Effective Management and Motivation of Employees

Management is the administration of a company, a not-for-profit organization, or government body. Personnel management has been formulated over the years and includes staff motivation as a part of the science. Therefore, motivation is a process of persuading a person (especially employee) to do something in a particular way. Widespread methods of it are tangible and intangible, tangible motivation is by money and intangible is by some other ways, which have been proven in the book The Engaging Manager: The Joy of Management and Being Managed (2012) which has written by Furnham. The main reason to use motivation principles is to save a company’s financial resources by using social recognition. It means manager will save organization’s money by the encouraging employees to do his job some other ways like public recognition in front of other co-workers. There are main principles of staff motivation formulated by personnel management and outlined in the book: motivation by achievement and recognition, which can help to improve efficiency.

Some employers think that increasing wages is only one possible way to stimulate an employee to do his/her job. Instead of this approach, the Hierarchy of Needs by Maslow will help managers understand what the employee really needs, which is very useful in managing. Taormina (2013) developed Maslow’s theory further and found that “the more each lower-level need was satisfied, the more the next higher-level need was satisfied.” Self-actualization is at the highest level which influences employees to achieve goals. In management, this kind of phenomena is named motivation by achievement and gives personal fear of failure. Employees must be energized and inspired by the manager to develop creativity and feel satisfaction from their job. Moreover, the person who feels good in a workplace will not look for another job even if the salary is insufficient. Achievement motivation works as a support for personal goals to manifest themselves said Ratcliffe (2013) in The Guardian magazine. Furnham (2012) has the same point of view. He writes that job enrichment is defined as an attempt by management “to design tasks in such a way to build in the opportunity for personal achievement, recognition, challenge and individual growth.” Some possible methods to improve achievement motivation are developing competition between the stuff, creating a website with the list of the best employees, designing a book of complaints and suggestions or even giving a free parking place to the outstanding ones. When the employee correlates the achievements of the company with his/her own achievements it will lead to success for both.

Managers are respected by every employee. However, the company should allow employees to be recognized, otherwise, people will feel useless. The best way to do it is to create special criteria to receive awards. The staff should take part in a discussion about criteria, also administration can allow them to share some problems and solve them together. As a Bersin (2013) states in his article, the administrator must be a good listener, because “sometimes your employees just need someone to talk to”. This model of partnership affects employees, creates a feeling of usefulness and inspires them to work hard. Some other methods are - name the employees publicly, place employee names in a newsletter or send out a company-wide email announcement. When workers do not feel confident and satisfied, they would rather leave the company, or their job will be unproductive. Novak (2016) researched the influence of motivation by recognition and got visible result: “82% of employed Americans do not feel that their supervisors recognize them enough,” another important thing which was discovered is “40% of employed Americans say they would put more energy into their work if they were recognized more often.”

Many experts suggest that personnel management is an important science which might help to develop every company if it has a professional manager. Also, using management is a positive thing which improves the relationship between the worker and employer and motivates the former to work hard to get some advantages. People should understand that they are important to the company and their responsibilities are meaningful and engage the individual attitudes. Personnel management formulates specific principles of staff motivation: motivation by achievement which is working in fear of failure and motivation by recognition, which is recognizing every member as a part of a team.