Understanding Motivation: A Business Management Report BMP3004

This report provides a comprehensive overview of employee motivation in the context of business management. It defines motivation, distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic types, and references Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a foundational theory. The report identifies various factors that motivate employees, such as salary, promotion, and work environment, and discusses the positive aspects employees experience, including growth opportunities, feeling valued, and appreciation. It also addresses negative factors like workload, safety concerns, and poor management, suggesting strategies to mitigate these issues, such as providing safety measures, expertise management systems and opportunities for expressing opinions. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of understanding and addressing employee needs to foster a positive and productive work environment.

Business Management with Foundation
BMP3004
World of Work
Understanding why people work
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Contents

What does Motivation Mean? 3-4
The various factors which motivate employees to work
4-5
The positive factors employees experience as a result of their job
roles 5-6
The negative factors employees experience as a result of their job
roles 6
Strategies to cope with negative factors employees experience as a
result of their job roles 6-7
Conclusion 7
References 8

Introduction
The basic reason for which people work is to earn money to provide themselves
and their families with essential needs of life – shelter, food and clothes. Once the essential
needs are met, many other needs and wants arise in people depending on different
individuals such as cars/ other modes of transportation, luxurious items or charities which
can be acquired through money and provide them motivation to work more or differently.
After this, people work for building human relationships through getting in contact with
their colleagues, partners and others to avoid loneliness, teaming up or fulfilling needs like
sexual intercourse (Villotti and et. al., 2018). Getting out of the house and working in
different fields or sectors also help them in their personal development by getting various
types of knowledge and betterment in personal behavior. In the following report,
definition of motivation, motivating factors for employees, their positive and negative
experience giving elements and strategies to cope up with those negative factors are
included.
What does Motivation Mean?
It is the process which tells about the readiness of people for doing a particular
work and providing them a reason to do it. It is the cause that make a person to act and
maintains goal orientated behavior. In context of business and management, motivation
helps in encouraging the staff to their at their level best which helps in increasing the
productivity and responsibility towards the work (Geregová and Frišaufová, 2020). There
can be different motivating factors for different people. There are two types of motivation:
 Intrinsic motivation- When motivation comes from inside to meet personal needs
like enjoying or getting self gratitude in doing a certain activity.
 Extrinsic motivation – This comes from external factors and can be controlled by
others like money and rewards.
In 1943, an American psychologist, Abraham Maslow theorized a hierarchy of
psychological needs, today known as Maslow's hierarchy theory. It is a motivating theory
which conspires about elements that provide motivation to a human being classified in
basic to the additional needs shown in hierarchical levels within a pyramid formulation.
There are five levels of this theory in orderly form as per the needs, notified in the
following:
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 Psychological needs- These are the essentials of living life- food, shelter and
clothes.
 Safety needs- After getting the essentials, an organism needs safety for its
existence, health and holding of assets from other organisms or calamities.
 Love and belonging needs- These are the social needs expected with others for
building relationship like parents and siblings and living fruitful life.
 Esteem needs- These are the ego driven needs for acquiring value such as-
respect, self worth and achievements.
 Self actualization needs- These are the highest level needs in the
corresponding theory and refer to the self realization needs like identifying
growth, potential of itself (Sun, 2019).
The various factors which motivate employees to work
 Salary: These are the main source of motivation for most of the human beings and
that comes from the remuneration provided in return for the work according to the
verbal agreement between person to person or terms and conditions of company. In
a company, when the work load is high or more production is needed by all or any
particular employee, increasing salary or providing incentive proved to be
successful way. In this evolving market, commission basis salary providing tactics
in which more the work is done more the remuneration he/she will receive and vice
versa is more preferred by business owners as it increases the production and
decrease their responsibility (Alsawaier, 2018).
 Promotion: When an employee working on a certain position gets promoted to a
higher position in that company or its branch, he/ she is promoted. This
motivational factor motivates the employee in some following ways:
◦ Increased authority - The higher positions have higher authority with them
and are considered to be more respected by other people in the organization.
◦ New work experience – Promotion may change or improve the past work
quality, quantity or operations completely. Higher the post comes with higher
responsibility and may provide the related person with different on the job and
working experience.
◦ Higher compensation – The promoted place is mostly considered to be given
higher remuneration than the previous post.
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 Work Environment: The place and situation in which a company operates and
employees work is the working environment of the company. It also include the
relationships of the workforce with each other and the employer. A healthy
working environment gives the corresponding workforce permission to show to
their creativity and good relationship between each other which loads out their
pressure, motivating them and thus improves the productivity and quality of the
work. It also increases the retention level of the company and decrease its expenses
toward new hiring.
The positive factors employees experience as a result of their job roles
 Growth opportunities – Nobody wants to be stuck in the same place and doing
the same work or assignments daily for long period of time. Development is
appreciated always and everywhere. Employees should be provided with some
training programs for skills development to keep them getting better, this also helps
