Motivation plays an important role in management skills, particularly in organizations that rely considerably on the abilities of human-kind over robots and machines. Law enforcement is one of those organizations that is still requires people 's work effort. Police managers must learn and create better means of inspiring those that they command. Abraham Maslow 's Theory of Hierarchy of Needs illustrates basic, but effective methods of motivating employees. His theory was based on the needs of talented and creative individuals. Maslow believed that human needs were fixed per a hierarchy that could be broken into two primary groups: lower order-basic needs, and higher order-metaneeds. When a police officer begins their career, their …show more content…
More times than a few, it is associated with high rates of drug abuse, suicide, health problems - both emotional and mental, and marital issues or divorce. Repeated exposure to such high stress events impacts the officers ' overall productivity and enthusiasm. If on-the-job stress is not properly acknowledged and dealt with, it will continue to demotivate the …show more content…
Even with the understood dangers associated with being a law enforcement officer that produce unmentionable levels of stress, numerous changes can be made to the supervisory styles to help reduce stress levels. Examples of these changes can be reduced shift length or varied shift work and assignments, training programs, and psychotherapy or psychiatric counseling following a high intensity critical incident. Such implementations will be helpful in reducing the potential problems that could arise from stress in the workplace. The officers are likely to respond better to internal changes when they are aware that there are programs in place to help them positively deal with their stress (Finn, 1997). Serving and protecting is a huge vow to uphold, yet there are few other occupations that constantly require the employees to always put themselves in the line of fire at any given time. Therefore, the consequences of being exposed to daily high pressure events and crimes of all sorts are life altering. Police officers should not have to skip out on work, retire early, experience increased health problems or emotional detachments from their typical daily activities because their work life is so stressful. They need safe and supportive ways to manage and maintain healthy stress
Waters, J.E. (1999). The impact of work resources on job stress among correctional treatment staff. Journal of Addictions & Offender Counseling, 20(1), 26-34.
In theory, the hierarchy works in this order towards an employee; first they seek to fill the physiological need by getting a job to pay for the basic necessity of the human body. Once that is settled, the employee will want his safety needs being solid, he needs to feel safe at work with insurance policies and medical coverage in case of anything untowardly was to happen. After the first two basic needs are taken care of, he will need to feel a sense of belonging to groups in the social need, humans are not meant to be alone and thus the need to mingle and socialize is important. The esteem needs is automatically achieved after he finally gets a good level of communication with his colleagues, which results in him being acknowledge by people, this is usually the need that needs to be reached in order for an employee to be motivated and also to measure job satisfaction. As an employee feels cherished by their company, they build self-confidence which in turn will motivate them in working hard and efficient. Lastly comes self-actualization, where the employees achieves this by finally getting recognition by his superiors and are rewarded for his dedication may it be some form of promotion at work. Maslow’s theory provides the fundamentals of motivation which is required to be fulfilled to maximize job satisfaction; one cannot feel satisfied if any of the five needs is
Training, talking, and the policies of the department are sometimes a viewed as a necessary evil by officers, but when used effectively, the benefits, and knowledge obtained in these setting, will reduce duplication of the tactics for the reduction of stress that were non productive in the past, and will allow management to harness each of the individuals personal strengths, to meet stress reducing objectives. In today’s high-performance work environment, traditional skills of command must be combined with influence skills, and persuasion strategies for this type of success in creating a less stressful workplace. Focus must be applied on larger patterns of leadership effectiveness for stress reduction to be an open talking point, and not marred in officer criticism, and fear. It is important for law enforcement administration, to take the time to address concerns, and gather information for their own experiences, to reduce unneeded stress within the profession. This will allow administration to make better personnel decisions, and make management of a stressful situation more effective, thus reducing stress on themselves, and the officers below them, while in turn demonstrating the team concept.
Some of the world’s most-loved and well-known superheroes include Superman, Batman, and Spiderman. However great these superheroes may appear, their fictional stories also include stressors that they face everyday, such as the villains that they encounter and the pressure of being a hero and an everyday citizen. In this way, stress often negatively impacts the lives of the ones who watch over every neighborhood, every street, and every house. Such is the job of a police officer. Because stress has become an important topic in the community of law enforcement, things that are commonly discussed are the causes of stress, the effects of stress, and the handling of stress in the lives of police officers.
During his life and in modern days, Maslow’s Hierarchy has been used to enhance leadership in business settings. Many motivational enterprises have taken the Hierarchy of Needs and adapted them to teach leaders how to help their employees achieve a high level of motivation. A company named Ovation Incentives trains that “an employee needs their basic needs such as their salary and work conditions to be fulfilled first before reaching high level needs such as feeling part of something bigger within an organization” (Stead,
According to “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory proposes that humans are motivated by multiple needs and those needs in a hierarchical order” (Daft, 2011, p.103, international edition) This hierarchical order starts from the bottom by the physiological needs including work conditions and base salary, next is the safety needs which includes the safe work, fringe benefits and job security. Next the belongingness needs including the desire of being accepted, making friends, being a part of a group or being loved. Next the esteem needs, which includes recognition, ...
Stress is caused by constant pressure, both at work and home. One important function of short-term stress is to channel our resources to deal with challenges or life threatening situations. Temporary stress gives us an extra boost in escaping danger by increasing the speed of our reactions. Police stress, however; refers to the negative pressures related to police work (Police Stress). Police Officers are under a great deal of stress on a daily basis. Types of Police stress includes: external, organizational, personal, and operational. Many factors lead to these stressors, such as; poor training, substandard equipment, poor pay, lack of opportunity, role conflict, exposure to brutality, lack of job satisfaction, fears about job competence and safety.
