Employee Motivation

Hey Everyone,

The question I am going to attempt to answer is whether motivating employees with money actually makes a significant difference. It is a common practice for many businesses to use bonuses, raises and any form of extra cash to get employees to perform more. I was able to find an interesting article by Nadia Goodman that had plenty of information on the correlation between money and workers motivation. Goodman believed that using money to motivate was a poor idea and that there are a lot better ways to approach the situation. There are three main reasons why she is against money motivation; sense of autonomy, individualized awards and ends vs. means. I am going to focus on the first point which essentially is that employees tend to loose their sense of autonomy when a money reward is given, they tend to feel controlled. Goodman stated "instead offer your employees reasonable freedom, listen to them give them opportunity to pursue and achieve their goals" (Goodman, 2012). Personally my take on this is that if you give your employees more freedom they will be more motivated to be creative and impress you. Where as if you are just giving them a cash bonus they may feel like you are controlling their work and the outcome will be of less quality. It is clear that money can be a good motivator in some situations but companies should look at the situation first and decide whether it would be a good motivator in that specific situation.

 Overall I found Goodman's ideas quite interesting and I am curious what everyone else thinks about her other points are they viable ideas?

Citations:
Goodman, N. (2012, November 26). Inside Employee Motivation: Does Money Really Make a Difference? Retrieved from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225041