STAFF MOTIVATION

Staff Motivation

Staff Motivation

Introduction

A vital factor in attaining organizational effectiveness is the management of the human resource. Nowhere is this factor more crucial than in our schools, where the kind of education that children receive is so heavily dependent on the quality of the performance of the teachers who staff them — quality defined not only in terms of teachers' knowledge and skills but also in terms of their dedication to teaching and the strength of their motivation to attain high levels of performance. The problem of motivating staff is a perennial one. Ever since organized activity began, organizations have been confronted with the problem of motivating employees so that they move towards full commitment to organizational goals. This paper examines the implications for educators of the "Motivation-Hygiene Theory" proposed by Frederick Hertzberg and proposes some strategies for developing staff motivation.

Discussion

The work of Herzberg1 indicates that factors which result in job satisfaction are directly related to work it while factors which result in job dissatisfaction tend to be related to the job environment. “Environment conditions which surround the doing of a job do not have the potentiality to give men basic satisfaction.” (Hertzberg, 1959, 154)

It is only from the job itself that the employee can gain "the rewards that will reinforce his aspirations”. Hygiene's act in a manner analogous to the principles of medical hygiene. Just as medical hygiene operates to remove health hazards from our environment, so these "hygiene's" operate to remove dissatisfaction hazards from the work environment.Herzberg suggests that factors which are sources of job satisfaction and those which contribute to job dissatisfaction do not belong to the same conceptual continuum. He hypothesized that satisfaction factors and dissatisfaction factors are basically different and mutually exclusive: "that some factors are satisfiers when present but not dissatisfiers when absent: other factors are dissatisfiers, but when eliminated as dissatisfiers do not result in positive motivation". (Hertzberg, 1959, 144)

The problem of motivating staff does not admit of an easy solution applicable to all teachers and all tasks.” The first and most important thing to be said about motives is that everybody has a lot of them and that nobody has quite the same mixture as anyone else". (Gellerman, 1963, 155)

One is inclined to agree with him when he suggests that there are people "Who work chiefly for money, others who work chiefly for security and still others who work because they enjoy it: there are even those who work chiefly because they wouldn't know what to do with themselves otherwise". (Gellerman, 1963, 175)

So the administrator has to deal with human diversity "regardless of whether he finds it administratively convenient or conceptually easy to grasp." (Gellerman, 1963, 175)

Hertzberg claims, however, that it can be argued that there is sufficient homogeneity within various groups of employees to make for relative similarity of "needs" hierarchies within each group. If this is so perhaps it is possible to discover strategies that are likely to satisfy these needs and provide motivation for at least ...