Techniques to Increase Employee Motivation

Every organization of any kind that carries out business activities to produce goods or services will always think in utilizing its resources to achieve effective and efficient goals. The success or failure of an organization in achieving its goals is largely determined by human factors, because humans as resources have a very important role in planning, implementing and controlling every activity and its position is also very important in relation to employee work productivity. This is one of the tough challenges often faced by a manager, how he can move the members of his organization to be willing and willing to mobilize all his abilities for the benefit of the organization. One effort in that direction is to motivate the employees concerned.

For this reason, a manager needs to think of motivational techniques that can and are appropriate to do so that the motivation of his employees arises so that effective motivational goals can be achieved for the achievement of organizational goals. The problem now is, how do techniques motivate employees in an effort to increase employee motivation. According to Robbins (2008), motivation as a willingness to spend a high level of effort for organizational goals, which is conditioned by the ability of the effort to meet individual needs, large elements of "effort" is a measure of intensity, if someone is motivated, he will try his best, but it is unlikely that a high level of effort will lead to performance results that benefit the organization. Therefore it must be considered the quality of the effort and its intensity. While general motivation is concerned with efforts towards each goal, in the above sense narrowed down to focus on organizational goals so that it reflects behavior related to motivation and work. The three key elements in the definition are effort, organizational goals and needs.

According to Nimram (1997), basically there are 3 main characteristics of motivation, namely:

1. Business, the first characteristic of motivation is that business shows the strength of one's work behavior or the amount of effort shown by someone in their work, specifically this involves a variety of activities and a variety of jobs.

2. Willpower, shows the willpower demonstrated by someone in applying their business to their work tasks.

3. Direction / purpose, with the intended direction and equipped with a strong will owned by someone is basically beneficial things.

By looking at the three main characteristics of motivation, motivation can be defined as a condition where one's effort and willpower are directed towards the achievement of certain results or goals. The intended results can be in the form of creative work, high work performance, or perhaps higher work productivity. According to David McClelland's view (Timpe, 2000), what inwardly stimulates employee behavior / motivation? He proposed three main motives as follows:

1. Affiliation needs: basically the same as Maslow's social needs, this motive arises when someone wants to be with another person and wants to enjoy his friendship.

2. The need for power: the desire to influence and control others.

3. The need for achievement: this motive is indicated by the desire to perform better to consider achieving good is important. He did not say that all three motives are in the same hierarchy in everyone.

He suggested that it is better than one need to be dominant at the same time. To answer inner questions that stimulate employee behavior, with respect to his own model, he suggests:

1. For those who have high affiliation motives, should be given the opportunity to work in a group of their own choosing, and develop compensation programs based more on groups rather than individual productivity.

2. For those with high motive power, it should be given authority over others that is adjusted to the degree of skills they appear to have.

3. For those with high achievement motives, it should be determined together with those targets with moderate difficulty levels. Give responsibility for completing goals on their own terms and ensure that they get enough knowledge about their progress through a good feedback system.

Another theory that answers this question and was once popular was Herzberg's two-factor theory (Cushway, Derek Lodge, 1999). In its essence this theory suggests conditions which create the greatest dissatisfaction at work, have relatively little effect on motivation if the conditions are improved. Among the pen factors