Introduction
Today, the environment in which public organizations exist is rather competitive, but each company is willing to achieve success. Trying to enhance organizational effectiveness, they recruit talented personnel that should be directed towards task fulfillment. This aim can be reached only if an organization has strong and positive relations with its workers. Still, the majority of companies do not consider their workforce to be the main asset, which can lead them to the highest position in the market, and pay more attention to other aspects, such as marketing and promotion. In this framework, it cannot be denied that they just do not realize the fact that their success depends on employee productivity that ensures decent fulfillment of organizational tasks and achievement of its goals.
To enhance their performance and productivity, the personnel should be satisfied with their jobs and motivated to work. Each of them has lots of different needs so that while ones are focused on security, others want to achieve more. If managers want to control employee behavior, they should know what they want from their jobs and what motivates them. It is not enough to ask how one feels about some situation. Managers should define real needs and focus on them to be able to generate effective motivational strategies that are aligned with employee needs if they want their workers to do their best to meet organizational goals. Thus, this paper seeks to explore the relationship between effective motivation and employee productivity.
Background
I have always believed that it is critical for every public organization to be able to ensure its competitiveness because of the constant changes that are observed in the market. To my mind, the best way to do so is to focus on the personnel. Those people who work in a company create it, as it depends on them whether it will be able to achieve its main goal and satisfy customers or not. Being focused on the employees’ influence on the organization, I also realized that this power is mutual. Managers can affect employees’ behavior so that their willingness to work hard increases and productivity improves if they find a right trigger. This trigger that makes people motivated is a need. Realizing this, I recollected that I have already several works that discussed this idea. What is more, I remembered the ideas of Abraham Maslow and Douglas McGregor that related to the topic and supported by belief.
Actually, the usage of effective motivation strategies is not an issue in the framework of my job, as I believe them to be properly utilized. Still, when communicating with my friends and other organizational managers, I found out that many of them do not pay enough attention to employee motivation. As a result, their companies can hardly reach the goals they have, which makes the executives unsatisfied and affects working environment adversely. I had not tried to solve this issue on my own before but attempted to address it with the help of an interview with the representatives of public organizations. We interacted face-to-face, and I ensured their anonymity but received an opportunity to gather some information about the way motivation or its absence influence employee satisfaction and, what is more critical, their productivity.
Literature Review
Employee performance can depend on various variables, including training, satisfaction, or appraisal. Still, many professionals and scientists believe motivation to be a major driver that triggers people to accomplish particular tasks and reach goals. For example, Kamalian, Yaghoubi, and Moloudi (2010) stated that due to the appropriate motivation strategy, an employee is likely to direct one’s efforts to the accomplishment of organizational goals. As a result, the personnel are focused on the constant improvement of their knowledge and skills so that their productivity enhances with the course of time. What is more, these organizations are reported to have better competitive advantage and results in the market. The author concludes that it is not easy to make the workers reach their potential and improve performance but effective motivation can be rather useful in this framework.
Abah and Nwokwu (2016) also believe motivation to be vital. Their research proved that it enhances job satisfaction and improves employee performance. The professionals stated that appropriate motivational techniques should be developed for each company separately. The rationale for it is the fact that peculiar needs of diverse personnel should be satisfied.
Ngima and Kyongo (2013) also emphasized the existence of a connection between motivation and performance. They underlined that many companies implement motivational strategies and theories without focusing on particular needs of their personnel, which prevents them from making a step forward. Thus, they emphasize the necessity to collect information about organization’s employees to select those strategies that will be the most effective and to avoid negative effects.
In his turn, McGregor develops his theory Y, according to which effective motivational strategies should be focused on the combination of personal and organizational goals (Dobre, 2013). The scientist underlines that people become self-directed and creative in this way. They start working gladly and are enthusiastic to achieve more. Subsequently, they reach high productivity levels. This view is supported by the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. According to it, organizations should create a positive environment that ensures the development of self-esteem and actualization, which strengthens creativity and job satisfaction, and leads to better productivity (Carpenter, Bauer, & Erdogan, 2009).
Analysis
The information obtained with the help of the literature review highlights two main facts. The first one reveals the connection between the usage of effective motivational strategies and improved employee productivity. The second one underlines that a lot of companies still fail to realize the value of their personnel in the framework of competitiveness or do not pay attention to the particular needs of their workers.
As organizations do not focus on their personnel and do not conduct research studies that can help them to determine what their workers expect from their job and whether they are currently satisfied prevents them from the generation of the most effective and appropriate motivational strategies. As a result, employee productivity does not improve and remains on the same level or even worsens. The existing issue has an adverse influence on the organizational performance. Unfortunately, it is not properly dealt with in the majority of cases.
Conclusion
Taking into consideration the information mentioned above, I can conclude that a lot of different professionals and scientists paid their attention to the problem of poor employee motivation and its influence on the employee productivity and organizational performance. They discussed it, conducting research studies in real organizations, which allowed to deepen into the subject. In addition to that, some aspects of this issue had been already investigated during the Human Relations Theory Period by such classics as Abraham Maslow and Douglas McGregor.
Even though some companies still do not realize that they can enhance their competitiveness and performance if they implement appropriate motivational strategies, the issue is well-examined. Professionals point out how organizations can identify what needs their workers have and explain how they can be used for proper motivation to improve productivity and performance.
References
Abah, E., & Nwokwu, P. (2016). Work place motivation and employee productivity in the Nigerian public organizations: The federal radio corporation of Nigeria experience. Journal of Resources Development and Management, 20(1), 2016, 30-41.
Carpenter, M., Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2009). Principles of management. Washington, D.C.: Flat World Knowledge.
Dobre, O. (2013). Employee motivation and organizational performance. Review of Applied Socio-Economic Research, 5(1), 53-60.
Kamalian, A. R., Yaghoubi, N. M., & Moloudi, J. (2010). Survey of relationship between organizational justice and empowerment. European Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Sciences, 24(1), 165-171.
Ngima, W., & Kyongo, J. (2013). Contribution of motivational management to employee performance. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 3(14), 219-239.