Introduction
They say, "Don't undo what you cannot redo". It is true in our day-to-day as well as in professional life.

If we cannot motivate people around us…
If we cannot motivate our employees…
If we cannot motivate our children…

then, we are no one to demotivate them. If you cannot appreciate then you are no one to discourage or criticize. There is a "Positive Side" of all incidents…of all acts and actions…of every experience. Even a stopped watch also shows correct time…twice in a day. Lets accept the fact that none of us is perfect. We all have space for improvement. We all need support to grow and excel in life and career. There are ways to "Criticize"…ways to give "Feedback" by keeping in mind the "positives". But if you are using any of the following syntax for giving feedback…then one day YOU will be alone in your department/organization, such as
If…then
But also
Either…or
Lets also accept that Human Resource Professionals are very poor in "Human Behavior" and "Human Psychology" and this should be a must for all "Human Resource Professionals". Lets understand that "One size does not fit all". Most companies have it all wrong. They don't have to motivate their employees. They have to stop demotivating them. In this article we will understand motivation; discuss the need for motivation; ways to motivations; expectations of employees and what they don't want from you.

Understanding Motivation
At one time, employees were considered just another input into the production of goods and services. What perhaps changed this way of thinking about employees was research, referred to as the Hawthorne Studies conducted by Elton Mayo from 1924 to 1932 (Dickson, 1973). This study found employees are not motivated solely by money and employee behavior is linked to their attitudes (Dickson, 1973). The Hawthorne Studies began the human relations approach to management, whereby the needs and motivation of employees become the primary focus of managers (Bedeian, 1993).

Motivation Defined
Many contemporary authors have also defined the concept of motivation. Motivation has been defined as: the psychological process that gives behavior purpose and direction (Kreitner, 1995); a predisposition to behave in a purposive manner to achieve specific, unmet needs (Buford, Bedeian, & Lindner, 1995); an internal drive to satisfy an unsatisfied need (Higgins, 1994); and the will to achieve (Bedeian, 1993). For this paper, motivation is operationally defined as the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals.

Motivation Theories
Understanding what motivated employees and how they were motivated was the focus of many researchers following the publication of the Hawthorne Study results (Terpstra, 1979). Five major approaches that have led to our understanding of motivation are Maslow's need-hierarchy theory, Herzberg's two- factor theory, Vroom's expectancy theory, Adams' equity theory, and Skinner's reinforcement theory.
According to Maslow, employees have five levels of needs (Maslow, 1943): physiological, safety, social, ego, and self- actualizing. Maslow argued that lower level needs had to be satisfied before the next higher level need would motivate employees. Herzberg's work categorized motivation into two factors: motivators and hygienes (Herzberg, Mausner, & Snyderman, 1959). Motivator or intrinsic factors, such as achievement and recognition, produce job satisfaction. Hygiene or extrinsic factors, such as pay and job security, produce job dissatisfaction.

Vroom's theory is based on the belief that employee effort will lead to performance and performance will lead to rewards (Vroom, 1964). Rewards may be either positive or negative. The more positive the reward the more likely the employee will be highly motivated. Conversely, the more negative the reward the less likely the employee will be motivated.

Adams' theory states that employees strive for equity between themselves and other workers. Equity is achieved when the ratio of employee outcomes over inputs is equal to other employee outcomes over inputs (Adams, 1965).

Skinner's theory simply states those employees' behaviors that lead to positive outcomes will be repeated and behaviors that lead to negative outcomes will not be repeated (Skinner, 1953). Managers should positively reinforce employee behaviors that lead to positive outcomes. Managers should negatively reinforce employee behavior that leads to negative outcomes.

