Team Work and Motivation

A better organization: Motivation and Teamwork
Motivational Processes of attracting and retaining employees are major factors in today’s businesses. Motivation is an important part of this. There are four basic elements of motivation – One, meeting basic human needs, Two, Designing jobs that motivate individuals, a third is enhancing the belief that desired rewards can be achieved and fourth, treating individuals equitably. Motivation is the force within a person or acted upon a person that cause that person to behave in a specific, goal-directed manner. Motivation is not the same as performance and is different for everyone. To improve motivation, organizations need to attract and encourage employees to remain with them, allow individuals to perform their tasks, and stimulate individuals to go beyond routine. Motivation affects performance. Individuals need to be motivated to complete a task or do a job. They must also have the ability to do that job. Ability can be their natural talents or learned skills. Both ability and motivation affect performance. Motivation is often seen in a process. That process starts with identification of needs.

Needs are defined as the deficiencies that a person experiences at a particular time. Needs can be psychological, physiological or social. Next, a way to satisfy those needs is sought out. For example of a need is psychological, like the need for recognition, an employee may feel tension to do something about that need. He may make an effort to fulfill that need and gain that recognition, by setting a goal. The goal may be to work longer hours, to highlight his accomplishments or what ever allows for more recognition. Now a day, innovation is the key word for a better organization. Companies are pushed for changes. Before profit was the most important factor for an organization, today people were put in the center.

Creating a better and motivational environment for employee will lead automatically to an increase in profit. Motivated workers means a better performance, better communication and teamwork, what makes an organization to run smoother and being able to achieve its goals. First of all, problems had become bigger and the basic problem solving has become obsolete, organizations need to create a more efficient way of thinking and teamwork comes in hand now. One person working by himself will be able to come up with a solution within his limits of knowledge and discipline of study; when different disciplines are combined in a team; ideas are connected to create a more effective solution. In health care the use of teamwork is essential for saving lives.

In the journal of Medical Ethics, M. D. Wachter shows a case report about interdisciplinary teamwork. In the case he shows that because of a lack of an interdisciplinary team, a medical error occurred, which prevented a couple to have children using fertilization methods, and when the error was founded it was too late because the women was approaching menopause. He also adds that working in an interdisciplinary team makes work much easier, what before was consider to a doctor too risk or complicated, now with different opinions, insights and ideas, it makes the problem easier to be solved in a more effective way. Secondly is motivation, people are motivate to do what is interesting, fun, challenging, and what involve them in something that mattered (Daniel Pink, 2009).

As explore in the TEDGlobal conference, Pink shows that motivational reward just work for mechanical tasks, but when comes to brain tasks, it poorer the results. Even after being proved that rewards are not an effective way to increase productive companies still use the old method of rewarding, bonus, prizing to get employees motivated. When people are satisfied with the job they do they tend to go above and beyond their normal job responsibilities by taking pride in what they do. Job satisfaction usually comes when people go into career fields that they are inspired to do, for example someone who likes to talk on the phone would probably thrive in a customer service or call center job environment. As stated above in health care the use of teamwork is essential for nurses and doctors to work together. In the medical field I believe there is a low turnover rate because they work so long to obtain their degrees and have large loans so they value their jobs and don’t leave them as quickly. Job performance is also related to job satisfaction.

Herzberg created a study and developed a two-factory theory, which says motivation and hygiene are the primary causes of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Motivators are the work itself, recognition, advancement, and responsibility. These factors are related to positive feeling about the job and are often intrinsic, meaning they are internal to the individual. Hygiene factors are things like policy, administration, technical supervision, salary, benefits, working conditions, job security, and interpersonal relations. These factors are related to negative feeling about the job and are often extrinsic, meaning they are external to the job. Increasing the amounts of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback are characteristics in designing jobs, from the job characteristic model.

Motivation is affected by meaningfulness, responsibility and feedback. An individual’s knowledge, skill, strength of growth needs and satisfactions with contextual factors all have an impact on the relationship between job characteristics and personal or work outcomes. Also think back to the cultural factors we have previously examined, since they play a large part in jobs and job design.

Abraham Maslow formulated a hierarchy of needs, introduced in his book Motivation and Personality (1954). He explained that a person is motivated by unsatisfied needs, every time a person satisfies a need, he will move to the next level. The pyramid would be constructed as, in the bottom, Physiological Needs, going up to Safety Needs, Social Needs, and Esteem Needs and in the top Self-Actualization. As showed a company can be benefited from applying changes at the organization and innovating. Examples of companies that are run based on teamwork and motivational work is Wikipedia and Linux where high skilled workers contribute for the company and are not paid for that, it is pure based in the motivation in doing some for pleasure. The way for a better company is innovation and communication, and these can be achieved with teamwork and motivation. The benefits of group people together with different skills and points of view and make them work in a team to improve an organization, motivate workers and create a better work environment.

References
* Alfie Kohn, 19 January 1987, Creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if task is done for gain Boston Globe. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html Retrieved May 24, 2013 *
Alexander Kjerulf, 19 December 2006, Why “Motivation by Pizza” doesn’t work. http://positivesharing.com/2006/12/why-motivation-by-pizza-doesnt-work/ Retrieved May 24, 2013 * R. Kyzlinková, L. Dokulilová and A. Kroupa (2007), Teamwork and high performance work organization Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/ewco/reports/TN0507TR01/TN0507TR01.pdf Retrieved May 25, 2013 * Abraham Harold Maslow, 1954. Motivation and Personality

* Daniel Pink, July 2009. The surprising science of motivation [online] TED Global 2009. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.html Retrieved May 25, 2013 * M. D. Wachter, June 1976. Journal of Medical Ethics. Interdisciplinary Teamwork, page 52-57. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495117/? page=2 Retrieved May 25, 2013