Money can be said to be a mean or medium of exchange though it has other functions such as being a means of payment, a unit of account and a store of value though these other functions are partly ignored or follow the medium of exchange. Money as a means of exchange is the characteristics that distinguishes it from other assets such as stocks, houses and bonds.
Money could be also described as anything that is widely used for making payments and accounting for debts and credits. Money has a big impact on the cultural and social interactions of a society and when a society is constantly driven by money it defines the life of a consumer.
Motivation In The Work Place
Motivation is that factor that makes an individual tick or want to carry out a particular function without being urged to. These function could be carrying out duties in the work place, participating in certain hobbies. Motivation in the work place could be said to be those energetic forces that come from within and beyond an individual or worker leading to a work related attitude in terms of determining intensity of his behaviour (Dr. Ravikiran Dwivedula, 2010).
Organizations have often ignored that when a workplace is designed and managed to create meaning for its workers they tend to be more happy and healthy and when a worker is happy and healthy he/she tends to be more productive in the long run which would in turn bring about a harmonious working relationship with fellow workers and good interaction with customers or with whoever they do business with.
Happiness, health and productivity are essential elements of a good organization but most organizations tend to lay emphasis on productivity alone but this is not enough to get the worker motivated to work because to have happiness a worker must be happy at work and work by itself cannot make a worker happy and a person cannot be happy if he is not happy at work.
Motivation in the work place is split into two categories and they are intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators. While intrinsic motivators are factors that are concerned with creativity of an individual, opportunities for a worker to use his or her initiatives and how an individual sees the importance of their work in the outside world, extrinsic motivators are those external factors that affect an individual such as working condition, salary, job security.
Intrinsic Motivator and Extrinsic Motivator
Knowing the factors that motivate employees is one of the key issues for managers in an organisation. It is not possible to motivate people directly but it is however key to know what to do to influence your team or workers.(Patricia Milne 2007)
Every organisation would want a healthy, happy and most importantly a highly productive individual or team. These set of individuals should be intrinsically motivated by the role they are expected to perform in the organisation i.e they should be motivated by the joy or happiness which their work brings. Intrinsic motivation can also refer to performing an activity for the pleasure and satisfaction derived from participation. An intrinsic worker derives satisfaction from the work and is always motivated by the job to always want to work.
Extrinsic motivation is a situation where rewards of some sort motivates the worker to go to work. These rewards can come in form of more pay, promotion, a one off bonus or a trip away but the joy derived from this type of motivator is short lived. People are not expected to work and not get paid.
Bringing the intrinsic and extrinsic factor together, it is right for employers and employees to view money as an incentive for a better job performance but note that money is a tool in motivation for work but not the major motivator for work.
Is Intrinsic Motivation At Work Enough Motivation For Work Effectiveness?
Fredrick Herzberg in his motivation theory does not believe money has to be a motivating factor for high productivity but prefers to concentrate on issues like challenging jobs, prompt feedback and contribution to decision making as a motivator to an individual in the work place. When a worker has control over his job then he would always want to be positive towards the job.
Herzberg brought up a critical distinction between movement and motivation stating that managers confused both words. He also said movement stems from “humankind’s animal nature” which is the built-in drive to take a flight from pain in the environment. He gave an example saying if he wanted his dog to move he could kick it or offer it a candy. The motivation for movement here is not the dog’s and what is observed in this scenario is a movement not motivation in the dog so similarly if an employee is asked to carry out an activity in return for a reward managers tend to argue that the employee is motivated when in actual fact it is the management that is motivated to promote employee movement.
According to the Self-Determination theory, all human beings share three basic needs for autonomy, relatedness and competence, where autonomy shows the need to express own behaviour and show mastery at work based on self-determined behaviour without the influence of others. Competence is the efficient use of energy and the effectiveness at work by a worker while relatedness on the other hand shows the need to have a good working relationship with your colleagues or fellow workers.
