EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION
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Motivation: Part II What gets your staff out of bed in the morning?
will lead to a particular outcome. 3. The link between outcomes and individual needs, or the degree to which the individual expects the anticipated outcome to satisfy personal needs. Some outcomes have more value for individuals than others do. 2: Equity Theory Equity theory is based on individuals’ perceptions about how fairly they are treated compared with their co-workers. Equity means justice or fairness, and in the workplace it refers to employees’ perceived fairness of the way they are treated and the rewards they earn. For example, imagine that after completing your IBD Diploma you were offered a job that paid £55,000 a year and had great bene ts. You’d probably be ecstatic, even more so if you discovered that the colleague on another shift was making £45,000 for the same job. But what if that same colleague were making £59,000 for the same job? You’d probably think it unfair, particularly if the colleague had the same quali cations and started at the
By Shane McNamara
In this article we look at the developing theories and practices used by modern companies surrounding moti- vation in the workplace. They may be useful in helping you to discover what does or doesn’t motivate you and your staff and what you can do to improve performance.
T he early management scholars laid a foundation that enabled managers to better understand their workers and how best to motivate them. Since then, more contemporary views have given us an even better understanding of worker motivation. Four of these theo- ries include: the expectancy theory, the equity theory, the goal-setting theory, and reinforcement theory. 1: Expectancy Theory One of the best-supported and most widely accepted theories of motivation is expectancy theory, which focuses on the link between motivation and behaviour. According to expectancy
theory, the probability of an individual acting in a particular way depends on the strength of that individual’s belief that the act will have a particular outcome and on whether the individual values that outcome (shown in Figure 1). The degree to which an employee is motivated depends on three important relationships: 1. The link between effort and per- formance, or the strength of the individual’s expectation that a certain amount of effort will lead to a certain level of performance. 2. The link between performance and outcome, or the strength of the expec- tation that a certain level of performance
34 ● BREWER AND DISTILLER INTERNATIONAL I october 2019
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