Motivation Theory

Understanding Motivation Concepts and Applications is one of the core areas of knowledge for any Human Resource Professional.

Motivation cuts across all six functional areas. Motivation, for instance, is often associated with why - and how - employees or people learn. It’s also highly relevant, however, to how employees perceive and value salaries, wages, and benefits, and to establishing and sustaining positive relationships in the workplace.

Motivation is literally the desire to do things. It’s the difference between waking up before dawn to pound the pavement and lazing around the house all day. It’s the crucial element in setting and attaining goals - and research shows you can influence your own levels of motivation and self-control. So, figure out what you want. Power through the pain. Start being who you want to be. Start creating the environment you want to lead.

Motivation theory directly impacts employee performance in the workplace. As such, HR Professionals need a keen understanding of the various motivation theories to incorporate them - in a practical sense - into their initiatives and into their consulting relationships with managers and leaders across the organization. Some of the key theories in which HR Professionals must be well versed are the following:

● Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

● B.F. Skinner Operant Conditioning

● Frederick Herzberg Motivation-Hygiene Theory

● Douglas McGregor Theory X and Theory Y

● David McClelland Acquired Needs Theory

● J. Stacy Adams Equity Theory

● Victor Vroom Expectancy Theory

Applied Learning

Motivational Theories in Practice: incorporate these theories into programs + practices to support success.

HR Professionals and Leaders in organizations incorporate these theories into programs and practices that contribute to the overall success of their employee retention + succession planning.

These practices include Total Rewards Programs (Recognition Programs), Methods of Learning/Education, Training + Development Initiatives, Performance Management Systems, Compensation + Benefits, Certification Programs, Coaching + Mentorship Programs, etc.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs [1954]

Maslow’s theory presents five levels of needs experienced by humans. People move into higher levels of need as lower levels of need are sufficiently satisfied. Those levels, from most fundamental to most evolved, are:

● Basic physical needs: Includes food, water, shelter, acceptable working conditions, and other fundamental, foundational needs.

● Safety and security: Speaks to the need to live and work in an environment that feels - and is - safe.

● Belonging and love: In the workplace, this need can manifest itself through membership in a department, a profession, a division, clubs, affinity groups, or simply through friendships and relationships.

● Esteem: Manifests in two dimensions - self and others. Self-esteem refers to valuing one’s own self, personally and/or professionally. Esteem from others relates to receiving recognition and approval from others.

● Self-actualization: Individuals want to, and strive to, reach their full potential. Self-actualization is, very often, its own reward.

Maslow at Work

HR Professionals need to look for creative ways to address the motivational needs identified by Maslow - even though employees may not be fully aware of them.

Addressing needs doesn’t mean trying to move everyone to the next level. It is important not to impose expectations on employees that they do not want to embrace. It is equally important to afford workplace-appropriate opportunities for those who do.

On that note, be sure to keep all applications of Maslow’s theory firmly grounded in the workplace. Link it clearly and unambiguously to performance - of the organization, the department, and the individual. Always maintain your focus on the organization’s goals, and always be prepared to articulate job-related reasons for motivation-based initiatives.

Last, as you focus on creating opportunities that enable employees to move to higher-level needs, don’t lose track of whether and how well employee’s lower level needs are being met. A compensation system, for instance, that allows employees to meet their basic physical needs at one point in time may eventually become problematic and fall well below what labor market competitors are paying. How can this happen? Try “taking your eye off the balls,” even for a short period of time, of range movement, merit budgets, and the like, and watch what happens.

B.F. Skinner, Operant Conditioning [1957]

B.F. Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning assumes that the ways people chose to behave in the future are a function of the consequences that have resulted from their past behavior. Skinner identifies four types of consequences:

● Positive reinforcement (praise): Demonstrating desired behavior results in a desirable outcome or consequence. This may encourage individuals to choose to engage in desired behaviors again. As an example, a customer service supervisor observes a customer service representative skillfully resolve a complaint from an irate customer, and praises that person for successfully defusing a potentially volatile situation.

● Negative reinforcement: When an individual believes that specific behaviors will result in a specific undesirable outcome or consequence, he or she may choose to demonstrate more desirable behaviors, instead. In this way, the individual will behave in a way that prevents that undesirable consequence from happening.

As an example, an employee chooses to use his or her own personal email address and computer - rather than the company’s email system - for jokes and/or other correspondence that could potentially be viewed as inappropriate for the workplace.

● Punishment: Demonstrating undesirable behavior results in an undesirable outcome or consequence. This may encourage the individual to choose not to engage in that undesirable behavior again.

