How can we inspire employees management essay

INTRODUCTION: Making people satisfied in and with heir jobs generates high employee performance. This relationship is considered by all successful managers and leaders who know ell hot to direct their subordinates and persuade them how to be willingly loyal to their job and their company. Our question here is how long employees should play the role of following orders and nothing else, the managers’ role here must be concentrated on how to achieve productivity, efficiency and sufficiency through motivating employees on how to be more enthusiastic about their work and their jobs to be like hobbies to them, some employees enjoy their work more than their leisure time, if we ask ourselves how this happens to them, the answer will be linked with their successful managers and leaders who could create the atmosphere of co-operation, fair responsibility, healthful work environment, mutual respect, fair promotions, good opportunities for advancement and comfortable pays. All these factors together help employees to be more successful. Success will create self satisfaction and loyalty. This will be indicated in employees, performance, successful firms will have well satisfied and loyal employees who enjoy their time at work. Once the firm is feeling with its employees, they will be more loyal to it. HOW CAN WE INSPIRE EMPLOYEES? Productivity can be defined as the efficient and effective use if resources with minimum time and efforts to achieve income. Now, we live in a world with limited resources where every work has this limitation. With the current challenges facing the international business, the concept of productivity job satisfaction and motivation become very important for each one of us. Employee satisfaction and retention have been always an important issue for the successful managers and successful firms. Conventional human resources theories, developed 50 years ago by Maslow and Herzberg. Suggest that satisfied employees tend to be more creative, productive and committed to their employers. People are motivated to do their best to be so, inorder to be more advanced and get more rewards and promotions. As a result people here are essential to productivity. The success of productivity improvement strategy is concentrated on the employees’ commitment, job satisfaction, motivation and their own skills. Maslow’s theory consists if 5 level pyramid physiologic or basic survival, physical and metal safety sense of belonging, accomplishment, creativity and growth and self actualization, Herzberg’s theory suggests that there are 2 groups of factors, hygiene (which satisfy) and motivation. The terms job satisfaction and motivation are used in different ways, so the factor of satisfaction is just an emotional response to the job it self, while motivation is considered the driving force to satisfy and pursue one’s needs. Maslow and Herzberg’s theories can be easily applied to any workplace. These theories help managers to have a good background about how they can satisfy their employees and motivate them to be more active and productive. Managers, in turn they can help their employees to achieve overall hob satisfaction, which, with the employee’s internal motivation drive, can increase performance on the job.” Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA”. JOB SATISFACTION: Job satisfaction according to Maslow is different from motivation because as we said before it is connected with the employees’ emotions towards their job conditions. It describes how content an individual is with the job involved in the happier people are those who are more satisfied with their hobs. Job satisfaction is a managerial and organizational objective. Any lack in it well affects badly on productivity and performance, and as a result it will be a clear indicator for the success or the failure. Job design aims to enhance job satisfaction and performance. There are different methods which include job rotation, job enrichment and job enlargement. There are some other influences on satisfaction include the management style and culture, employees empowerment, employee involvement and autonomous work groups, job satisfaction is a very important attribute which can be measured by organizations, through using the rating scales, employees can report their reactions to their jobs and this the common way to check employees rate of satisfaction. Questions relate to rate of pay, work responsibilities, variety of tasks, promotional opportunities the work it self and co-workers, some ” yes or no” questions while others ask to rate the degrees of satisfaction 1-5 scale (where 1 represents ” not at all satisfied and 5 represent ” extremely satisfied). Job satisfaction is a pleasurable emotional state comes as a positive result from the appraisal of one’s job so it is an affective reaction to one’s job and an attitude towards one’s job (Weiss 2002) has argued that job satisfaction is considered an attitude but points out that researchers should clearly distinguish the objects of cognitive evaluation which affect emotion, beliefs and behaviors. So, we from attitudes towards our jobs by taking into account our feelings, beliefs and our behaviors. MODELS OF JOB SATISFACTION: Affect TheoryEdwin A. Locke’s Range of Affect Theory (1976) is arguably the most famous job satisfaction model. The main premise of this theory is that satisfaction is determined by a discrepancy between what one wants in a job and what one has in a job. Further, the theory states that how much one values a given facet of work (e. g. the degree of autonomy in a position) moderates how satisfied/dissatisfied one becomes when expectations are/aren’t met. Dispositional TheoryAnother well-known job satisfaction theory is the Dispositional Theory. It is a very general theory that suggests that people have innate dispositions that cause them to have tendencies toward a certain level of satisfaction, regardless of one’s job. This approach became a notable explanation of job satisfaction in light of evidence that job satisfaction tends to be stable over time and across careers and jobs. Two-Factor Theory (Motivator-Hygiene Theory)Frederick Herzberg’s Two factor theory (also known as Motivator Hygiene Theory) attempts to explain satisfaction and motivation in the workplace. This theory states that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are driven by different factors – motivation and hygiene factors, respectively. An employee’s motivation to work is continually related to job satisfaction of a subordinate. Motivation can be seen as an inner force that drives individuals to attain personal and organization goals (Hoskinson, Porter, & Wrench, p. 133). Motivating