Employee Motivation

Employee Motivation

INTRODUCTION

In the quest to obtain the maximum from employees and achieve organizational success, employers recognised the need to acknowledge that people have complex needs. With the growing affluence of our society, Singaporeans of today are no longer solely driven by money but also challenges inherent in their responsibility. This is supported by our Senior Minister Goh who recently commented that Singaporeans prefer the experience of working abroad than locally as the foreign employer advocate the importance of not only work, but also the employee’s needs.(TODAY, 15 March 07).

Before discussing the motivational strategies, a simplistic approach will be taken, using Hackman Oldham’s Job Characteristics Model, which defines the workforce into two categories. The first category consist of staff in job settings which are low in skill variety, task identity, task significance, low autonomy and feedback and followed by staff in complicated job settings with scorer high in all fronts (Robbins, Millet, Waters-Marsh, 2004).

GOAL SETTING / EXPECTANCY THEORY

“Specific hard goals produce a higher level of output than does the generalised goal of ‘do your best” (Robbins, 2003). This statement defines Edwin Locke’s goal-setting theory which advocates giving employees clear targets so that they are aware of what needs to be done and how much effort to be expended. While easier goals are more readily accepted, difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance as the specificity of goals itself acts as an internal stimulus. Also, people tend to perform better when timely feedback is provided (Bartol, Tein, Matthews, and Martin, 2005).

When applied to individuals who are motivated by inhe...

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...cShane, S and Glinow, MA 2003, Organisational Behaviour, McGraw-Hill, New York.

McShane, S and Travaglione, T 2007, Organisational Behaviour on the Pacific Rim, Irwin/McGraw-Hill, Sydney.

Robbins, SP 2003, Organisational Behaviour, Prentice Hall, Sydney

Robbins, SP, Millet, B, and Waters-Marsh, T, 2004, Organisational Behaviour, Prentice-Hall, Sydney

Wood, J, Chapman, K, Fromholtz, M, Morrison, V, Wallace, J, Zeffane, R, Kennedy, R, Schermerhorn, J, Hunt, J and Osborn, R 2004, Organisational Behaviour: A Global Perspective, John Wiley & Sons, Brisbane.

Internet References

“Singapore leaking talent”

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/specialreport/news/264096_8/1/.html

Fortune’s “Best companies to work for.”http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/01/22/8397996/index.htm

AIA Singapore

http://www.aia.com.sg/Content.asp?ca_typeid=4