Foundations of
Employee
Motivation
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© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Employee Motivation and
Engagement at Standard Chartered
Through goal setting, strengths-based feedback, community
involvement, and fun activities in the workplace, Standard
Chartered Bank has significantly improved employee
engagement and motivation throughout its operations, most
of which are in Asia and India.
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© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Motivation Defined
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
The forces within a person that
affect the direction, intensity,
and persistence of voluntary
behaviour

Exerting particular effort level
(intensity), for a certain amount
of time (persistence), toward a
particular goal (direction)
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Employee Engagement
Emotional and cognitive
motivation, self-efficacy to
perform the job, a clear
understanding of one’s role in
the organisation’s vision and a
belief that one has the resources
to perform the job.
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Drives and Needs

Drives (primary needs, fundamental needs, innate
motives)
• Neural states that energise individuals to correct deficiencies
or maintain an internal equilibrium
• Prime movers of behaviour by activating emotions
Self-concept, social norms,
and past experience
Drives
(primary needs)
and emotions
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Needs
5
Decisions and
behaviour
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Drives and Needs

Needs
• Goal-directed forces that people experience
• Drive-generated emotions directed toward goals
• Goals formed by self-concept, social norms, and experience
Self-concept, social norms,
and past experience
Drives
(primary needs)
and emotions
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Needs
6
Decisions and
behaviour
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Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy Theory
Seven categories
capture most needs
Five categories placed
in a hierarchy
Selfactualisati
on
Need to
know
Need for
beauty
Esteem
Belongingness
Safety
Physiological
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© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy Theory
Selfactualisation
Need to
know

Lowest unmet need has
strongest effect
Need for
beauty

When lower need is
satisfied, next higher need
becomes the primary
motivator

Self-actualisation – a growth
need because people desire
more rather than less of it
when satisfied
Esteem
Belongingness
Safety
Physiological
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Evaluating Maslow’s Theory
Need to
know
Selfactualisation
Need for
beauty

Lack of support for theory

People have different
hierarchies – don’t progress
through needs in the same
order

Needs change more rapidly
than Maslow stated
Esteem
Belongingness
Safety
Physiological
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What Maslow Contributed to
Motivation Theory

More holistic
• Integrative view of needs

More humanistic
• Influence of social
dynamics, not just instinct

More affirmational
• Pay attention to strengths,
not just deficiencies
Abraham Maslow
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What’s Wrong with Needs Hierarchy
Models?

Wrongly assume that
everyone has the same
(universal) needs hierarchy

Instead, it is likely that each
person has a unique needs
hierarchy
• Shaped by our self-concept –
values and social identity
Abraham Maslow
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Learned Needs Theory

Needs are amplified or suppressed through
self-concept, social norms, and past
experience

Therefore, needs can be ‘learned’ (ie.
strengthened or weakened through training)
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Three Learned Needs
Need for achievement
• Need to reach goals, take responsibility
• Want reasonably challenging goals
Need for affiliation
• Desire to seek approval, conform to others’ wishes,
avoid conflict
• Effective executives have lower need for social approval
Need for power
• Desire to control one’s environment
• Personalised versus socialised power
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Four-Drive Theory
Drive to acquire
• Drive to take/keep objects and
experiences
• Basis of hierarchy and status
Drive to bond
• Drive to form relationships and
social commitments
• Basis of social identity
Drive to learn
• Drive to satisfy curiosity and
resolve conflicting information
Drive to defend
• Need to protect ourselves
• Reactive (not proactive) drive
• Basis of fight or flight
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Features of Four Drives
Innate and hardwired
• Everyone has them
Independent of each other
• No hierarchy of drives
Complete set
• No drives are excluded from the model
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How Four Drives Affect Motivation
1.
Four drives determine which emotions are
automatically tagged to incoming information
2.
Drives generate independent and often
competing emotions that demand our
attention
3.
Mental skill set relies on social norms,
personal values, and experience to transform
drive-based emotions into goal-directed
choice and effort
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© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Four Drive Theory of Motivation
Drive to
acquire
Drive to
bond
Drive to
learn
Social
norms
Personal
values
Past
experience
Mental skill set resolves
competing drive demands
Goal-directed
choice and effort
Drive to
defend
Social norms, personal values, and
experience transform drive-based emotions
into goal-directed choice and effort.
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Implications of Four Drive Theory
Provide a balanced opportunity for employees to
fulfil all four drives
• Employees continually seek fulfilment of drives
• Avoid having conditions support one drive more than
others
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Expectancy Theory of Motivation
P-to-O
expectancy
E-to-P
expectancy
Outcomes
& valences
Outcome 1
+ or -
Effort
Performance
Outcome 2
+ or -
Outcome 3
+ or -
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Increasing E-to-P and P-to-O
Expectancies

