Employee Motivation: Theories, Factors, Strategies for Tech Companies

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of employee motivation, exploring various motivational theories such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Alderfer’s ERG theory, Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory, McClelland’s Achievement Theory, Locke’s Goal Setting Theory, Adam’s Equity Theory, and Vroom’s Valence-Instrumentality-Expectancy Theory. The report delves into factors impacting employee motivation in current organizations, using Paratemtic Information Technology as a case study, and discusses strategies tech companies can employ to enhance employee engagement and productivity, including effective reward systems, job redesign, flexibility in work, and building trust. The report also includes references to relevant academic sources.

Understanding Motivation, Motivational
Theories and Employee Motivational
Factors and Strategies

TABLE OF CONTENTS
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
1.1 Maslow's hierarchy of needs............................................................................................1
1.2 Alderfer’s Existence, Relatedness and Growth Theory...................................................2
1.3 Hertzberg’s Two Factor Theory.......................................................................................3
1.4 McClelland’s Achievement Theory.................................................................................3
1.5 Locke’s Goal Setting Theory............................................................................................3
1.6 Adam’s Equity Theory.....................................................................................................3
1.7 Vroom’s Valence – Instrumentality- Expectancy Theory................................................4
2. Factors which impact employee motivation in current organisations................................4
3. Employee motivation strategies which technology companies can use.............................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

MAIN BODY
1.1 Maslow's hierarchy of needs
This theory was proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943. Managers are required to
understand psychological behaviour of individuals. According to this theory, there are five needs
which are discussed below:
Illustration 1: Maslow's hierarchy of needs
(Source: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, 2018)
Psychological need: These are the basic needs which are required for survival of individuals.
This help in proper functioning of human body. Basic needs are important and they should be
met first. This include food, water, air without which person cannot survive. Psychological
needs should be met first (Kiruja and Mukuru, 2018).
Security needs: After fulfilling psychological needs, management should focus on security needs
of individuals. Management provide job security to employees in order to avoid employee’s
turnover. These needs are related to safety of employees. In order to establish good relation
between employees and organisation management must fulfil all security needs.
Social needs: This is another motivation factor adopted by organisation to motivate employees.
This need include belonging for love and association. Employees should be accepted among
social groups.
1

Esteem needs: This is related to reputation and status symbol of individual. Every employee
working in organisation deserve respect. Providing employees with high living standard will
boost up their morale. There are two types of esteem needs lower and higher. This is closely
related to motivation of employees (Kuvaas and et.al., 2016).
Self-actualisation: This includes individual capabilities to meet requirement. According to theory
this is last factor of motivation. In this stage individual try to accomplish personal goals and
objectives. An individual need motivation to fulfil their desire.
1.2 Alderfer’s Existence, Relatedness and Growth Theory
This theory deals with providing basic necessities to individual. This consist of
psychological and safety needs. It is important for people to maintain interpersonal relationship
between employees. They form groups according to mutual understanding and relations. People
interact with each according social status. There are different factors of motivation, which leads
personal growth and development. Managers of organisation need to analyse behaviour of
employees and make development strategies on basis of them. Individual need motivation to
accomplish their goals and objectives.
Illustration 2: Alderfer’s Existence, Relatedness and Growth Theory
(Source: Aldref theory of motivation, 2018)