The Role of Motivation
Why do we need motivated employees? The answer is survival (Smith, 1994). Motivated employees are needed in our rapidly changing workplaces. Motivated employees help organizations survive. Motivated employees are more productive. To be effective, managers need to understand what motivates employees within the context of the roles they perform. Of all the functions a manager performs, motivating employees is arguably the most complex. This is due, in part, to the fact that what motivates employees changes constantly (Bowen & Radhakrishna, 1991). For example, research suggests that as employees' income increases, money becomes less of a motivator (Kovach, 1987). Also, as employees get older, interesting work becomes more of a motivator.

Understanding Employee Motivation

The employees who work for your company are naturally motivated. All you need to do is to utilize their natural ability, which you can do without spending a dime. That's right. No money. In fact, money can actually decrease an employee's motivation and performance. The first step in utilizing your employees' natural abilities is to eliminate your organization's negative practices that zap away their natural motivation. The second step your organization can take is to develop true motivators, which can spark all your employees into being motivated. By decreasing negative zapping demotivators and by adding true motivators, you will tap into your employees' natural motivation. Your employees' natural motivation relies on the fact that all people have human desires for affiliation, achievement, and for control and power over their work. In addition, they have desires for ownership, competence, recognition, and meaning in their work.
But there are several ways that management unwittingly demotivates employees and diminishes, if not outright destroys, their enthusiasm.

Many companies treat employees as disposable. At the first sign of business difficulty, employees-who are usually routinely referred to as "our greatest asset"-become expendable.

Employees generally receive inadequate recognition and reward: About half of the workers in our surveys report receiving little or no credit, and almost two-thirds say management is much more likely to criticize them for poor performance than praise them for good work.

Management inadvertently makes it difficult for employees to do their jobs. Excessive levels of required approvals, endless paperwork, insufficient training, failure to communicate, infrequent delegation of authority, and a lack of a credible vision contribute to employees' frustration.

Some common myths about employee motivation

1. Myth Number One: "I can motivate people"
   Not really -- they have to motivate themselves. You can't motivate people anymore than you can empower them. Employees have to motivate and empower themselves. However, you can set up an environment where they best motivate and empower themselves. The key is knowing how to set up the environment for each of your employees.
2. Myth Number Two: -- "Money is a good motivator"
   Not really. Certain things like money, a nice office and job security can help people from becoming less motivated, but they usually don't help people to become more motivated. A key goal is to understand the motivations of each of your employees.
3. Myth Number Three: "Fear is a damn good motivator"
   Fear is a great motivator -- for a very short time. That's why a lot of yelling from the boss won't seem to "light a spark under employees" for a very long time.
4. Myth Number Four: "I know what motivates me, so I know what motivates my employees"
   Not really. Different people are motivated by different things. I may be greatly motivated by earning time away from my job to spend more time my family. You might be motivated much more by recognition of a job well done. People are not motivated by the same things. Again, a key goal is to understand what motivates each of your employees.
5. Myth Number Five: "Increased job satisfaction means increased job performance"
   Research shows this isn't necessarily true at all. Increased job satisfaction does not necessarily mean increased job performance. If the goals of the organization are not aligned with the goals of employees, then employees aren't effectively working toward the mission of the organization.
6. Myth Number Six: "I can't comprehend employee motivation -- it's a science"
   Nah. Not true. There are some very basic steps you can take that will go a long way toward supporting your employees to motivate themselves toward increased performance in their jobs. (More about these steps is provided later on in this article.)

Basic Principles to be kept in mind…while working on "Employee Motivation"

1. Motivating employees starts with motivating yourself: It's amazing how, if you hate your job, it seems like everyone else does, too. If you are very stressed out, it seems like everyone else is, too. Enthusiasm is contagious. If you're enthusiastic about your job, it's much easier for others to be, too. Also, if you're doing a good job of taking care of yourself and your own job, you'll have much clearer perspective on how others are doing in theirs.

   A great place to start learning about motivation is to start understanding your own motivations. The key to helping to motivate your employees is to understand what motivates them. So what motivates you? Consider, for example, time with family, recognition, a job well done, service, learning, etc. How is your job configured to support your own motivations? What can you do to better motivate yourself?