As an example, and employee who continues to answer incoming personal cell phone calls during a training session, even after being asked to stop, is asked to leave the training session and is not permitted to register for a make-up program for at least three months.

● Extinction: An individual’s behavior - whether desired or undesired - elicits no outcomes or consequences at all. The indi vidual may choose not to demonstrate that behavior again. As an example, an employee persists in trying to engage co-workers in counterproductive conversations about other co-workers (that is, gossip). If the coworkers do not join in, the employee might choose not to initiate these sorts of (undesired) conversations in the future.

Frederick Herzberg, Motivation-Hygiene Theory [1959]

Herzberg identified two separate and distinct types of needs:

● Motivation factors: Related specifically to the job itself - for instance, the nature of the work, the challenge inherent to the work, and/or the perceived or real value of the work.

● Hygiene factors: Related to everything else an employee might experience in the workplace - everything associated with the work, but not the work itself. This includes - but is not limited to - pay, benefits, nature of supervision, relationships with co-workers and so forth.

Dubbed as “The Father of Job Enrichment,” Herzberg distinguished between factors that can generate positive feelings about the work (the motivation factors) and the factors that can result in negative feelings about the work (hygiene factors).

So, although unacceptable motivation factors won’t cause an employee to be unhappy at work, unacceptable hygiene factors could. Conversely, acceptable or positive motivation factors will cause an employee to be happy at work, but acceptable or positive hygiene factors won’t. However, motivation factors will have a positive impact on an employee’s motivation level if, and only if, hygiene factors are acceptable.

Herzberg’s theory challenged employers, Business Leaders + Human Resource Departments to look at employee’s satisfaction at work in a completely new and different way.

No longer was job satisfaction viewed as existing along a single continuum. Herzberg transformation-ally defined it as a function of two related, but wholly different,factors - both of which warranted attention.

Douglas McGregor, Theory X, Theory Y [1960]

Building on Maslow’s work, Theory X and Theory Y refers to two approaches to management:

● Theory X Managers manage in accordance with the general belief that employees are uncommitted, uninterested, hesitant to assume any additional responsibility, and essentially lazy.

● Theory Y Managers manage in accordance with the general belief that employees will take on - and even look for - additional work if the employee perceives that the work is satisfying and rewarding.

McClelland, Acquired Needs [1961]

McClelland’s theory identified and focused on one particular need - achievement. According to McClelland, achievement is not a universal motivator for everyone, and the degree of need varies from individual to individual. Individuals who experience - or, perhaps more appropriately, possess - the need for achievement are neither risk averse nor risk embracing. More frequently, they take a middle-of-the-road approach when it comes to risk - calculated, and conscious.

Those motivated by the need for achievement, therefore, will assume an acceptable and tolerable level of risk that allows the opportunity for upside potential, confident all the while that their skills, abilities, and contributions will have the greatest impact in determining the outcome of a situation. Interestingly, individuals with a higher achievement need are less concerned with the rewards of achievement than they are with the actual attainment of that achievement.

With respect to performance management, individuals who have a high need for achievement may gravitate toward stretch goals. They would also be more likely to focus on the goals portion of a performance management system or form than the competencies portion.

Adams, Equity Needs [1963]

Equity Theory, as the name implies, is predicated on the assumption that people want to be treated fairly, particularly when compared to how others around them are treated. It also purports that such comparisons will be made frequently.

In the context of employment, equity theory asserts that employees will compare their inputs (everything they bring to the job and invest in the job) and outputs (how they are rewarded - both intrinsically and extrinsically - for what they invest in the job) to others’ inputs and outputs. If employees come away from this process with the feeling as though they are being treated fairly in comparison to others, they will continue to put forth effort.

Conversely, employees who come away from this process with the belief that they are being treated unfairly will seek to make a change. That change might include trying to change their own inputs, trying to change their own outputs, or trying to change the inputs or outputs of others. Any of these options could manifest themselves in either productive or unproductive ways. And, of course, that same employee could quit - the most dramatic way that an employee can change inputs.

Vroom, Expectancy [1964]

Vroom’s expectancy theory is all about weighing options and making choices. It asserts, in essence, that people will put forth effort when they believe that such effort will result in an outcome, and that that outcome is worthwhile. This theory is composed of three key elements and resulting questions that individuals (in this case, employees) ask themselves:

● Expectancy: “How likely is it that I’ll be able to attain a particular goal (in this case, a certain level of performance) if I put forth the required effort?”

● Instrumentality: “Assuming that I do attain this level of performance, how likely it is that I’ll be recognized or rewarded in some way?”

● Valence: “Assuming that I am recognized or rewarded, what is that recognition or reward really worth to me?”