1.3 Hertzberg’s Two Factor Theory
This theory suggest that it is important to create job stratification among individuals.
Organisation should offer challenging work to individual. They must provide opportunities to
employees to do something great. Managers motivate employees to effectively participate in
decision making process of organisation. This will create sense of belongingness. Management
must create good working environment in order to create job satisfaction. Offering good pay or
salary will boost up morale and self-esteem of employees (Lee, Back and Chan, 2015).
1.4 McClelland’s Achievement Theory
This is also known as need theory. Employees prefer to perform difficult task. Top level
management should give feedback about work of their subordinates. Motivation factors are
directly linked with age, sex, gender and culture of individual. People desire to achieve some
goals and objectives in life. Management should offer well paid job with carrier benefits.
Individual starve for respect and position, they make great efforts to establish their reputation.
Motivational factors has direct impact on status of employees (Olafsen and et.al., 2015). People
generally form group with individuals that has same behaviour or attitude.
1.5 Locke’s Goal Setting Theory
This theory deals with developing plans, which will influence behaviour of employees to
achieve goals of organisation. Management use smart criteria to set goals of organisation. It is
important to set goals for personal development of individual. Organisation set goals that are
difficult in order to enhance their personal performance. Managers provide guideline to
employees to accomplish their target on time. Organisation should give rewards to staff for better
performance of work. This will increase productivity as employees are committed towards goals.
Managers are required to monitor behaviour of individuals and provide them with regular
feedback.
1.6 Adam’s Equity Theory
This theory focus on proper distribution of resources to achieve goals of organisation.
Management measure cost (input) and revenue (output) of organisation. Input include employees
handwork, skills, loyalty, etc. whereas, output refers to rewards like bonus, salary, commission.

This theory motivates the employees to enhance their quality and quantity of performance.
Employees feel motivated when the get desired output (Osabiya, 2015).
1.7 Vroom’s Valence – Instrumentality- Expectancy Theory
Vroom's valance expectancy theory states that results of behaviour from conscious
choices of alternatives, whose purpose is to minimize pain and maximise pleasure. They realised
that an employee’s performance is evaluated on the basis of individual factors which include
personality, knowledge, skills, experience and effort, performance and motivation are linked to
an employee’s motivation. He uses the help of variables given below:
Expectancy: It is a belief that increase in effort leads to increase in performance and can
affected by having right resources available, skills and necessary support required to get work
done.
Instrumentality: It is a belief that well performance will receive a valued outcome. This
causes a degree of first level outcome that leads to the second level outcome. This can be
affected by clear understanding of relationships between performance and outcome, trust in
employees that take decisions and complete transparency during the process.
Valence: It is the importance that an individual places on expected outcome. For it to be
positive, the person must consider attaining the outcome to not attaining it (Ritz, Brewer and
Neumann, 2016).
This theory works on perceptions, it means that even if an employer feels that they have
provided everything required for motivation and it even works on the employees, it does not
mean that someone will not perceive that it doesn't work
2. Factors which impact employee motivation in current organisations
Paratemtic Information Technology uses various factors to motivate employees.
Leadership skills play major role in determining the motivation level of employees. They
implement appropriate leadership style to motivate employees to achieve company goals. Some
ways of motivation is discussed below:
Motivating through intrinsic rewards: Management should have effective reward structure.
They must offer employees rewards for their achievement and success. Offering employees with
monetary incentive will boost their morale. They will work effectively in order to accomplish
goals and objectives. Paratemtic Information Technology Company give commission to

employees on increased percentage of sale. Monetary aspects will help employees to achieve
specific goals.
Creating a Motivational Organizational Climate: Managers make great efforts to manage and
create organisation structure. They must look after need and requirements of their employees.
Managers must create healthy working environment, in which employees respect their
subordinates and lower level management. Organisation follows principle of respecting every
individual. Treating employees badly will increase labour turnover. Paratemtic information
technology motivate employees to respect each other, this will create happy working
environment. People generally prefer working in positive working conditions (Shields and et.al.,
2015).
Structure of motivation: Managers motivate employees to interact with each other in order to
maintain coordination and cooperation between their works. Mangers standardise the work and
motivate employees achieve that standard. Good organisation motivate employees to match up
their work. This make work place interesting and enjoyable.
Job security: Paratemtic information technology provide job security to employees working in
organisation. This will help individual to focus on work and become productive. Job security
create positive working environment. Managers should appreciate performance of employees in
order to motivate them.
Good wages: Paratemtic information technology offer good wages to employees in order to
increase productivity (Ritz, Brewer and Neumann, 2016).
3. Employee motivation strategies which technology companies can use
In every company, management wants that their potential employees must work with full
efficiency and capabilities so that the company will able to achieve desired objectives and goals
in the prescribed time frame. In this context, employee motivation refers as the factors or
elements that cause they behave a certain way in their workings. It is defines as the level of
energy, creativity and commitment possesses by the workers. They must follow different kinds
of techniques and strategies to motivate their work force and increase their productivity. In the
Parametric Technology Ltd (Siponen, Mahmood and Pahnila, 2014). Organisation that is situated
at Birmingham, United Kingdom. It operates its business activities in technology and provides
technical services to its customers. In this organisation, the management team uses various types
of employee motivational strategies. These techniques or strategies are as follows:

