MOTIVATION

MEANING

The term ‘motivation’ has its origin in the Latin word “mover” which means to
“move”. Thus, motivation stands for movement. One can get a donkey to move
by using a “carrot or a stick”, with people one can use incentives, or threats or
reprimands. However, these only have a limited effect. These work for a while
and then need to be repeated, increased or reinforced to secure further
movement. The term motivation may be defined as “the managerial function of
ascertaining the motives of subordinates and helping them to realize those
motives”.

DEFINITION:

According to DUBIN, motivation could be defined as “the complex of forces

starting and keeping a person at work in an organization. Motivation is
something that moves the person to action, and continues him in the course of
action already initiated”. Motivation refers to the way a person is enthused at
work to intensify his/her desire and willingness to use and channelize his/her
energy for the achievement of organizational objectives. It is something that
moves a person into action wand continue him in the course of action
enthusiastically. The role of motivation is to develop and intensify the desire in
every member of the organization to work effectively and efficiently in his
position.

In the words of DALTON E. McFARLAND, “motivation is the way in which

urges, desires, aspiration, striving or needs direct, control or explain the
behavior of human being”. Motivation has very close relationship with the
behavior. It explains how and way the human behavior is caused. According to
Mcfarland, “motivation is a form of tension occurring within individual, with
resulting behavior aimed at reducing, eliminating or diverting the tension.
Understanding the needs and drives and their resulting tensions helps to
explain and predict human behavior ultimately providing a sound basis for
managerial decision and action.” Thus, motivation is the term, which applies to
the entire class of urges, drives, desires, needs and similar forces.
IMPORTANCE OF MOTIVATION:

Motivation is a very important for an organization because of the following

benefits it provides:-

Puts human resources into action

Every concern requires physical, financial and human resources to

accomplish the goals. It is through motivation that the human resources
can be utilized by making full use of it. This can be done by building
willingness in employees to work. This will help the enterprise in
securing best possible utilization of resources.

Improves level of efficiency of employees

The level of a subordinate or a employee does not only depend upon his
qualifications and abilities. For getting best of his work performance, the
gap between ability and willingness has to be filled which helps in
improving the level of performance of subordinates. This will result into-

• Increase in productivity,
• Reducing cost of operations, and
• Improving overall efficiency.

3.Leads to achievement of organizational goals

The goals of an enterprise can be achieved only when the following

factors take place :-

• There is best possible utilization of resources,

• There is a co-operative work environment,
• The employees are goal-directed and they act in a purposive
manner,
• Goals can be achieved if co-ordination and co-operation takes
place simultaneously which can be effectively done through
motivation.

4.Builds friendly relationship

Motivation is an important factor which brings employees satisfaction.

This can be done by keeping into mind and framing an incentive plan for
the benefit of the employees. This could initiate the following things:

• Monetary and non-monetary incentives,

• Promotion opportunities for employees,
 • Disincentives for inefficient employees.

In order to build a cordial, friendly atmosphere in a concern, the above

steps should be taken by a manager. This would help in:

• Effective co-operation which brings stability,

• Industrial dispute and unrest in employees will reduce,
• The employees will be adaptable to the changes and there will
be no resistance to the change,
• This will help in providing a smooth and sound concern in
which individual interests will coincide with the organizational
interests,
• This will result in profit maximization through increased
productivity.

5.Leads to stability of work force

Stability of workforce is very important from the point of view of

reputation and goodwill of a concern. The employees can remain loyal to
the enterprise only when they have a feeling of participation in the
management. The skills and efficiency of employees will always be of
advantage to employees as well as employees. This will lead to a good
public image in the market which will attract competent and qualified
people into a concern. As it is said, “Old is gold” which suffices with the
role of motivation here, the older the people, more the experience and
their adjustment into a concern which can be of benefit to the enterprise.
We can summarize by saying that motivation is important both to an
individual and a business. Motivation is important to an individual as:

• Motivation will help him achieve his personal goals.

• If an individual is motivated, he will have job satisfaction.
• Motivation will help in self-development of individual.
• An individual would always gain by working with a dynamic
team.

Similarly, motivation is important to a business as:

• The more motivated the employees are, the more empowered

the team is.
• The more is the team work and individual employee
contribution, more profitable and successful is the business.
• During period of amendments, there will be more adaptability
and creativity.
• Motivation will lead to an optimistic and challenging attitude at
work place.
 WHAT MOTIVATES?

One approach to employee motivation has been to view "add-ins" to an

individual's job as the primary factors in improving performance. Endless mixes
of employee benefits such as health care, life insurance, profit sharing,
employee stock ownership plans, exercise facilities, subsidized meal plans,
child care availability, company cars, and more have been used by companies
in their efforts to maintain happy employees in the belief that happy employees
are motivated employees.