The Self-determination theory also differentiates between two types of interpersonal contexts and they are autonomy supportive context and autonomy control context.
A context is autonomy supportive if a manager encourages the worker to make choices and participate in decision-making using non-pressuring tools or language in communicating with the worker. Modal operators such as ‘could’ or ‘may’ will provide a good basis for asking someone to participate in an activity and also acknowledge the worker’s feelings towards such activity.
A context is autonomy controlled when managers put pressure on their workers to act in a particular way by using pressuring language such as must or should or when the managers do not provide a choice for the worker.
An example of intrinsically motivated work force is a case study of the Easy Jet Airline Company Limited where the gem awards was introduced. The gem awards stands for ‘going the extra mile’ where workers were rewarded with free travel, shopping and gifts. The aim of the gem awards was to create a motivation scheme for its over 5,000 employees that reinforced its business goals of keeping costs low, safety paramount and customer service high. Employees can nominate one another or a whole team for behaviour that encapsulates the values of safety or customer service. These values or customer service can include highlighting a certain hazard, taking actions to keep customers safe or simply an example of great customer service.
A judging panel vote on the nominations and the winners receive vouchers from AYMTM (Archer Young Motivation Travel Management Limited) which designed the scheme to spend on travelling, gifts and shopping. The scheme has received over 2,500 nominations since its inception in 2006.
To What Extent Is Money A Motivator?
Money is believed to be the strongest amongst all extrinsic rewards because it is believed that when u pay for productivity then there is a high chance you get more productivity and a happy work force. There is a relationship between productivity, satisfaction and reward, so a well paid staff is more happy and productive than a lesser paid staff.
Money can serve as an incentive for workers to outshine each other which can also lead to better productivity within the organisation and encourage other workers to raise their performance.
Money is used to pay for bills of basic amenities such as water, electricity, clothing, food, shelter and it is believed that workers wake up every morning to go to work so as to be able to pay for these amenities.
When money is scarce it can lead to motivation for an individual to go in search of it for survival or to take care of his basic need
Effects Of Money On Motivation
A perceived low pay can lead to dissatisfaction but it does not mean an increase in pay would lead to happiness because a pay rise will wear off as soon an individual adapt to his or her new condition so any improvement will be for a short while. Tax can also show that money is not a motivator to a worker because the more money he or she is paid the higher tax paid so why work yourself to death when the government will still take most of your pay.
Money is not everything because it is perceived that workers would prefer more time off or job security than being paid more money and even the feel good factor of more pay would be diluted because if the salary of an employee increases so does the comparative salaries of other colleagues.
Focusing attention on money will reduce intrinsic interest of work and when money becomes the important goal for work, the worker focuses his or her interest on money instead of performance. A good example is when parents pay their kids for chores which the kids should normally do without being paid, the kids will carry out the chores because a reward is involved.
Conclusion
Money is a motivator to work but it is not a major motivator though this depends on personality, because a person with much love for money will see money as a motivator for top performance on the job while a person who simply just loves his job would not see money as a motivating factor for top performance but see things like personal development, creativity as a driving force or as a motivation to always want to work.
Extrinsic factors however contribute to organizational effectiveness but if there could be encouragement for intrinsically oriented workers it could lead to reduction or mitigation of the need for external incentives in order to bring about an effective work force and reduce the issue of stress amongst workers.
To achieve organizational effectiveness the Management of the organization through the Human Resources Department should come up with a plan that make their employees motivated both intrinsically and extrinsically so as to have a balance and keep all parties happy and bring about a good working relationship amongst them.
Some employees respond better to being mentored or coached than to be rewarded financially and there should be assessment tools put in place to streamline goal-setting for individuals or even a team or department in an organization. Goal-setting is important to helping job performance though some employers would believe monetary and other extrinsic motivators influence job performance.
It is however, very important to note that monetary incentives influence job performance independently.
The question is does the economy of a Nation have anything to do with being Intrinsically or Extrinsically motivated ???