2. Always work to align goals of the organization with goals of employees: As mentioned above, employees can be all fired up about their work and be working very hard. However, if the results of their work don't contribute to the goals of the organization, then the organization is not any better off than if the employees were sitting on their hands -- maybe worse off! Therefore, it's critical that managers and supervisors know what they want from their employees. These preferences should be worded in terms of goals for the organization. Identifying the goals for the organization is usually done during strategic planning. Whatever steps you take to support the motivation of your employees (various steps are suggested below), ensure that employees have strong input to identifying their goals and that these goals are aligned with goals of the organization. (Goals should be worded to be "SMARTER". More about this later on below.)
3. Key to supporting the motivation of your employees is understanding what motivates each of them: Different things motivate each person. Whatever steps you take to support the motivation of your employees, they should first include finding out what it is that really motivates each of your employees. You can find this out by asking them, listening to them and observing them. (More about this later on below.)
4. Recognize that supporting employee motivation is a process, not a task: Organizations change all the time, as do people. Indeed, it is an ongoing process to sustain an environment where employees can strongly motivate themselves. If you look at sustaining employee motivation as an ongoing process, then you'll be much more fulfilled and motivated yourself.
5. Support employee motivation by using organizational systems (for example, policies and procedures) -- don't just count on good intentions: Don't just count on cultivating strong interpersonal relationships with employees to help motivate them. The nature of these relationships can change greatly, for example, during times of stress. Instead, use reliable and comprehensive systems in the workplace to help motivate employees. For example, establish compensation systems, employee performance systems, organizational policies and procedures, etc., to support employee motivation. Also, establishing various systems and structures helps ensure clear understanding and equitable treatment of employees.

Process of Employee Motivation

1. Personalized Motivation. As per, Sullivan, a professor of management at San Francisco State University, The need to identify employees' critical motivators is important because, simply put, most managers are terrible at motivating their employees. When managers don't know what motivates an individual, they mistakenly assume that all workers want the same thing, or they make random guesses about what motivates an individual. Both are serious errors.

   If we expect managers to successfully motivate their individual employees, human resources professionals must accept the responsibility of providing managers with a list of what motivates and frustrates a new or recently transferred employee. I have found that even "bad" managers, when they are educated about what excites and challenges an individual worker, can become "good" managers in as short as a month. Just ask your employees the following questions:

   What would you like more of? That is, what are the elements of any job that excite, challenge and motivate you to be more productive?
   What would you like less of? That is, what are the elements of any job that frustrate you or inhibit your productivity?
   How would you like to be managed? Help me understand the best approach to get the most productivity out of you.
   Why did you quit your last few jobs? Help me understand why you quit, so that I can avoid repeating the same mistakes that your previous managers made.
   This will help a lot in motivating your employees towards the desired goal.

2. Admit to yourself (and to an appropriate someone else) if you don't like an employee
   Managers and supervisors are people. It's not unusual to just not like someone who works for you. That someone could, for example, look like an uncle you don't like. In this case, admit to yourself that you don't like the employee. Then talk to someone else who is appropriate to hear about your distaste for the employee, for example, a peer, your boss, your spouse, etc. Indicate to the appropriate person that you want to explore what it is that you don't like about the employee and would like to come to a clearer perception of how you can accomplish a positive working relationship with the employee. It often helps a great deal just to talk out loud about how you feel and get someone else's opinion about the situation. As noted above, if you continue to focus on what you see about employee performance, you'll go a long way toward ensuring that your treatment of employees remains fair and equitable
3. Have one-on-one meetings with each employee
   Employees are motivated more by your care and concern for them than by your attention to them. Get to know your employees, their families, their favorite foods, names of their children, etc. This can sound manipulative -- and it will be if not done sincerely. However, even if you sincerely want to get to know each of your employees, it may not happen unless you intentionally set aside time to be with each of them.
4. Instill an inspiring purpose.
   A critical condition for employee enthusiasm is a clear, credible, and inspiring organizational purpose: in effect, a "reason for being" that translates for workers into a "reason for being there" that goes above and beyond money.

