not the direct factors that motivates the employees but it surrounds
the job. The absence of the hygiene factors causes employees to work less hard in their work.
These factors includes some measures that are given below:
 Companies policy- The code of conduct of the policy of the business should be fair and
equal for all the employees with the employees they must be equal for the competitors as
well.
 Relationships- The relationship between the employees of the organisation should be
healthy, friendly and appropriate in accordance to the work , there should be no bullying
and no tolerance.
 Supervision- The monitoring should be fair and clear to the every employees . here should
be reasonable anatomy given to each employees in context of their working.
 Work conditions- The working environment should be safe and healthy and fit the purpose
of working for the management as well as the employees .
 Salary- this is the most important hygiene factors for the motivation of the employees as
pay structure should be fair and reasonable . With that is has to be competitive with the
other company as well.
 Security- Ti is important part of the working in an organisation as with the healthy and the
secure working environment , employees feel that their job is secure and not under the
constant threat of being losing the job (Pateman, and Pateman, 2018).
Vroom expectancy theory
This theory state that the employee motivation is result of how much a person want
valance or reward, assessment which the likelihood that efforts will lead to an expected

performance and belief that performance will lead to a rewards. This theory distinguishes between
efforts employee put in, their work performance and the final outcome There are different
component of this theory, which are mentioned below:
 Expectancy- It is related to the employee's expectation from their own efforts and relation
to a good performance and result or outcome. An organisation like Sainsbury can respond
to that by finding out which element or factor can motivate a employee so that he deliver
best passible performance. Therefore, it is all about a connection between the performance
and appropriate sources of the motivation (Yoes and Silverman, 2021).
 Instrumentality- Every workers is a cog in machine and the instrument which contribute
to business result. The instrumentality is a belief and from that visual aspect
instrumentality is easy to grasp. It is all about performance of employee being best enough
in order to attain the desired outcome or result. An organisational like Sainsbury can
stimulate it by making good on promises of the additional rewards including promotion or
bonus. Workers has to believe that their godo performance will be shown an appreciation
for the result. At workplace, transparency throughout the organisational reward process is a
significant condition for the instrumentality
 Valence- Final result that workers attain is valued differently by every employee. This
value is based on employee's own basic needs. Therefore, it is a good idea for the
Sainsbury to find out that what their employee's value and what their personal needs or
requirement are like source of the motivation. One might value money, when another
values may be more day off.
Advantages of expectancy theory for the organisation
 It stresses upon the perception and expectation, what is actual and what is real is
immaterial.
 It mainly emphasize on pay off or rewards.
Limitation of expectancy theory
 It seems to be an idealistic because quite few individual or employees perceive a high
degree correlation between the performance and rewards.

CONCLUSION
Form the above report it is concluded that there are various motivational theories which
have been developed in order to explain the motivated behaviour and satisfy the needs. Hence,
based on these approaches, company's manager would benefit form the understanding that what
employee need so that actions of workers can be manager by understanding them clearly. In this
report, various theories are discussed like Vroom expectancy and Maslow hierarchy of needs and
so on. Thus, it is find out that employees in organisation will be motivated by different factors and
these factors are different from every one. Therefore it is advised to every organisation that they
should make a clear vision for the comp[any so that every one can understand it and motivate
them employees to attain this vision in effective and efficient way.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Beckmann, J. and Heckhausen, H., 2018. Motivation as a function of expectancy and incentive.
In Motivation and action (pp. 163-220). Springer, Cham.
Bushi, F., 2021. An Overview of Motivation Theories: The Impact of Employee Motivation on
Achieving Organizational Goals. Quality-Access to Success, 22(183).
Fellmeth, J.L., 2021. Patient Noncompliance: Can Theories of Motivation and Principles of Social
Influence Be the Solution? (Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University).
Navy, S.L., 2020. Theory of human motivation—Abraham Maslow. In Science Education in
Theory and Practice (pp. 17-28). Springer, Cham.
Pateman, J. and Pateman, J., 2018. Managing Cultural Change in Public Libraries: Marx, Maslow
and Management. Routledge.
Yoes, M. and Silverman, M.J., 2021. Expectancy Theory of Motivation and Substance Use
Treatment: Implications for Music Therapy. Music Therapy Perspectives, 39(1), pp.61-
68.