: Write an essay of at least 250 words to answer these questions.

(40 points)

It is said that the most effective way to increase a worker's motivation is to ensure that his/her
income is high enough to meet essential needs.
What is your opinion? Use Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Herzberg's two-factor theory
to explain your answer.
Suggested answer 1:

Raising employees' income to the point where it can cover their most essential needs, which
are mostly physiological needs and security needs, is sometimes argued to be the optimal
method to motivate workers. However, due to the highly diverse living conditions and personal
needs among workers, the latter of which are entirely subjective, I'd argue that it is futile to
come up with one definite "best" way of motivating employees and that employers should take
into account their workers' level of income and his "higher" needs in order to derive his own
motivation method.

On the one hand, I concede that raising wages to allow workers afford basic necessities is
crucial to motivate workers in low income brackets who struggle to make ends meet. According
to Abraham Maslow, physiological needs—such as water, food and sleep—and security needs
—such as clothing and shelter—are lowest in his hierarchy of needs, which means that they
must be pursued and fulfilled first before considering other higher categories of needs.
However, while Maslow and Herzberg suggest, similarly, that such needs cannot motivate
workers like the ability to realize one's goals, the need for recognition and the sense of
responsibility, I think that for the working class, especially those who have low income and who
have little needs for so-called self-actualization, the fulfilment of the first two categories in
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is indeed the most effective motivator because for them,
difficulties like having to carry out menial tasks or being unable to make themselves widely
recognized by employers become superficial as long as they can feed their families.

However, increasing income to cover essential needs ceases to be the most effective way to
motivate employees once workers move up from lower income brackets to higher ones, or, in
other words, once they have been able to afford basic necessities and start to desire higher
needs in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, namely social, esteem and self-actualization needs. This
hardly needs explaining, because after all, nobody with high income would want to be paid just
enough to satisfy basic needs when such needs are so easily satisfied that they are readily taken
for granted. Instead, managers must seek other ways to keep such employees motivated, and
this matter, as I have mentioned before, depends highly on each worker's perspective on what
is counted as a "motivator", such as recognition, responsibility and promotion, according to
Frederick Herzberg. For those with a high enough income but have to perform boring tasks, job
rotation, enlargement and enrichment can be great ways to induce challenges; for those who
have to work under authoritarian managers, switching to a more democratic, or even a laissez-
faire management style might help increase employee's sense of responsibility; for others, good
job prospects can encourage them to work harder, and so on.
In conclusion, being paid only to be able to afford the bare minimum can only motivate people
with low wages, but it becomes a given once workers have a high enough income. In that case,
managers must identify the level of the hierarchy that their subordinates are pursuing in order
to come up with the optimal way to motivate their employees.

Suggested answer 2:

As society progresses to be increasingly worker-inclusive, so do the requirements and standards

of the working industry in order to be traded for motivation amongst their personnel. One
route suggested to be of most effectiveness to motivate workers is to reward them with
monetary benefits- both stable and competitive- in order to ensure their most barebones
necessities. While it is agreeable that a satisfactory wage is an important factor, it is not the
most effective method, for reasons provided below.

To start with, it is undeniable that different sets of workers have different intuitions for their
satisfaction floors, but it is also common knowledge that there exist a surfeit of layers for
increasing prevalence of needs, and Maslov's "hierarchy of needs" provides the typical
illustration. The hierarchy is set as a pyramid, with barebones needs provided as basis at the
bottom, such as food, drinks, or shelter: this basis provides structures for higher needs such as
the sense of safety, or self-actualization. While monetary basis covers the essential layers
greatly, one's job satisfaction grows higher than such, which money alone cannot be traded for.

As further affirmation, Herzberg's "two-factor theory" suggests that an employee requires more
than monetary benefits. Similar to Maslov's aforementioned theory, Herzberg's model also has
basic needs as a condition, but with "psychological needs" as its counterpart: as these are
separate, it shows that physical needs cannot override psychological ones, and both have to be
addressed in order to maintain satisfaction for workers.

In conclusion, motivation does not merely conform to basic standards that can be wagered with
prospective salaries. With working tasks becoming more demanding, companies would have to
materialise novel and innovative ways to ensure their personnel's higher-end, psychological
needs.