MOTIVATION AND MODERN ORGANIZATIONS
BY OLUWANISOLA SEUN EMMANUEL
EZINE ARTICLE EXPERT AUTHOR
(C) 2009 (UNAUTHORIZE PUBLICATION IS STRONGLY PROHIBITED AND REFERENCE MUST BE MADE WHEN EXTRACTED)


The role of motivation in a modern day organization cannot be overemphasized. In fact, motivation now serves as a vital tool to get the aims, goals and objectives of an organization achieved. Most workers are no longer accepting any less from their employers as far as their fulfillment on the job is concerned. There is high rate of workers transition or labour turnover as workers move from one job to another for better life, better pay, packages, etc.

Most human resource department in organizations are more concerned about the motivating side of workers. This is because organizations have come to understand that workers motivation has direct relationship with productivity, profitability and sustainability of the firm. Salary or monetary compensation is no longer serving as a motivator but just enough to satisfy some of their needs. In fact, the general norm today is that no organization can pay the worth of a worker and their must be other means devise to keep the best brains from looking outside or putting forth application letters while on the job.

The complicated side of motivation today is that it goes beyond the postulated theories and should be pragmatically and strategically approached because what motivates one person may not be a motivator to another. Thus, it is as if each worker should be separately studied and knows what actually need to be used to motivate him/her. The hierarchy of need of Abraham Maslow (a powerful motivation theory) could help here but the organization should understand the following:

• That workers are not on the same level of the hierarchy
• That workers move at different speed on the hierarchy
• That motivators may not be satisfiers (what motivates one may must satisfy him, when expectation is higher than what he gets e.g. if someone had served a firm for long time and had achieved exceptional result and expects the firm to promote him to level 14 from 10 but was promoted to level 12. The firm might felt he has been motivated but he is not satisfied. It may affect his morale on the job.
• That motivation should be a continuous thing and not time-fixed (i.e. durational).
• That motivation exercise should be timely to make it valuable by the recipient.
• That motivation should be considerate, commensurate and adequate.
• That motivation should be reasonable such that it does not make other workers feel cheated.

Motivation is taking new dimension in 21st century organization wherein special attention is being paid to the concept. Human resource departments now see it as one of the most important function they play to ensure the efficiency of the organization. Gone are the days when organizations believe that ‘workers should work, firm should pay’. Today, monetary and non-monetary compensations are being put in place to drive home the goals of the organization more so that organizations are now highly competitive and looking for a way to draw the best brains from all over the place and have them in their firm only and thus, becoming the market leader in respect to best workforce.