Many modern theorists, however, propose that the motivation an employee

feels toward his or her job has less to do with material rewards than with the
design of the job itself. Studies as far back as 1950 have shown that highly
segmented and simplified jobs resulted in lower employee morale and output.
Other consequences of low employee motivation include absenteeism and high
turnover, both of which are very costly for any company. As a result, "job
enlargement" initiatives began to crop up in major companies in the 1950s.

On the academic front, Turner and Lawrence suggested that there are three
basic characteristics of a "motivating" job:

1. It must allow a worker to feel personally responsible for a meaningful

portion of the work accomplished. An employee must feel ownership of
and connection with the work he or she performs. Even in team
situations, a successful effort will foster an awareness in an individual
that his or her contributions were important in accomplishing the group's
tasks.

2. It must provide outcomes which have intrinsic meaning to the individual.

Effective work that does not lead a worker to feel that his or her efforts
matter will not be maintained. The outcome of an employee's work must
have value to himself or herself and to others in the organization.

3. It must provide the employee with feedback about his or her

accomplishments. A constructive, believable critique of the work
performed is crucial to a worker's motivation to improve.Empowerment
gives autonomy and allows an employee to have ownership of ideas and
accomplishments, whether acting alone or in teams. Quality circles and
the increasing occurrence of teams in today's work environments give
employees opportunities to reinforce the importance of the work
accomplished by members as well as receive feedback on the efficacy of
that work.
 METHODS OF MOTIVATION

There are as many different methods of motivating employees today as

there are companies operating in the global business environment. Still,
some strategies are prevalent across all organizations striving to
improve employee motivation. The best employee motivation efforts will
focus on what the employees deem to be important. It may be that
employees within the same department of the same organization will
have different motivators. Many organizations today find that flexibility in
job design and reward systems has resulted in employees' increased
longevity with the company, improved productivity, and better morale.

EMPOWERMENT, giving employees more responsibility and decision-

making authority increases their realm of control over the tasks for which
they are held responsible and better equips them to carry out those
tasks. As a result, feelings of frustration arising from being held
accountable for something one does not have the resources to carry out
are diminished. Energy is diverted from self-preservation to improved
task accomplishment.

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION, at many companies, employees with

creative ideas do not express them to management for fear that their
input will be ignored or ridiculed. Company approval and toeing the
company line have become so ingrained in some working environments
that both the employee and the organization suffer. When the power to
create in the organization is pushed down from the top to line personnel,
employees who know a job, product, or service best are given the
opportunity to use their ideas to improve it. The power to create
motivates employees and benefits the organization in having a more
flexible work force, using more wisely the experience of its employees,
and increasing the exchange of ideas and information among employees
and departments. These improvements also create an openness to
change that can give a company the ability to respond quickly to market
changes and sustain a first mover advantage in the marketplace.

LEARNING, if employees are given the tools and the opportunities to

accomplish more, most will take on the challenge. Companies can
motivate employees to achieve more by committing to perpetual
enhancement of employee skills. Accreditation and licensing programs
for employees are an increasingly popular and effective way to bring
about growth in employee knowledge and motivation. Often, these
programs improve employees' attitudes toward the client and the
company, while bolstering self-confidence. Supporting this assertion, an
analysis of factors which influence motivation-to-learn found that it is
directly related to the extent to which training participants believe that
such participation will affect their job or career utility.
QUALITY OF LIFE, the number of hours worked each week by
American workers is on the rise, and many families have two adults
working those increased hours. Under these circumstances, many
workers are left wondering how to meet the demands of their lives
beyond the workplace. Often, this concern occurs while at work and may
reduce an employee's productivity and morale. Companies that have
instituted flexible employee arrangements have gained motivated
employees whose productivity has increased. Programs incorporating
flextime, condensed workweeks, or job sharing, for example, have been
successful in focusing overwhelmed employees toward the work to be
done and away from the demands of their private lives.

MONETARY INCENTIVE for all the championing of alternative

motivators, money still occupies a major place in the mix of motivators.
The sharing of a company's profits gives incentive to employees to
produce a quality product, perform a quality service, or improve the
quality of a process within the company. What benefits the company
directly benefits the employee. Monetary and other rewards are being
given to employees for generating cost-savings or process-improving
ideas, to boost productivity and reduce absenteeism. Money is effective
when it is directly tied to an employee's ideas or accomplishments.
Nevertheless, if not coupled with other, non monetary motivators, its
motivating effects are short-lived. Further, monetary incentives can
prove counterproductive if not made available to all members of the
organization.

