Motivation and job performance are linked, with financial incentives, promotions, and recognition among the factors that motivate employees. Managers use research-based approaches to match employees’ needs with their job performance, but some argue that motivation must come from the employee. Performance issues can still occur even with highly motivated employees.
Motivation and job performance are inextricably linked because every worker must have some degree of motivation just to get to work in the first place. Many people believe that the most motivated employees are the employees who will achieve the highest level of job performance. As a result, many large companies train supervisors and managers to motivate their employees or develop methods that allow them to understand the factors that motivate individual employees.
To some extent, most employees are motivated by money because people generally work to earn money to cover their daily expenses. Many people work harder if they receive financial rewards, such as commission checks and bonuses for achieving performance levels beyond the basic level required by their bosses. Some people are motivated by the opportunity to get promotions or move into more prestigious roles, while other employees are motivated by the fear of failure. In some cases, people are motivated to work hard if they believe that failure to do so will result in job loss. All of these factors are regularly cited by people who see a correlation between motivation and job performance.
Most companies expect departmental managers to motivate employees, and sometimes managers start trying to achieve this by offering employees financial incentives, as well as promotions or additional payouts. Many companies use research-based approaches from psychologists, such as Abraham Maslow who developed the Hierarchy of Needs in the 1950s. Using Maslow’s list of motivators, managers try to match their clients’ personalities or needs with needs identified by psychologists and motivate employees by linking their needs with their job performance. Someone with low self-esteem may be motivated by the possibility of gaining recognition, while someone struggling financially may be motivated by the need to earn the money needed to have a sense of security.
Modern psychologists and behavior analysts have argued that a leader cannot motivate an unmotivated employee and that motivation must begin with the employee. Using this logic, some employees perform poorly at work because they lack motivation. Regardless of what is tried, bosses cannot raise their performance level by attempting to use rewards or punitive actions as motivators.
Many managers track employee actions and the results those actions generate. Managers look for a correlation between the amount of effort an employee puts in through actions such as making sales calls and that employee’s sales results compared to other seemingly less motivated employees. Other variables that an employee cannot control, such as customer behavior, can also affect an employee’s performance. While motivation and job performance are linked, even highly motivated employees can experience performance issues on the job.
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