Motivation In The Workplace Research Paper

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As defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary, motivation is “the act or process of giving someone a reason for doing something”. Simply put, motivation is what causes people to act. It is the driving force behind actions as simple as eating dinner, reading a book, or going for a run. Each different motivation example is extremely subjective, however. What motivates one person to go for a run may have zero correlation to what motivates their neighbor to go for a run. Because every single person is unique, motivation to act will vary from person to person and situation to situation. Motivation comes into play in all aspects of life; motivation in the workplace being a huge one. What motivates people to get a job? What motivates people to go to work? …show more content…
Because every single person is different, everyone works and reacts to things differently. Motivation is often based on values, and since each person has a different set of values, it is absolutely ineffective to generalize when attempting to motivate a group of people. Modern managers need to not only understand and recognize that everyone is different, but they must in turn personalize their methods of motivation. As the workplace gets more and more diverse, embracing individualism and differences in the work setting is necessary. Simply having a diverse company doesn’t mean much without figuring out how to embrace each every one’s differences and collaborate them all together. This starts with first knowing and understanding each person. How can managers expect to motivate their staff if they don’t first understand each person’s values and what’s important to them? It’s impossible to put together a puzzle without first identifying each individual piece.
Besides the difficulties that modern managers face due to increased diversity in the workplace, they also face more challenges because of the fast-pace of today’s changing world. The statement claims that “too many conflicting priorities at work, and too many distractions away from work are impacting this process in ways that are entirely new”. This statement is true; business managers from previous generations did not have to deal with this obstacle
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Especially since the employees were opening fake accounts with no money in it, which doesn’t seem to benefit the bank much. Since Wells Fargo focuses on cross-selling, selling as many products as possible to existing customers is ideal. Because of this, each employee had a target of selling each customer at least eight products, which eventually increased to ten. This created a “high pressure sales culture” for the employees, considering the quotas were nearly impossible to reach (Gobry). As demonstrated in demotivation models, when someone faces a barrier to get to their goals, they often are led to frustration. In this case, the Wells Fargo employs hit barriers and couldn’t hit their expected quotas, so they resorted to frustration and cutting corners illegally to get the job done.
Managers at Wells Fargo could have prevented this demotivation in a number of different ways. They could have focused on recognition and rewards, and instead of setting a high expected quota, positively recognized workers who got above a certain mark. They could have also focused more on effective communications in order to ensure no fraud made it through the system. They also could have attempted to understand the individual’s perception of the situation better, understanding that employees could not meet their high

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