factors are those aspects of the job that make people want to perform, and provide people with satisfaction, for example achievement in work, recognition, promotion opportunities. These motivating factors are considered to be intrinsic to the job, or the work carried out. Hygiene factors include aspects of the working environment such as pay, company policies, supervisory practices, and other working conditions. While Hertzberg’s model has stimulated much research, researchers have been unable to reliably empirically prove the model, with Hackman & Oldham suggesting that Hertzberg’s original formulation of the model may have been a methodological artifact. Furthermore, the theory does not consider individual differences, conversely predicting all employees will react in an identical manner to changes in motivating/hygiene factors. Finally, the model has been criticized in that it does not specify how motivating/hygiene factors are to be measured. JOB CHARACTERISTICS MODELHackman & Oldham proposed the Job Characteristics Model, which is widely used as a framework to study how particular job characteristics impact on job outcomes, including job satisfaction. The model states that there are five core job characteristics (skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback) which impact three critical psychological states (experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility for outcomes, and knowledge of the actual results), in turn influencing work outcomes (job satisfaction, absenteeism, work motivation, etc.). The five core job characteristics can be combined to form a motivating potential score (MPS) for a job. SUPERIOR-SUBORDINATE COMMUNICATIONSuperior-subordinate communication is an important influence on job satisfaction in the workplace. Communication behavior such as body movement, vocal expression, facial expression, and eye contact is crucial to the superior-subordinate relationship (Teven, p. 156). Nonverbal messages play a central role in interpersonal interactions with respect to impression formation, emotional expression, attraction, deception, and social influence (Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 1996). The relationship of a subordinate with their supervisor is a very important aspect in the workplace. JOB SATISFACTION AND EMOTIONSMood and emotions while working are considered the raw materials which cumulate to form the affective element of job satisfaction. (Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996). Moods tend to be longer lasting but often weaker states of uncertain origin, while emotions are have a clear object or cause, short-lived and often more intense. There is some evidence in the literature that state moods are related to overall job satisfaction. Positive and negative emotions are also found to be significantly related to overall job satisfactionIt is known that suppression of unpleasant emotions decreases job satisfaction and the amplification of pleasant emotions increases job satisfaction. RELATIONSHIPS AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONSJob Satisfaction is considered an important indicator of how employees feel about their jobs and also it is a predictor of work behaviors such as organizational turnover, absenteeism, and citizenship. Further more job satisfaction can mediate deviant work behaviors and the relationship of personality variables. It was also found that job satisfaction is correlated with life satisfaction. This correlation is reciprocal, meaning people who are satisfied with life tend to be satisfied with their job and people who are satisfied with their job tend to be satisfied with life. Job satisfaction is not significantly related to life satisfaction when other variables such as core self-evaluations and non-work satisfaction are taken into account. Another finding is that job satisfaction has a rather tenuous correlation to productivity on the job. This is an important piece of information to businesses and researchers, as the idea that satisfaction and job performance are directly related to one another is often cited in the media and in some non-academic management literature. In job performance, the employee personality is more important than job satisfaction. The link between the two is thought to be a spurious relationship instead, both satisfaction and performance are considered the result of personality. CHALLENGING JOBIt is already known that what motivates is considered a challenging job. This job allows a feeling of growth, advancement, enjoyment of work, achievement, responsibility and earned recognition. Workers become dissatisfied when their opportunities for meaningful achievement are eliminated and not considered. Both studies professional and manual workers produced quite a clear statement of job related needs. But benefits, wages, fringe and working conditions regarded as less important. Herzberg put in his consideration that job satisfaction is more important than money for persuading people inorder to increase productivity. Scott Myers defined ‘ job satisfaction’ in meaningful terms with more details. Several attempts were then made to apply the knowledge earned so as to increase job satisfaction by job enlargement and by job enrichment. Job enlargement aims to make jobs more challenging and interesting through increasing the variety of the tasks to be achieved. Job enrichment includes adding different types of tasks and asking for greater worker involvement and participation. CONCLUSION: Finally, I come in my research to conclude that employees’ satisfaction in and with their jobs will lead to successful and productive performance. The successful managers can make use of the different theories which deal with peoples’ satisfaction to motivate their employees to be more enthusiastic, loyal and productive at their work. This will never happen in the absence of satisfaction. The factors of satisfaction we have already introduced must be considered by all employers and this will create the spirit of competition among workers who will be ready to be more efficient, effective and productive. My recommendations here can be summarized in the following: Companies must consider about the importance of the employees’ satisfaction. People must be oriented about the best ways to be more productive and satisfied. Mutual interests and understanding will help employees to be more active and agile. Training plays an important role to make employees more adequate and equivalent to their jobs. We must come to the equation that says the more our employees are satisfied and motivated, the more they will achieved their tasks, improve their performance and be more productive and effective in their jobs.