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EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION
John L. McKeever, Ph.D.
Professor of Management
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado
Managers are decision makers.
They make decisions which establish
objectives for their organization.
These objectives will provide
guidance and direction for other decisions and human behavior in
the organization.
Managers also make decisions which result in the
achievement of their objectives by making the best possible use of
their resources in any function and at any level in the organization.
The most important resource in all organizations is people because
all non-human resources lie fallow until the human element is applied.
If the most important resource--people--is to be used in the best
possible way to achieve organizational objectives, managers must
understand the way people behave in an organization and what must
be done to create a work environment which motivates people. To
do less will result in a failure to achieve your objectives.
The first thing that managers should understand is that people who
come to work in an organization bring with them a set of personal
goals that must be achieved along with the company's.
Some managers
have made some very bad mistakes in determining and identifying the
goals of people in the organization.
They still place too much
emphasis on wages or salaries and fringe benefits.
Salaries, wages
and fringe benefits are people-motivators, but only to a certain
extent. In'addition to the economic goals, management must provide
non-economic satisfaction if employees are to be motivated to
greater efforts and loyalty. This is not to downgrade the impor-
tance of salaries or wages and fringe benefits as employee motivators.
They are important in the total effort but their importance is depen-
dent on and interrelated with other factors that employees feel
are important. Let.us look more closely at the nature of man and
the factors that motivate him.
To an individual, personal goals are important. Any failure of
management to consider his goals "to be import