   Every manager should be able to expressly state a strong purpose for his unit. What follows is one purpose statement we especially admire. It was developed by a three-person benefits group in a midsize firm.

   Benefits are about people. It's not whether you have the forms filled in or whether the checks are written. It's whether the people are cared for when they're sick, helped when they're in trouble.

   Stating a mission is a powerful tool. But equally important is the manager's ability to explain and communicate to subordinates the reason behind the mission. Can the manager of stockroom workers do better than telling her staff that their mission is to keep the room stocked? Can she communicate the importance of the job, the people who are relying on the stockroom being properly maintained, both inside and outside the company? The importance for even goods that might be considered prosaic to be where they need to be when they need to be there? That manager will go a long way toward providing a sense of purpose.

5. Reward it when you see it
   A critical lesson for new managers and supervisors is to learn to focus on employee behaviors, not on employee personalities. Performance in the workplace should be based on behaviors toward goals, not on popularity of employees. You can get in a great deal of trouble (legally, morally and interpersonally) for focusing only on how you feel about your employees rather than on what you're seeing with your eyeballs.
6. Reward it soon after you see it
   This helps to reinforce the notion that you highly prefer the behaviors that you're currently seeing from your employees. Often, the shorter the time between an employee's action and your reward for the action, the clearer it is to the employee that you highly prefer that action.
7. Cultivate strong skills in delegation
   Delegation includes conveying responsibility and authority to your employees so they can carry out certain tasks. However, you leave it up to your employees to decide how they will carry out the tasks. Skills in delegation can free up a great deal of time for managers and supervisors. It also allows employees to take a stronger role in their jobs, which usually means more fulfillment and motivation in their jobs, as well.
8. Celebrate achievements
   This critical step is often forgotten. New managers and supervisors are often focused on a getting "a lot done". This usually means identifying and solving problems. Experienced managers come to understand that acknowledging and celebrating a solution to a problem can be every bit as important as the solution itself. Without ongoing acknowledgement of success, employees become frustrated, skeptical and even cynical about efforts in the organization.
9. Promote teamwork.
   Most work requires a team effort in order to be done effectively. Research shows repeatedly that the quality of a group's efforts in areas such as problem solving is usually superior to that of individuals working on their own. In addition, most workers get a motivation boost from working in teams.

   Whenever possible, managers should organize employees into self-managed teams, with the teams having authority over matters such as quality control, scheduling, and many work methods. Such teams require less management and normally result in a healthy reduction in management layers and costs.

   Creating teams has as much to do with camaraderie as core competences. A manager needs to carefully assess who works best with whom. At the same time, it is important to create the opportunity for cross-learning and diversity of ideas, methods, and approaches. Be clear with the new team about its role, how it will operate, and your expectations for its output.

10. Let employees hear from their customers (internal or external)
    Let employees hear customers proclaim the benefits of the efforts of the employee. For example, if the employee is working to keep internal computer systems running for other employees (internal customers) in the organization, then have other employees express their gratitude to the employee. If an employee is providing a product or service to external customers, then bring in a customer to express their appreciation to the employee.
11. Implement at least the basic principles of performance management
    Good performance management includes identifying goals, measures to indicate if the goals are being met or not, ongoing attention and feedback about measures toward the goals, and corrective actions to redirect activities back toward achieving the goals when necessary. Performance management can focus on organizations, groups, processes in the organization and employees.
12. Be an expediter for your employees.
    Incorporating a command-and-control style is a sure-fire path to demotivation. Instead, redefine your primary role as serving as your employees' expediter: It is your job to facilitate getting their jobs done. Your reports are, in this sense, your "customers." Your role as an expediter involves a range of activities, including serving as a linchpin to other business units and managerial levels to represent their best interests and ensure your people get what they need to succeed.
13. How do you know, beyond what's obvious, what is most important to your employees for getting their jobs done? Ask them! "Lunch and schmooze" sessions with employees are particularly helpful for doing this. And if, for whatever reason, you can't immediately address a particular need or request, be open about it and then let your workers know how you're progressing at resolving their problems. This is a great way to build trust.
14. Coach your employees for improvement.
    A major reason so many managers do not assist subordinates in improving their performance is, simply, that they don't know how to do this without irritating or discouraging them. A few basic principles will improve this substantially. First and foremost, employees whose overall performance is satisfactory should be made aware of that. It is easier for employees to accept, and welcome, feedback for improvement if they know management is basically pleased with what they do and is helping them do it even better.

