How motivation affects employee performance?

Entering the workforce is one of the most challenging and rewarding parts of becoming a teenager into adulthood. Many people actually connect to the productivity and more immediate gratification of certain types of jobs versus the very prolonged study and subtler accomplishments of schooling. But how does that remain sustained throughout life? If a person begins working at 14 or around freshman year of high school and continues throughout their lives, they are working 50+ years! How does motivation affect employee performance? As a former manager, supervisor, and employee, it is safe to say that motivators can affect performance! One could even argue that without them motivation will dissipate, leading to eventual burnout.

What does this look like?

Think about the daily grind of work and when employers decide to come up with motivators in terms of assisting in production that can be a signal for people to turn on their inner competitive streak. Not only does their inner competitive streak get ignited but outer competitive streak if there is a competition in terms of productivity. Employees will be more motivated if there is something they are working towards whether it be time off, a bonus, or another gift. In this way, motivation is turned on through the idea of competition and it’s also turned on with the idea of winning something. Competition and winning are extremely common and favorable in this country’s work climate. A more internalized motivation is also favorable and can assist a person and complete their work so that they can open up time off or just have the satisfaction of accomplishment. More often however unless the person owns the business, work motivation is necessary as people are expected to perform at a higher expectation of productivity than ever before.

It was always striking that in the past 20 years, many companies actually lowered pay and removed bonuses while removing any other motivators to keep working just as hard. Some management attempted to bring about motivators by addressing the needs of a larger company and discussing the idea of loyalty to a company. With the climate of companies being bought and sold and people no longer staying at a company for 30+ years this does not act as a very effective motivation for people to work hard!