Increasing E-to-P Expectancies
• Assuring employees they have competencies
• Person-job matching
• Provide role clarification and sufficient resources
• Behavioural modelling

Increasing P-to-O Expectancies
• Measure performance accurately
• More rewards for good performance
• Explain how rewards are linked to performance
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Increasing Outcome Valences

Ensure that rewards are valued

Individualise rewards

Minimise countervalent outcomes
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Goal Setting
The process of motivating
employees and clarifying their
role perceptions by
establishing performance
objectives.
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© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Effective Goal Setting
Characteristics
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Specific – measureable change within a time
frame
Relevant – within employee’s control and
responsibilities
Challenging – raise level of effort
Accepted (commitment) – motivated to
accomplish the goal
Participative (sometimes) – improves acceptance
and goal quality
Feedback – information available about progress
toward goal
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Characteristics of Effective
Feedback
Specific – connected to goal details
2. Relevant – relates to person’s behaviour
3. Timely – to improve link from behaviour to
outcomes
4. Sufficiently frequent
1.
• Employee’s knowledge/experience
• Task cycle
5.
Credible – trustworthy source
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© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Trouble Keeping Score in NZ
Hospitals
The New Zealand government
introduced a balanced
scorecard system to measure
and improve performance of
public hospitals, but many
public health staff experienced
philosophical and practical
problems with this goal setting
and feedback process.
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Balanced Scorecard

Organisational-level goal
setting and feedback

Attempts to include
measurable performance
goals related to financial,
customer, internal, and
learning/growth (i.e. human
capital) processes

Usually includes several
goals within each process
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Feedback Through Strengths-Based
Coaching
Maximising the person’s potential by focusing
on their strengths rather than weaknesses
 Motivational because:

• People inherently seek feedback about their
strengths, not their flaws
• Person’s interests, preferences, and competencies
stabilise over time
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Multisource Feedback

Received from a full circle of people around
the employee
 Provides more complete and accurate
information
 Several challenges
• Expensive and time-consuming
• Ambiguous and conflicting feedback
• Inflated rather than accurate feedback
• Stronger emotional reaction to multiple feedback
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Evaluating Goal Setting and
Feedback

Goal setting has high validity and usefulness
 Goal setting/feedback limitations:
• Focuses employees on measurable performance
• Motivates employees to set easy goals (when tied to
pay)
• Goal setting interferes with learning process in new,
complex jobs
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Keeping Pay Equitable at Costco
Costco Wholesale CEO Jim Sinegal
(see photo) thinks the large wage
gap between many executives and
employees is blatantly unfair.
“Having an individual who is making
100 or 200 or 300 times more than
the average person working on the
floor is wrong,” says Sinegal, whose
salary and bonus are a much
smaller multiple of what his staff
earn.
Organisational Justice
Distributive justice
• Perceived fairness in
outcomes we receive relative
to our contributions and the
outcomes and contributions of
others
Procedural justice
• Perceived fairness of the
procedures used to decide the
distribution of resources
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Elements of Equity Theory
Outcome/input ratio
• inputs – what employee contributes (eg. skill)
• outcomes – what employee receives (eg. pay)
Comparison other
• person/people against whom we compare our ratio
• not easily identifiable
Equity evaluation
• compare outcome/input ratio with the comparison
other
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Correcting Inequity Feelings
Actions to correct inequity
Example
Reduce our inputs
Less organisational citizenship
Increase our outcomes
Ask for pay increase
Increase others’ inputs
Ask coworker to work harder
Reduce others’ outputs
Ask boss to stop giving others preferred
treatment
Change our perceptions
Start thinking that others’ perks aren’t really
so valuable
Change comparison other
Compare self to someone closer to your
situation
Leave the field
Quit job
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Equity Sensitivity

Outcome/input preferences and reaction to
various outcome/input ratios

Benevolents
• tolerant of being underrewarded

Equity Sensitives
• want ratio to be equal to the comparison other

Entitleds
• prefer proportionately more than others
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Evaluating Equity Theory

Good at predicting situations involving unfair
distribution of pay/rewards

Difficult to put into practice
• Doesn’t identify comparison other
• Doesn’t indicate relevant inputs or outcomes

Equity theory explains only some feelings of
fairness
• Procedural justice is as important as distributive
justice
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Procedural Justice

Perceived fairness of procedures used to
decide the distribution of resources
 Higher procedural fairness with:
• Voice
• Unbiased decision maker
• Decision based on all information
• Existing policies applied consistently
• Decision maker listens to all sides
• Those who complain are treated respectfully
• Those who complain are given full explanation
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Foundations of
Employee
Motivation
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© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved