Employee motivation : views of successful leaders

Abstract

Businesses have an ever-increasing need to improve productivity and reduce costs, while maintaining or improving their quality and customer satisfaction. At the same time, employees have become more mobile and less likely to remain with a company for an extended period. Therefore, an understanding and focus on employee motivation factors is essential for leaders to successfully inspire their organizations. This thesis is an investigation into the subject of employee motivation. Literature research was conducted to gain a broad overview of the published theories on this subject. The core of the thesis, though is focused on interviews with senior successful leaders from a variety of industries. A number of techniques exist to inspire and motivate employees depending on the situation and the leader themselves. This thesis presents various situations and motivational aspects cited by these leaders. Even though there is variation in motivational attributes across situations, an analysis of the interviews also reveals items that are consistently found to be critical success factors. These factors include top leadership involvement, full engagement of employees, frequent communication, consistency of actions and communications, and the opportunity to learn. All leaders interested in inspiring their employees to achieve successful results are encouraged to think about their performance in relation to these attributes.