How to Motivate Employees?

One of the biggest concerns of organizations is to keep their employees motivated for their better performance that would ultimately effect organization's performance. Motivation levels are never constant for everyone, one person being motivated in working a team but other may feel uncomfortable in that situation. So it depends on behaviours, situation and other multiple factors which may be intrinsic or extrinsic. In order to deal with such situation we first need to know what motivation actually is? As Stephen Robbins defines it as a process through which efforts of individuals are energized, directed and sustained over a period of time. It means that the efforts employees put in to do their tasks must be enough to do it most effectively and efficiently.

In or to keep their efforts in right direction employees can make them comfortable by provinding them certain benefits or incentives which they consider valuable. Here i would describe certain ways managers can motivate their employees but obviously situations have significant impact in selecting any of these:

• At the very basic level, certain monetary rewards and incentives along with additional perks for the individual and his/her family are one of the motivators for employees
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• Experienced and skilled employees should be given enough freedom to utilize their abilities and knowledge in order to perform their tasks  
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• Stay connected to employees at individual level, have their feedback on tasks and job, they feel good and privileged this way.
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• Have their suggestions in decision making, it would encourage them to bring up new ideas and make them feel good that they have their say
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• They should be developed regularly, identify the skills they are interested in and want to develop and provide them training accordingly
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• Offer your key employees time benefits like compressed work weeks, flextimes or work at home etc.  
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• Recognize them, their efforts and reward their performances even appreciate them publicly if they have really helped your company grow and creating company's offerings
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• Provide trusting and open culture so they may be able to share and act real

These are certain general and very important ways employees can be motivated. By adopting a few of these or even two or three may help you increasing motivation level. 

Consumer Learning & its Elements

Consumer learning is a topic of concern for all marketers. Especially in today's world where marketers want to teach the consumers about their own products and services, consumer learning is integral part of their any marketing strategy. If you are a marketer or producer, and you want people to know about your product, you will make them learn, you must run some effective ad or promotional campaigns telling about your products and its features. This way consumers will acquire knowledge about you product and will experience it by using it once. this is where learning process will accomplish. Now after using that whatever will be there response would be feedback to you.

How it can be defined? It is basically a rigorous process, which evolves with time. In this process consumers acquire purchase and consumption knowledge and experience they apply to future related behavior.
Timely changes are associated with this process, as new products keep on entering the market and consumers keeps on learning about these products so the process of learning goes on.

In order for learning to occur, following elements must be present:

Motivation:

It is the deriving force which act as spur to learning. It is based on needs and goals. your needs and desires motivate you to achieve your goal. And to achieve your goal or fulfill your desire you need to find the ways out to accomplish that, you will be motivated to seek information which will help fulfilling your needs. So in learning to takes place, motivation is very important as it gives initiative to learning process.

Cues:

Cues act as stimuli and gives directions to your motives. For instance, you are home after 9 hours job, you are tired, at that very moment you watch an ad of a energy drink on the T.V which makes you realize you need that drink to boost your energy and feel fresh. So that ad acted as cue at that time, which motivated you to fulfill your salient need.

Responses:

Reaction of the consumers to the cue is the Response. How they behave after getting visible to that cue, constitutes their response. Consumers may not immediately react to a cue, as it may not be there need at that time. But possibility is there that if consumers have learnt your cue, they may keep it in corner of the mind and whenever their need has arose they make use of that cue and respond in favorable way. For instance, in above mentioned example, energy drink may not be readily available to you, you may fulfill that need with water or some other drink. But if you remember that energy drink and in later time when you feel thirsty or tired you may buy it and respond to that ad now.

Reinforcement:

It increases the likelihood that a specific response will occur in the future as the result of particular cues or stimuli. In above mentioned example, if using that energy drink satisfies you and you have gained all the benefits then you will likely to continue buying that product. Through positive reinforcement, learning has taken place, since energy drink lived upto the expectations.

Motivation & Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Motivation acts like a driving force to achieve objective. The word motivation sounds quite positive and exiting to me. Because it is something which is a driving force to do something in your life. I get motivated by many things in my life but most motivating factor to me is food. Lol…

Your needs and desires are the major factors that motivate you to do something. Your needs may include basic needs (food clothing, shelter etc), education, health, safety, a part from your boss, an admiration from parents, fellows and family, self esteem, self actualization etc.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who gave a Need Hierarchy Theory. He actually explained the psychology of human beings regarding their needs at different levels or stages of their life. Motivation arises from unsatisfied needs. He has explained the needs which motivate human beings at different levels of their life.

Physiological Needs:

This hierarchy best explains the needs of human beings. As all of us know that food, clothing, shelter, sex and now education as well, comes under the head of basic needs (physiological needs) of us. These needs are must for sustainability of life. If we are getting these as fulfilled in our life, then we can go further but if we are deprived of these basic needs then only these are count as needs and rest of the things in life are considered as desires. So at the very basic level of the hierarchy, Maslow kept the basic physiological needs.

Safety Needs:

Once when your physiological needs are fulfilled, you can look for other things. These things may be security of your family, your own life, your job, health of you and your family etc. so Maslow put these need at the second level.

Social Needs:

Once your safety needs are met, your social needs arises. This may include need for belongingness, friends, love etc. because you need to share, you need to care and be taken care of, you need to give affection and get as well.

Esteem Needs:

When above three needs are satisfied gradually, then you need to feel important. You want to get the value you think you have. You want your self respect, esteem, recognition, appreciation and reputation. Some of these esteem needs are internal or some external. For instance when want to achieve a high level of Self-respect its internal esteem, but when you want recognition and appreciation its external esteem.

Self-actualization Needs:

Once you are getting all what you need, the four levels or needss are being fulfilled in your life, another need arises that is usually not satisfied. This is self-actualization need. It’s the struggle to reaching ones full potential and to achieve at highest level. Only a small number of people reaches this level.

Implications:

If you are a manager then you can apply this theory and can motivate you team or employees to achieve organizational goals. For physiological needs, you can give them appropriate wages or salaries sufficient to get essentials of life, lunch breaks, rest breaks etc. In safety needs, you can provide then safe working environment, retirements benefits and job security. For social need, create a happy and healty community, friendly environment and have personal chit chat with workers. For esteem needs, give rewards and appreciation and offer job titles so they may feels importance about what job they are holding. For need of actualization, provide workers challenging tasks to reach their career goals.