Motivation improves employees’ attitude

KAMPALA - The Human Resource Directorate together with the Office of the Principal Makerere University Business School have organized training series on “Management Skills for Young Executives” which began on October 17th 2022 and will run until November 7th 2022, to be held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

On 28th October 2022, Dr. Edith Mwebaza Basalirwa , Dean Faculty of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Administration trained MUBS Staff and all employees of different organizations about motivation.

She says that after hiring the people, it is important to keep these people by motivating them. There is a relationship between leadership and motivation.

Motivation is an internal state that arouses, directs, and maintains behavior among employees in the organization. It is the extent to which an individual’s persistent effort is directed towards voluntary willingness to achieve set goals.

Effort: Must be defined in relation to its appropriateness to the objectives being pursued. Persistence: Relates to the willingness of the individual to stay with a task until it is complete. Direction: Measured in terms of how persistent of how persistent effort is applied in the relation to the goals being pursed. Goals: Individual goals and organizational goals must be compatible in order to be motivated.

Dr. Edith Basalirwa says that people are complex human beings so are their needs. People’s actions and behaviors are driven by their desires and needs.

These desires and needs must be identified and an atmosphere created so as organizational goals are achieved. Motivation is the inducement of the desired behavior within subordinates with a view of channeling their effort and activity to achieve organizational goals. It can cause channels that sustain people’s behaviors.

It influences people’s performance.

Nature of motivation

Motivation is a psychological concept according to Dr. Edith Basalirwa and is not a one off. It needs to be reviewed continuously to induce a person to work. Motivation is a drive to satisfy a need, if not met, a person becomes frustrated.

Needs are goals a person wants to achieve and motivation should be directed towards those goals. People are images of themselves and their actions are acting like what they think they are.

Importance of Motivation

Motivation enables people to perform better, therefore increasing it is important. It facilitates change in behaviors of an individual. Allows development of competencies. Allows people to be creative, facilitates setting of goals. It enables developing of talents. Increases happiness in individuals. Helps in attracting and retaining employees. Increases productivity in the organization. Importance of motivation to an individual.

Helps individuals achieve personal goals, gives job satisfaction, supports self-development, improves employees attitude. Motivation is made up of two types which are; Intrinsic and Extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is all about self-drive and passion. It is all about doing the job which is inherently motivating. It is the relationship between the worker and task.

Extrinsic motivation is when factors in the external environment involves rewards such as pay; supervision and benefits which act as motivators. Dr. Edith Basalirwa says that it is important to blend both types of motivation for somebody to do their activities.

Theories of motivation

According to Dr. Edith Basalirwa, many researchers have proposed different theories to explain motivation but she emphasized Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Fredrick Herzberg’s 2 factor theory.

Maslow’s hierarchy is all about the following order in an individual’s life. Physiological needs/basic needs, Safety needs/security, Belongingness/ lone needs(soul), Esteem Needs/Recognition, need to know and Understand and lastly Self-actualization.

Meanwhile, Frederick Herzberg theorized that employee satisfaction has two dimensions: “hygiene” and motivation. Hygiene issues, such as salary and supervision, decrease employees' dissatisfaction with the work environment. Motivators, such as recognition and achievement, make workers more productive, creative and committed.