OTHER INCENTIVES study after study has found that the most effective
motivators of workers are non monetary. Monetary systems are
insufficient motivators, in part because expectations often exceed results
and because disparity between salaried individuals may divide rather
than unite employees. Proven non monetary positive motivators foster
team spirit and include recognition, responsibility, and advancement.
Managers who recognize the "small wins" of employees, promote
participatory environments, and treat employees with fairness and
respect will find their employees to be more highly motivated. One
company's managers brainstormed to come up with 30 powerful rewards
that cost little or nothing to implement. The most effective rewards, such
as letters of commendation and time off from work, enhanced personal
fulfillment and self-respect. Over the longer term, sincere praise and
personal gestures are far more effective and more economical than
awards of money alone. In the end, a program that combines monetary
reward systems and satisfies intrinsic, self-actualizing needs may be the
most potent employee motivator.
 TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Tata Consultancy Services, the key player in the IT services and business
solutions area has attained for themselves a quality that none can match. Their
services are mainly consulting based, with an integrated IT and ITes portfolio.
They have a unique Global Network Delivery Model – which is supposed to be
the yardstick of superiority in software development.

Tata Consultancy Services is a part of the Tata group (the largest industrial
conglomerate of India). They are spread across 42 countries with more than
130,000 IT consultants. They had registered consolidated revenue of USD 5.7
billion for the FY 2007-08. With its excellence in service, TCS has been listed
on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in India.

SERVICES AND SOLUTIONS

TCS has always helped the clients optimize the business processes to get
maximum efficiency. TCS is a leading IT services provider, with a wide breadth
of services across the entire Information technology spectrum. To know more
about how TCS can help you identify opportunities of improvement, build the
roadmap to getting there & leverage technology to make it possible, read more
about our services & solutions. TCS offers the following solutions:

• Enterprise solutions
• Consulting
• Business process outsourcing
• Business intelligence and performance management
• Engineering and industrial services
• IT and business solutions for SMEs

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is well known for its sound HR policies. The
primary motive of this consulting firm is to make its employees knowledgeable
about the on going practices in their respective domains. For this, it invests 4%
of its annual revenue on training, development and other employee
empowerment programs. Its learning centre at Trivandrum has state of the art
facilities coupled with all modern day amenities to make learning fun. The other
employee benefits which are offered here include house building loans,
automobile loans, mentoring, career counseling, stress development programs
and many more.
 EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION – A SHORT CASE STUDY

I joined CVS Caremark project at TCS-Noida in November after a successful

stint at Aviva in TCS-Bangalore, where I had worked as a trainee. I had always
wanted to go back to my hometown and live with my parents and when I got a
transfer to Delhi I didn’t waste a single moment in saying yes to the new project
and heading towards Delhi. Many of my friends were also moving out from
Bangalore at the same time which only made my decision easier. I felt that
Caremark offered better career prospects, as it was a new project and we were
offered to work on the current technologies that were in demand in the market. I
was sure I would excel in my new position at Caremark, just as I had done in
my old job at Aviva. I joined as Assistant Systems Engineer at Caremark, with a
handsome pay hike for becoming a confirmed employee of the company.
Caremark also had international operations and there was more than a slim
chance that I would be sent to USA or the UK on a project. Knowing that this
would give me a lot of exposure, besides looking good on my resume, I was
quite excited about the new job. I joined Ashish Mehta's five-member team at
Caremark. I had met Ashish during the interview sessions, and was looking
forward to working under him. My team members seemed warm and friendly,
and comfortable with their work. I introduced myself to the team members and
got to know more about each of them. Wanting to know more about my boss, I
casually asked Shobha, one of the team members, about Ashish. Shobha said,
"Ashish does not interfere with our work. In fact, you could even say that he
tries to ignore us as much as he can." I was surprised by the comment but
decided that Ashish was probably leaving them alone to do their work without
any guidance, in order to allow them to realize their full potential. At Aviva, I had
worked under Sudhir Reddy and had looked up to him as a guide .
BASIC PRINCIPLES TO MOTIVATE EMPLOYEES AT TCS

1. Motivating yourself will Motivate employees Enthusiasm is contagious.

If you enjoy your job, it helps others enjoy theirs too. If you do a good job of
taking care of yourself and your own job, you will have much clearer
perspective on how others are doing. You are setting an example for
employees to follow.

2. Work to align goals of the organization with goals of employees

Frequent reviews and strategic goal setting sessions will help to ensure that
company goals and personal goals are in alignment. Managers need to make
the goals of the company very clear so an employee can be sure the goals they
set will contribute to the success of the company. Employees will buy into the
goals of the company when they are allowed to have input. Goals should meet
the SMART rule: Specific, Measureable, Action, Realistic and Time oriented.

3. Understand what motivates each employee Start by evaluating what

motivates you. A key to motivating others is knowing what inspires them.
Everyone is not motivated by the same method. Some want recognition, others
money, learning, spending time with family and etc. Is their job configured to
motivate them properly? What can you do to better motivate yourself and
others?