the organization in getting the qualified work. Employees should be liable to be
Growth opportunities – Nobody wants to be stuck in the same place and doing the
promoted after a certain work experience or their knowledge (Alsuwaidi and et.
al.,2020). When they know that can be promoted if they perform better, the positive
fights for working best will be there in the organization and will bring growth both
for the employees and the firm.
 To humanize – Showing humanity and kindness gives a beautiful return in every
aspects of life including businesses operations. Understanding the workforce and
providing a transparent and honest approach to them is a valuable habit for a
businessman. It tells about their wants and needs which will help in creating a safe
workplace and loyal employees where everybody can share their clear thoughts
related to the operatives of the organization.
 Appreciation – Everyone wants to be honored, remembered and valued. A
positive and actual feedback to the employee or employees of a certain firm
regarding the work by the boss or seniors, impacts affirmatively and fills them with
enthusiasm and increases their satisfaction level which thus helps to boost their
moral towards the work. When the workforce of the firm feel that they are being
considered, the actions towards improving their work will be practiced.
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The negative factors employees experience as a result of their job roles
 Work load - Some business owners or managers are very harsh with their
employees and don't try to understand them. They just want their more and more
profits to be booked with the most work they can get done by overburdening their
workforce and putting pressure on them. This misconduct may lead to lower
retention levels and even strikes which can stop the work completely till it starts
again by consulting , decreasing the workload or replacing workers(Kim, Park and
Kang, 2019). Due to the high targets, they will not not be motivated to even hit
their own best working points.
 Safety and security – The need to be felt safe is one of the most important need of
any organism. The unsafe environment of a firm makes a bad impact by stopping
the workforce to put their full focus on the work.
 Bad management system – When the managing function of a company is poor, it
can immensely affect the organization in many ways. Poor distribution of work
between the employees can create conflicts in them. It will make them feel
discriminated if they get more work load then other with the similar efficiency
level and may lead to make a bad impact on the goodwill and relationships between
the employers and employees of it. This can also promote increasing of leaves due
to negligence of its management.
Strategies to cope with negative factors employees experience as a result
of their job roles
 Providing safety measures – As we identified that poor safety measures will
affect the focus of the employees from the work, this factor should be given
priority. This will make the related people feel safe and secure in and around the
company or even in their personal life which will increase their trust and morale
towards the it. These safety measures can include fire security, guards, cameras and
even life or certain other insurances for them and their families(Farmaki, 2018).
 Focusing on expertise management system – The managing system of providing
the work to their employees should be based on their personal capabilities and
remuneration should be according to the given work so the workforce get
motivated to do more and more work. The expertise managers with needed
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qualification should be hired and their way of dealing with people and operations
must also be superior. For hiring, a company can have their eye on the youth
category graduating form different colleges that have great potential.
 Providing opportunities of expressing opinions – People want to get heard,
similarly the workforce of an business entity want to express their views and
opinions towards any concern or building of strategies. This involvement makes
them feel valued and will be considered as a fair treatment of the company(Youn,
Lee and Lee, 2018). This strategy can also help the organization by providing
them more choices of ideas. Trust and respect in the company's social environment
will also improve through this.
Conclusion
In the above it has been concluded that, people work for specific reasons which can differ
on individual to individual. The term motivation refers to the cause for which people work.
It has two types – extrinsic (when motivation comes through any outside cause) and
intrinsic (when motivation comes from inside or from self). Maslow's hierarchy is a theory
which tells about five elements through which motivational factors are determined and in
an organized form. There are various factors that help in motivating employees such as
salary and promotion. A business organization can consist of some positive and negative
experience providing elements to their employees. To cope with those negative elements,
it can use some strategies such as providing safety measures, listening to their opinions and
focusing on expertise management system.
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References
Alsawaier, R.S., 2018. The effect of gamification on motivation and engagement. The
International Journal of Information and Learning Technology.
Alsuwaidi, M. and et. al., 2020, October. Performance appraisal on employees’ motivation:
a comprehensive analysis. In International Conference on Advanced Intelligent
Systems and Informatics (pp. 681-693). Springer, Cham.
Farmaki, A., 2018. Tourism and hospitality internships: A prologue to career
intentions?. Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education. 23.
pp.50-58.
Geregová, M. and Frišaufová, M., 2020. People with experience of long-term drug use and
homelessness teaching with us: experts by experience participation in university
social work education. Social Work Education. 39(3). pp.315-328.
Kim, E.J., Park, S. and Kang, H.S.T., 2019. Support, training readiness and learning
motivation in determining intention to transfer. European Journal of Training and
Development.
Sun, L., 2019, August. Interaction Design Strategy Based on the Consideration of
Subconsciousness and Behavioral Habits. In 2019 International Conference on
Smart Grid and Electrical Automation (ICSGEA) (pp. 553-557). IEEE.
Villotti, P. and et. al., 2018. A serial mediation model of workplace social support on work
productivity: the role of self-stigma and job tenure self-efficacy in people with
severe mental disorders. Disability and rehabilitation. 40(26). pp.3113-3119.
Youn, H., Lee, K. and Lee, S., 2018. Effects of corporate social responsibility on
employees in the casino industry. Tourism management. 68. pp.328-335.
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