Motivation to work is a human state of mind where competence to work and will to workfuse together. In the absence of will,competence alone does not result in performance, similarly in the absence of competence will alone does not produce results. Motivation of an employee cuts across all topics and principles of Industrial Psychology.It is also the ultimate test of effectiveness of industrial and business organizations, because it directly relates to the results achieved.
Motivation provides for optimum use of human resources in an organization, through the involvement of employees and determines the performance of the unit organization. Viewing it from a broader perspective work motivation of employees in which organization ultimately determines the state of the nationaleconomy, as it is an aggregate of unit organizational performance which determines the national economy. Hence it is indeed the main concern of management of any enterprise, as without employee motivation other resources like time material finance etc. become greatly sterile.
Psychometric testis adopted inorganizations in order to measure the level of motivation of an employee, among many different functions served. In order to bring about and maintain motivation of people at work in any organization or industrial sectors, suitable basic approach and a series of actions which emanate from that approach is required on the part of management. The human resource approach which is a balanced, flexible and result oriented approach appears to provide the most suitable approach.
The action areas like forecasting and planning of manpower, recruitment and selection, performance appraisal, training and development are all part of that conscious effort to utilize the human resources.But motivation of employees is ultimately achieved through the effect of organizational environment developed by all these activities with effective leadership and establishment of interpersonal task centered relationship and all levels and functions. Here also the management plays a great role in minimizing conflicts between the employers and the employees as well as negotiation of business activities.
Elaborating the basis of employee motivation discuss employee motives, needs and expectations and various incentives and attempts at formulating a sound motivational strategy adaptable to Indian organizations.Work motivation is expressed through performing behavior Thus it is important to bear in mind the basic mechanism of behavior and its relationship with personality and environment. It might be pointed out that certain physiological functions like reflexes etc.may occur without motivation but barring that, nearly all conscious behavior in human beings is required to be motivated.One of the most important facts of a management’s job is to identify and activate employee’s motives consciously and constructively towards taskperformance in order to increase productivity.Motives are mostly the expressions of a person’s needs;hence motives are mainly personal and internal.
Incentives are external to the person and originate in the environment in sentence can be both positive and negative depending on the orientation of the person.A threat of losing job for instance will be looked upon as a negative incentive to work in order to keep the job,if keeping the job is important to the person.