How can a manager motivate a workforce and what are the major benefits Essay - 2

How can a manager motivate a workforce and what are the major benefits of this to a company - Essay Example The paper tells that benefits of the motivated workforce are immense because they need least supervision, efforts and guidance to get best out of them. Motivated workforce helps produce quality goods and efficient services. They learn quickly with fewer efforts on their training. They make fewer mistakes and tend to resolve conflicts quickly. Motivated workforce makes favorable impact on customers and exhibit minimal resistance to change. Away back in 1943, Abraham Maslow's theory explained about 'hierarchy of needs' of the people and that stood to the test of time during the time. A few years later, in 1960, Douglas McGregor proposed his Theory Y – opposing the Theory X, in which he acknowledged and recognized self-motivated people when given a proper environment and freedom to accomplish the given task. In fact, much of the motivational theories of later period find their roots in the Theory Y of Douglas McGregor. Financial incentives do play a role in motivating workforce t o a certain extent but not always, especially during economic downslide, managers’ hands are mostly tied to providing financial incentives and they need to develop other means that can create the motivating workforce in good and bad times. Steve Jobs, though he himself was a tough taskmaster, could inspire thousands of employees to accomplish the task with zeal and vigor. Perhaps, Steve Jobs provided most inspirational leadership to the workforce at Apple through his own commitment and dedication and ability to provide solutions to the problems. Walter Isaacson states that Jobs used to motivate employees to accomplish that at first hand appeared impossible. He states, "Jobs once pushed an engineer to accelerate a Macintosh's boot-up time, even after the employee explained why it would be impossible. In response, Jobs asked, "If it would save a person's life, could you find a way to shave 10 seconds off?" and calculated the overall time spent waiting for Macs to start up aroun d the world every year. Within a few weeks, the engineer reduced the boot-up time by 28 seconds". Thus, manager or leader’s inspirational role can do wonders in motivating employees. Nonfinancial Factors – a Key to Motivation The Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) based at the UK conducted a survey to find how organizations, employees, and managers in the UK feel about the various motivating factors in current times. The survey discovers that intrinsic factors such as recognition, praise are weighed highly as motivating elements over extrinsic factors such as financial rewards, performance bonuses. Key motivating factors that emerge from the survey are better treatment by employer, praise and creating a sense of being valued by the employer. Employee value recognition, support, feedback as the important motivating factors and managers who employ these tools to reward their employees are successful in motivating their workforce for more productive outcomes.