Motivating Employees: Understanding Their Needs

This article will discuss most of the basic factors that motivates people. And knowing and understanding these motivating factors could help in looking for the proper solutions in motivating your staff. In general, employees are able and readily willing to work if they feel they are appreciated for their efforts and hard work if they feel that their job is important. However, if employees are bored or not even interested in their work, then employee motivation is low, hence productivity diminishes. The way to motivating your people could be quite a challenging and tricky task. So in order for your employees to be driven, it helps to perceive and understand what motivates people.

One of the key factors to being an effective and successful manager is the capacity to motivate his people to perform at their very best. You must first know and understand how motivation works in order for you to motivate other people. According to Abraham Maslow, individuals are motivated by unmet needs. Below is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. 1.) Psychology Needs-are your basic needs for survival such as water, food, clothing, shelter and medicine. 2.) Safety Needs-the need that employees want to feel secure at their jobs or career. 3.) Social Needs-the individual’s need to feel welcome and accepted as part of a certain group or society.

4.) Esteem Needs-the person’s need for recognition and being acknowledged by other people. 5.) Self-Actualization Needs-the individual’s need to develop their entire potential at its fullest. In theory, when one of those needs is already met, an individual would begin to satisfy the next need. There are two types of rewards in motivating employees—the extrinsic reward and intrinsic reward. Individuals may be motivated in various ways. One of which is through intrinsic reward. Intrinsic motivation or intrinsic rewards basically deals with the feelings a worker has when they accomplished a good job. This could be seen more in hobbies or in the feeling of being obliged to perform well at one’s work—they do it simply because they enjoy it.

The extrinsic reward is the second type of reward. Some of the common examples of extrinsic rewards are bonuses, praises or compliments, promotions, pay increases or paid vacations. It refers to any tangible or intangible reward given to you by somebody else. Extrinsic motivation is normally used as a traditional method of motivating employees. So being the manager, it is essential to know and understand the kinds and types of needs you are dealing with. Your own needs and your employees’ needs for the most part may be similar. There are so many strategies and methods that can be used in motivating your staff.

In motivating your workforce it is basic and significant to have a good and keen understanding of what your needs are to better help understand your people. This article was written to assist and guide you on the kinds and types of needs you might encounter in the future while enforcing techniques and styles that are keys to motivating employees effectively.