Understanding Why People Work: Factors, Motivation, and Coping Strategies

This report explores the factors that motivate employees to work, including salary, promotion, and work environment. It also discusses Maslow's hierarchy theory and positive and negative factors of job roles. Strategies to cope with negative factors are also presented.

BSc (Hons) Business Management with
Foundation
BMP3004
World of Work
Understanding why people work
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Contents

Introduction 1
What does Motivation Mean? 1
The various factors which motivate employees to work
4
The positive factors employees experience as a result of
their job roles 5
The negative factors employees experience as a result of
their job roles 5
Strategies to cope with negative factors employees
experience as a result of their job roles 6
Conclusion 7
References 8

Introduction:
Why do people work is a big question. Every person from their childhood gets this
thought from all the elders that you have to earn by your own one day. Why is that?
The simplest answer would be that everyone on this planet deserves to have a better
lives and can do whatever they wanted by earning their own money. People basically
works to make a lot of money and they buy their basic necessary things for a living
like food, house, clothes. And how can motivation is an important part in earning
money will be discussed in this report.
What does Motivation Mean?
Motivation is defined as the factor which encourages people to give their best
performance to fulfill the organizational and individual's goal at the same time
(Cobianchi and et. al., 2022).
MASLOW'S HIERARCHY THEORY:
This is a theory which includes motivation and psychology which states that five
categories of the human needs describes an individual's behavior. It is a five- tier
model in which the top to bottom hierarchy includes followings:
 SELF ACTUALISATION NEEDS: The highest level of hierarchy which states
that it is one's potential, personal growth and self fulfillment and experiences.
Maslow however describes this level as the want to execute everything that
one can and able to do.
 ESTEEM NEEDS: This is the fourth in the hierarchy level and includes self-
worth and respect. He further classified it into two parts of esteem for oneself
and the want of reputation from others.
 LOVE AND BELONGINGNESS NEEDS: The third level according to Maslow
is social needs and belongingness which refers to a human need for
relationships, attention and to being a part of groups in the society.
 SAFETY NEEDS:The security and safety is the most important thing for an
individual. This can either be job security and stability or others. But according
to Maslow, a person needs to feel safe and secured around its surroundings.
 PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS: The lowest in the hierarchy but is the most
important thing for a person to survive. At this level however, a person has his
motivation level from his instincts to survive for basic needs like food, shelter
and clothes.
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EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION:
If an individual is motivated by an external factor to push his limits and give their best
performance in return of an award refers to extrinsic motivation.
INTRINSIC MOTIVATION:
If one person is motivated totally by himself or by inner thought of doing better for
own sake will be called intrinsic motivation (Hollebeek and Srivastava, 2022).
The various factors which motivate employees to work:
 Salary: By taking in consideration the salary motivation theory, an individual
with high salary will also be motivated regarding his work as it feels like a
security and a reward in exchange of the services he had provided and will
give motivation to work more better in order to retain his position and increase
the salary amount as well which of course will help him to raise the living
standards and can afford luxury things as well.
 Promotion: Promotion can be also a major factor that can affect motivation
in an individual. Every employee wants a higher post in the company if he is
constantly giving his best to the company. And there is where companies try
and give an opportunity of increased compensation and at the same time
becoming a higher authority and can also enjoy some benefits like paid off,
expense accounts, company cars, insurances and many more. Therefore this
always make them motivated to complete their targets efficiently and
effectively.
 Work Environment: Working environment can be tricky factor that affects
motivation. To make the employee the importance of the organizational goals
and at the same time can be able to understand his individuals goals and
acting accordingly can make a very healthy environment which is beneficial
for both of them. Along with this, the co-workers also play an imp[important
role in making the work environment good for everyone. To keep the people
and the environment constantly positive and make other people motivated can
make the process more easy.
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The positive factors employees experience as a result of
their job roles:
While working for any company, every employee experience many factors in the
beginning and on the way to built a successful career for themselves. An individual's
experience is his own perception about his work throughout the whole time in a
particular company. Some of the factors are being discussed below:
 FLEXIBILITY: The company needs to embrace the change and so its
employees. By making a flexible environment for the new trends, modern
technology and new skills and slowly adapting them both the company and
employees and helping each other which results in gaining new experiences
and helps to stay motivated for the job roles.
 RELAXED AND POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT: It is concluded from the studies
that a relaxed and positive environment i.e environment without the signs of
any fear, bullying, domination, sexual harassment is the appropriate
environment to work with. This not only make the person doubt himself on his
ability to do efficient and creative work but also under-motivated.
