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How Best Can Managers Ensure Employees Are Motivated at Work?

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How Best Can Managers Ensure Employees Are Motivated at Work?
How best can managers ensure employees are motivated at work?

There are two reasons why people do things, first because they want and willing to do, or second because they have no choice. If people do things when they have to, it is likely that they will do no more than necessary, and they will stop doing as soon as they can. Therefore, the term “motivation” is introduced, in order to make people want and willing to do things. This essay will be looking at how best managers can ensure their employees are motivated at work, because this is important for an organization to achieve its goals. Before we start, we have to clarify the term: motivation.

Motivation has to do with a set of independent/dependent variable relationships that explain the direction, amplitude, and persistence of an individual’s behaviour, holding constant the effects of aptitude, skill, and understanding of the task, and the constraints operating in the environment.

To begin with traditional theory X, it assumes people are lazy, they do not like working and want to avoid it as soon as possible, plus, they have no ambition, and take no responsibility. The only reason they work is for rewards (simply in money). In this case, managers must monitor their staffs all the time.

In sharp contrast to theory X, Douglas McGregor introduced a total difference thing called theory Y. He believes people want to work and learn, not only for paid, self-development is more important to them, they enjoy working while challenge themselves. Therefore what managers do, is to design the plan for the best outcome, for both employees and the organization, and ensure the plan works properly.

The above two paragraphs clearly show a relationship between employers and employees, and that is the employment relationship. This simply means:

 Employer hires employee’s capacity/potential to work
 Employee exchanges his/her capacity to work for wages.

However, in further, employment relationship means

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