 Effective reward system – Management may often use better reward system to
encourage or reinforce to employee's behaviour that they need to continue. A systematic
reward policy is a work outcome of positive value to the each person. It has two types
intrinsic and extrinsic reward system. In this context, intrinsic reward refers as self-
administered that person feels good because he or she has a feeling of personal
development, competency and self‐control over his or her job. In the other hand, the
extrinsic reward demonstrates to the externally administered. It provides by the
management in different form such as pay bonuses, office fixtures, verbal praise, time
off, special assignments, promotions, awards, and many more.
 Redesigning job or work – In the company, management can also redesign the job of
their potential workers and provide them better working environment for accomplishment
of their work. The concept of job redesign, that needs to a knowledge of and concern for
the human qualities people convey with them to the company and it applies several
motivational theories to the structure of work for improvement in their satisfaction and
productivity (Zameer and et.al., 2014).
 Flexibility in work – In today's environment, every person want to spend more time with
their personal life so that it is the responsibility of management that they use minimum
time of worker. So for this reason flexible time frame, that permits work force to set,
manage and control their own work hours. It is one of the way that employer must
accommodates their employees' needs and requirements. In this context, management of
Parametric Technology Ltd. may use several methods for example job sharing,
compressed worksheet and many more in order to motivate their potential employees.
 Trust on employees – It is one of the most essential task that must conducts by human
resource management because trust is a way to develop possible talent in employees. In
each organisation, workers want to know that their manager is looking out for their best
interests, it will motivate them to succeed. In other words, the leaders also want to know
that they can trust their staff to do their jobs properly. So for this reason management
must build a trust on their potential work force and increase their productivity (Kiruja,
and Mukuru, 2018).

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Kiruja, E.K. and Mukuru, E., 2018. Effect of motivation on employee performance in public
middle level Technical Training Institutions in Kenya. IJAME.
Kuvaas, B. and et.al., 2016. Do you get what you pay for? Sales incentives and implications for
motivation and changes in turnover intention and work effort. Motivation and
Emotion, 40(5), pp.667-680.
Lee, J.S., Back, K.J. and Chan, E.S., 2015. Quality of work life and job satisfaction among
frontline hotel employees: A self-determination and need satisfaction theory
approach. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(5),
pp.768-789.
Olafsen, A.H. and et.al., 2015. Show them the money? The role of pay, managerial need support,
and justice in a self‐determination theory model of intrinsic work
motivation. Scandinavian journal of psychology, 56(4), pp.447-457.
Osabiya, B.J., 2015. The effect of employees motivation on organizational performance. Journal
of public administration and policy research, 7(4), pp.62-75.
Ritz, A., Brewer, G.A. and Neumann, O., 2016. Public service motivation: A systematic
literature review and outlook. Public Administration Review, 76(3), pp.414-426.
Shields, J. and et.al., 2015. Managing employee performance & reward: Concepts, practices,
strategies. Cambridge University Press.
Siponen, M., Mahmood, M.A. and Pahnila, S., 2014. Employees’ adherence to information
security policies: An exploratory field study. Information & management, 51(2), pp.217-
224.
Zameer, H. and et.al., 2014. The impact of the motivation on the employee’s performance in
beverage industry of Pakistan. International Journal of Academic Research in
Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, 4(1), pp.293-298.
Online
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. 2018. [Online]. Accessed through:
<https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html>.
Aldref theory of motivation. 2018. [Online]. Accessed through:
<https://www.yourcoach.be/en/employee-motivation-theories/erg-motivation-theory-
alderfer.php>.