 GROWTH AND SKILL DEVELOPMENT: Every employee wants to get
promoted and get its skill improvement through learning and giving time to
that company and also will also want a reward if he is always willing to give
his hundred percent to the company (Ibrahim and et. al., 2022). This factor
however always makes the employee motivated towards their works and have
an optimistic approach to get successful in their respective careers.
The negative factors employees experience as a result of
their job roles:
There are many specific factors which causes a negative or bad experience in their
respective jobs:
 UNDERPAID: As discussed above, salary is one of the most important factor
which motivates the people to do better in every task and increase their
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efficiency as well. But if the employee is underpaid for the work he is doing
with full efficiency, then it not only makes the person under-motivated but also
makes him not realizing his actual worth in the company.
 LIMITED CAREER GROWTH: every person needs to have an opportunity to
move up in the ladder otherwise its not worth to just stay there only. Similarly,
in the world of success and careers, employees wants that if he is giving his
best potential, so after some time he can see his own growth. Growth here
can not only be related to increase in the salary but also the skill
enhancement and the practical approach in the real world (Jamal and
Camargo, 2022). Limited growth in the company can make the employee
leave the current organisation in the hope to have more greater career
opportunities.
 POOR MANAGEMENT: The management in any organization plays a very
important role in the process of motivating employees and the other process
like planning, organisation and the decision making of the firm. A major
reason for the less efficiency of the employees is the poor management. A
boring group of people in the management not only makes the people
careless towards their work and the goals but also makes a bad decision
making for the organization.
Strategies to cope with negative factors employees
experience as a result of their job roles:
Nothing affects more to the working environment and the employee than a
negative working environment. However, the companies follow up many strategies to
cope up with the negative factors employees experiencing. Some of them are
discussed below:
 MAKE THE EMPLOYEE FEEL HEARD: In every organisation, every
employee needs to be heard and should be appreciated for their ideas as
well. When this cannot be done, this makes a negative environment in the
workplace and they might feel discouraged as they were unable to make them
understand enough to other people. Talking to them and giving time and
make them understand what they might be missing in their ideas or work that
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is not enough, in spite the fact that they are continuously giving their hundred
percent (Tripathi and et. al., 2022).
 REMAIN PROFESSIONAL: An organisation is a place where people need to
be professional all the time, and by professional no one means to be strict all
the time but to avoid being in unnecessary gossips and topic which can
results into a negative environment in the firm and can also take a lot of hours
of your time. And in addition to this, gossiping can also make other people
uncomfortable and jealous at the same time in the workplace. So it is
advisable to the people to be professional in the work place to maintain the
motivation and positive energy (Newell, 2022).
 SURROUND YOURSELF WITH POSITIVE CO-WORKERS: Most of the
negativity in the workplace can be caused because of the co-workers. People
needs to find co-workers which can actually bring positivity with them.
Spending time with them however will help them to explore more better things
and can be advised good. This also keeps the environment motivated as their
motivation comes from the inside through which they help a lot other people
mentally who have negative environment in their work space.
Conclusion:
From this respective report however, it can be concluded that motivation in the
subject of management is very important as it is the act of giving someone a solid
reason for doing his task with efficiency. After this Maslow's hierarchy theory has
also9 been discussed which states that the five categories of the human needs
describes an individual's behavior which are self actualization needs, esteem
needs,love and belongingness needs,safety needs and physiological needs. The
various factors which motivate employees to work has also been discussed along
with the positive factors employees experience as a result of their job roles and the
negative factors employees experience as a result of their job roles. Lastly the
strategies to cope with negative factors employees experience as a result of their job
roles has also been discussed in the respective report.
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References
Cobianchi and et. al., 2022. Hand in hand: a multistakeholder approach for co-
production of surgical care. The American Journal of Surgery, 223(1),
pp.214-215.
Hollebeek, L.D. and Srivastava, R.K., 2022. Consumer involvement and
engagement: From involvement’s elaboration likelihood to engagement’s
investment propensity.
Ibrahim and et. al., 2022. Safety of Women Journalists in Nigerian News Media:
Exposing the Hushed Gender-Based Discriminations. In Research
Anthology on Changing Dynamics of Diversity and Safety in the
Workforce (pp. 1980-2003). IGI Global.
Jamal, T. and Camargo, B., 2022. Responsible Tourism Marketing. In Encyclopedia
of Tourism Management and Marketing (pp. 1-3). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Newell, P., 2022. Finance for the common good: Re-thinking the relationship
between finance, poverty and sustainability. In Financial Crises, Poverty and
Environmental Sustainability: Challenges in the Context of the SDGs and
Covid-19 Recovery (pp. 17-24). Springer, Cham.
Tripathi and et. al., 2022. Spirituality meets science: Impact of founders’ imprint on
healthcare practices for marginal communities in India. Journal of Business
Research, 138, pp.311-323.
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