HRMN 495-Mini Case Study 3

Motivating Employees: Why It Matters

What motivates you to do what you do? How do you motivate others to

help you or to accomplish things on their own? You have already learned

about the role both managers and employees play in helping

organizations reach their goals. As a manager, you are expected to lead

and manage people. As an employee, you are given job‐specific duties

and responsibilities to perform. Neither leading nor following will happen

unless people are motivated.

This video (https://youtu.be/dysp4PtHgtQ) on the motivational

strategies used by Zappos is a good place to begin our discussion of

motivation in business. What motivates the employees at Zappos? Is it

high salaries? Long vacations? The chance to shave their heads at the

company picnic once a year? As you watch the video, pay attention to

what really motivates Zappos workers.

Since the 1920s, researchers have studied human behavior, developing a

variety of theories to explain the driving force behind motivation. These

theories range from the need to provide a safe and secure environment to

the desire not to experience negative consequences from action or

inaction. Understanding the basis for motivation and how motivational

approaches work within an organization can help you and your business

be successful.

Learning Resource

Motivating Employees: Why It Matters

1 of 4 3/17/2023, 5:21 PM

UMGC (n.d.). Motivating Employees: Why it Matters. Retrieved from https://leocontent.umgc.edu/content/umuc/tus/hrmn/hrmn495/2225/ learning-resource-list/motivating-employees--why-it-matters-.html#

As you read on, ask yourself the following questions:

• What motivates me?

• How have others tried to motivate me?

• Which motivational approaches have been the most and least

successful?

• When have I been successful in motivating others?

• How can I use this information to be successful in my personal and

professional life?

The Hawthorne Studies

Many of today’s ideas about the connection between human motivation

and employee performance can be traced back to discoveries from the

Hawthorne studies.

Hawthorne Works, c. 1920

During the 1920s, Elton Mayo conducted a series of studies on workers

at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company in Illinois. These

studies changed the direction of motivational and managerial theory from

earlier studies, in particular Frederick Taylor’s “man as machine” view that

focused on ways of improving individual performance.

In contrast, Hawthorne set the individual in a social context. He argued

Motivating Employees: Why It Matters https://leocontent.umgc.edu/content/umuc/tus/hrmn/hrmn495/2225/lear...

2 of 4 3/17/2023, 5:21 PM

that an employee’s work surroundings and coworkers have as much

influence over performance as skill and ability. The Hawthorne studies are

credited with focusing managerial strategy on the sociopsychological

aspects of human behavior in organizations.

This video (https://youtu.be/D3pDWt7GntI) from the AT&T archives

contains interviews with individuals who participated in these studies. It

provides insight into the way the studies were conducted and how they

changed employers’ views on worker motivation.

The studies originally examined the effects of physical conditions on

productivity and whether workers were more responsive and efficient

under certain environmental conditions, such as better lighting. The

results were surprising: Mayo found that workers were more responsive

to social factors—such as their manager and coworkers—than the other

factors being investigated. When the lights were dimmed again and the

workplace was returned to pre‐experimental conditions, productivity rose

to its highest level and absenteeism plummeted.

Mayo had discovered that workers responded when they received more

attention from their managers: Employees were more productive when

they felt that their managers cared about and were interested in their

work. The studies also found that although financial incentives are

important drivers of worker productivity, social factors are equally

important.

The Hawthorne studies also included a number of other experiments,

including one in which two women were chosen as test subjects and were

asked to choose four other workers to join the test group. Each person’s

performance was measured before they were grouped in a separate room

from other employees, and their performance continued to be measured

for five years as they worked assembling telephone relays. In the

experiment room, they were assigned to a supervisor, who sometimes

used the test subjects’ suggestions to make changes.

Motivating Employees: Why It Matters https://leocontent.umgc.edu/content/umuc/tus/hrmn/hrmn495/2225/lear...

3 of 4 3/17/2023, 5:21 PM

The researchers then measured how different variables affected group

and individual productivity. Changing a variable usually increased

productivity, even if the variable was just a change back to the original

condition. The researchers concluded that the employees worked harder

because they thought they were being monitored individually. They

hypothesized that choosing one’s coworkers, working as a group, being

treated as special (as evidenced by working in a separate room), and

having a sympathetic supervisor were the real reasons for the

productivity increase.

The Hawthorne studies showed that people’s work performance is

dependent on social issues and job satisfaction. The studies concluded

that tangible motivators, such as monetary incentives and good working

conditions, are generally less important in improving employee

productivity than intangible motivators, such as meeting individuals’

desire to belong to a group and be included in decision making and work.

Licenses and Attributions

Chapter 10: Motivating Employees (https://courses.lumenlearning.com

/wm‐introductiontobusiness/chapter/why‐it‐matters‐motivating‐

employees/) by Linda Williams and Lumen Learning from Introduction

to Business is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) license.

UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original

license.

© 2023 University of Maryland Global Campus

All links to external sites were verified at the time of publication. UMGC is not responsible for the

validity or integrity of information located at external sites.

Motivating Employees: Why It Matters https://leocontent.umgc.edu/content/umuc/tus/hrmn/hrmn495/2225/lear...

4 of 4 3/17/2023, 5:21 PM