The Importance Of Motivation: Hierarchy Of Needs To Employees

The essay will set out to answer why it is crucial for an organisation to be able to motivate its employees. This will be done by looking at different methods used by businesses and academics to show the importance of employee motivation to employers.

To answer this question regarding employee motivation importance we must be able to try and define what motivation is and how it affects employees resulting in its importance within the workplace and to employers.

Also looking at theories made by academic researchers which can be used by employers to motivate employees. This includes two types of motivational theories. Firstly a content theory where the emphasis is placed on what motivates employees is called ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ by Maslow

It could be argued with this type of understanding of what motivation is and how it effects the employee it can help managers develop new ways of trying to make employees more “flexible, adaptable, committed and creative In a rapidly changing competitive business environment”, (Huczynski & Buchanan 2013) by giving their employees incentives to trigger their motivation which In turn leads to success for both the organisation and employee.

Maslows (1943) Hierarchy of Needs theory revolves on the idea that people always tend to want something and what they want depends on what they already have. The process involves fulfilment to progression where they cannot move on to the next need until the present need is met and so on. This is where motivation comes in you need to be motivated to achieve your present goal/ need to successfully move on to the next one. The five levels included

The results from a survey conducted showed that “the top motivator was ‘job enjoyment’ by 59% of respondents.” Looking at the top motivator shows that there’s more to motivation than just financial incentives as employees value meeting other needs than just money. It ties in with the Equity theory of everyone wanted to be treated well by others and employers need to understand and embrace that to truly be successful in business.

Mangers can use these theories to help them understand employee’s needs and how unique a individual is by communicating with the employees to find out what they can do to help them for example introducing different ways of working such as flexitime where the employee can choose when to work their core hours to suit their personal life or job sharing where two or more individuals can split up a traditional job and its hours to allow them to have more control of their work enabling them to work to the best of their abilities, therefore motivating them.

Employee engagement could be used by employers to motivate employees in the retail