In many instances police officers bring the effects of the job homes with them. This form of stress affecting the police officer’s personal life can be seen in the officer overworking and over committing. The officer will bring the job home with him or her and neglect his or her spouse and the kids. This neglect of affection and communication that the officer has towards his/her spouse puts a lot of stress on the family. An officer that has truly been overcome with stress will neglect the family and in many cases start to neglect the other daily tasks of the house. (Miller, 2007) Another way that police stress can affect the officer’s personal life is through infidelity, lies and distrust. Police are generally required to work many of hours in their work week and this unfortunately can lead to infidelity, lies and distrust in the officer’s personal life. When the infidelity, lies and distrust happen in a relationship, this not only affects the relationship and stress of the family but also affects the stress that the officer then takes back in to work.(Miller,
By studying and evaluating Maslow’s theories, it becomes simpler to understand and recognize his influence and contribution to psychology. One of Maslow’s greatest and most recognized theories is his hierarchy of needs theory. He proposed that in order for someone to reach self-actualization they had to climb and achieve each level of needs in his proposed hierarchy. The first level of this hierarchy states that every human being must satisfy their physiological needs. These needs include the basic necessities needed to survive such as breathing, eating, sleeping, and so forth. Once these needs have been satisfied, according to Maslow, different needs become apparent in the succeeding levels. The second level states that everyone needs safety. For example, everyone needs shelter, steady employment, security for their family, etc. The third level stresses the importance of love or belonging such as marriage, friendship, and family. In the fourth level, Maslow introduces the importance of a human beings need for esteem. This includes feelings of accomplishment, confidence, respect for others and oneself, and self-esteem. Once each level of needs has been completed, Maslow believed a person could finally achieve self-actualization or the peak experiences in one’s life. This final level in his hierarchy includes achieving the needs of morality, creativity, spontaneity, and so on (Koltko-Rivera, 2006, p. 303). Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory paved the way for many psychological and philosophical theories that describe human nature to be selfish and the only way to achieve selflessness and self-actualization is through gradual growth. Many people today believe Maslow’s hierarchy is essential to form a society based on solidarity, compassion, care, problem-solving, and altruism (D’Souza & Gurin, 2016, p.
Abraham Maslow wrote the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory. This theory was based on fulfilling five basic needs: physiological, safety, social, esteem and self-actualization. Maslow believed that these needs could create internal pressures that could influence the behavior of a person. (Robbins, p.204)
There are so many reports of workplace or organizational stress. It would be easily concluded that everyone, everywhere is depressed and discouraged. Every employee feels stress related to his or her work.Many employees complain about their jobs, their bosses and their subordinates. So it has become necessary to releases pressure to that extend that allow the workers to calm down and get back to work without stress. The stress at workplaces is increasing from many years but management did not take it up seriously(Ira S. Wolfe).Stress is a condition which happens when one realizes the pressures on himself/herself, or the requirements of a situation are wider than their recognition that they are able to handle. If these requirements continue for a longer period of time with out any interval then mental, physical or any other behavior problems may occur (Health &Safety Executive UK ). Stress is an individual's reaction to an environmental force that effects an individual performance.(Kahn et al. 1964 & Selye, 1956 )Work place stress has been also viewed as dysfunctional for organizations their eployess and managers (Wolfe, Quinn,Kahn, Snoek, & Rosenthal, 1964).There is link between anxiety stress with satisfaction and performance of employees. Lower anxiety and stress improves performance of employees (Donnelly & Ivancevich, 1975) . For the present study, stress was conceptualized to consist of four psychiatric conditions which reduces he employee’s job performabe.One is Depression( Feeling lonely, fed up, Dejected and loss of sexual desire) 2nd is Anxiety(Frequency of upset, sour stomach, feeling dim or little dizzy, hand trembling, feeling afraid and avoiding things).3rd is Cognitive Disorder(Experie...
Abraham Maslow did studies of the basic needs of human beings. He put these needs into a hierarchical order. This means that until the need before it has been satisfied, the following need can not be met (Encyclopedia, 2000). For example, if someone is hungry they are not thinking too much about socializing. In the order from lowest to highest the needs are psychological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization. The first three are classified as lower order needs and the last two are higher order (Hierarchy, 2000). Without meeting these needs workers are not going to be as productive as they could otherwise. The first three are considered to be essential to all humans at all times. The last two have been argued but are mostly considered to be very important as well.
In Murphy and Shoeborn’s paper, Stress Management in Work Settings, practical information in presented regarding the application of a stress management program within the workplace, along with guidance for creating a “comprehensive stress management program which encourages each individual to become more self-responsible and self-determining, and suggests that the overall program must focus on dynamics within the organization as well as within the individual” (Murphy & Shoenborn, 1987). In addition, Murphy and Shoenborn state that to develop an effective stress management program; several steps as indicated in must be applied as outlined in Figure 3
Stress damages people and it damages their organizations. Constant and unmanaged stress potentially reduces the effectiveness and efficiency of the personnel. Stress among policemen would manifest in the form of fatigue, depression, inability to concentrate, irritability and impulsive behaviour. These danger signals are quite common among the policemen. Both physical and mental illness renders the employee unfit for work. It impacts job satisfaction and reduces job performance. Common direct costs of occupational stress are reduced productivity, increased absenteeism, and employee
Furthermore, there are three theories which explain the different factors in how employees are motivated based on their needs. The first theory, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, was proved by Abraham Maslow in the years of 1943 and 1954 (McLeod, 2013). Maslow believed that society developed their motivations depending on their needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a theory in which five motivational needs( self-actualization,esteem, belongingness and love, safety, and psychological) are demonstrated in a hierarchy pyramid. The five motivational needs are divided into three categories(basic, psychological, and