4. Recognize that supporting employee motivation is a process, not a

taskPeople and organizations change all the time so it is important to
continually look at what motivates you and the employees and to make sure the
processes you have in place are still effective. It is an on-going process.

5. Support employee motivation by using organizational systems (for

example, policies and procedures) .Use reliable and comprehensive systems in
the workplace to help motivate employees. Don’t just count on cultivating strong
interpersonal relationships with employees to help motivate the employee
performance systems, and organizational policies and procedures to support
employee motivation.
CONCLUSION:

Creating a workplace with excellent morale and motivated employees is a long-

term project, and needs to be embedded within the fabric of an organisation’s
daily operations. Highly motivated and engaged personnel are a tremendous
asset to any organisation. While money is an important foundational
consideration, the main factors that attract and maintain “talent” within an
organisation include:

• recognition
• having interesting work to do
• being heard by management
• having skilled managers
• having good communication flows
• being provided with opportunities for advancement.

Developing well-motivated employees leads to more satisfied customers and

higher sales; this in turn leads to greater employee motivation and creates a
virtuous circle. Highly motivated employees are likely to be engaged
employees, willing to go the extra mile with customers, and to reward their
employers with loyalty, high levels of productivity, and greater innovation.
Employee Motivation: Theory and practice
The job of a manager in the workplace is to get things done through
employees. To do this the manager should be able to motivate employees. But
that's easier said than done! Motivation practice and theory are difficult
subjects, touching on several disciplines.
In spite of enormous research, basic as well as applied, the subject of
motivation is not clearly understood and more often than not poorly practiced.
To understand motivation one must understand human nature itself. And there
lies the problem!
Human nature can be very simple, yet very complex too. An understanding and
appreciation of this is a prerequisite to effective employee motivation in the
workplace and therefore effective management and leadership.
These articles on motivation theory and practice concentrate on various
theories regarding human nature in general and motivation in particular.
Included are articles on the practical aspects of motivation in the workplace and
the research that has been undertaken in this field, notably by Douglas
McGregor (theory y), Frederick Herzberg (two factor motivation hygiene
theory,) Abraham Maslow (theory z, hierarchy of needs), Elton Mayo
(Hawthorne Experiments) Chris Argyris Rensis Likert and David
McClelland (achievement motivation.)

Why study and apply employee motivation principles?

Quite apart from the benefit and moral value of an altruistic approach to treating
colleagues as human beings and respecting human dignity in all its forms,
research and observations show that well motivated employees are more
productive and creative. The inverse also holds true. The schematic below
indicates the potential contribution the practical application of the principles this
paper has on reducing work content in the organization.

Motivation is the key to performance improvement

There is an old saying you can take a horse to the water but you cannot force it
to drink; it will drink only if it's thirsty - so with people. They will do what they
want to do or otherwise motivated to do. Whether it is to excel on the workshop
floor or in the 'ivory tower' they must be motivated or driven to it, either by
themselves or through external stimulus.

Are they born with the self-motivation or drive? Yes and no. If no, they can be
motivated, for motivation is a skill which can and must be learnt. This is
essential for any business to survive and succeed.
Performance is considered to be a function of ability and motivation, thus:

• Job performance =f(ability)(motivation)

Ability in turn depends on education, experience and training and its

improvement is a slow and long process. On the other hand motivation can be
improved quickly. There are many options and an uninitiated manager may not
even know where to start. As a guideline, there are broadly seven strategies for
motivation.

• Positive reinforcement / high expectations

• Effective discipline and punishment
• Treating people fairly
• Satisfying employees needs
• Setting work related goals
• Restructuring jobs
• Base rewards on job performance

These are the basic strategies, though the mix in the final 'recipe' will vary from
workplace situation to situation. Essentially, there is a gap between an
individuals actual state and some desired state and the manager tries to reduce
this gap.

Motivation is, in effect, a means to reduce and manipulate this gap. It is

inducing others in a specific way towards goals specifically stated by the
motivator. Naturally, these goals as also the motivation system must conform to
the corporate policy of the organization. The motivational system must be
tailored to the situation and to the organization.

In one of the most elaborate studies on employee motivation, involving 31,000

men and 13,000 women, the Minneapolis Gas Company sought to determine
what their potential employees desire most from a job. This study was carried
out during a 20 year period from 1945 to 1965 and was quite revealing. The
ratings for the various factors differed only slightly between men and women,
but both groups considered security as the highest rated factor. The next three
factors were:

• advancement
• type of work
• company - proud to work for

Surprisingly, factors such as pay, benefits and working conditions were given a
low rating by both groups. So after all, and contrary to common belief, money is
not the prime motivator.