Space limitations prevent a full treatment of the subject of giving meaningful feedback, of which recognition is a central part, but these key points should be the basis of any feedback plan:

1. Performance feedback is not the same as an annual appraisal. Give actual performance feedback as close in time to the occurrence as possible. Use the formal annual appraisal to summarize the year, not surprise the worker with past wrongs.
2. Recognize that workers want to know when they have done poorly. Don't succumb to the fear of giving appropriate criticism; your workers need to know when they are not performing well. At the same time, don't forget to give positive feedback. It is, after all, your goal to create a team that warrants praise.
3. Comments concerning desired improvements should be specific, factual, unemotional, and directed at performance rather than at employees personally. Avoid making overall evaluative remarks (such as, "That work was shoddy") or comments about employees' personalities or motives (such as, "You've been careless"). Instead, provide specific, concrete details about what you feel needs to be improved and how.
4. Keep the feedback relevant to the employee's role. Don't let your comments wander to anything not directly tied to the tasks at hand.
5. Listen to employees for their views of problems. Employees' experience and observations often are helpful in determining how performance issues can be best dealt with, including how you can be most helpful.
6. Remember the reason you're giving feedback-you want to improve performance, not prove your superiority. So keep it real, and focus on what is actually doable without demanding the impossible.
7. Follow up and reinforce. Praise improvement or engage in course correction-while praising the effort-as quickly as possible.
8. Don't offer feedback about something you know nothing about. Get someone who knows the situation to look at it.

Conclusion
Motivated employees are crucial to a company's success-this has never been truer than today, when margins are thin (or nonexistent) and economic recovery remains elusive. These hard bottom-line realities may also mean that managers can't rely as much as they might have in the past on using financial incentives to drive employee engagement. But, if the company has a solid approach to talent management, a bad manager can undermine it in his unit. On the flip side, smart and empathetic managers can overcome a great deal of corporate mismanagement while creating enthusiasm and commitment within their units. While individual managers can't control all leadership decisions, they can still have a profound influence on employee motivation.

The most important thing is to provide employees with a sense of security, one in which they do not fear that their jobs will be in jeopardy if their performance is not perfect and one in which layoffs are considered an extreme last resort, not just another option for dealing with hard times.

But security is just the beginning. When handled properly, each of the above mentioned practices will play a key role in supporting your employees' goals for achievement, equity, and camaraderie, and will enable them to retain the enthusiasm they brought to their roles in the first place.

Bibliography
Smith, K. L. (1990). The future of leaders in Extension. Journal of Extension, 28 (1)

Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and Human Behavior. New York: Free Press

Harvard Management Update, "Stop Demotivating Your Employees", Vol. 11, No. 1, January 2006

Kovach, K. A. (1987). What motivates employees? Workers and supervisors give different answers.

Business Horizons, 30. 58-65

Harpaz, I. (1990). The importance of work goals: an international perspective. Journal of International Business Studies, 21. 75-93.

Looking forward to your comments and feedback

With love and care
Sanjeev Sharma (Himachali)
(Chandigarh-India)
(Mobile: +91-9876328841)
(Blog: http://sanjeevhimachali.blogspot.com/)
(E-mail: sanjeev.himachali@gmail.com; ss_himachali@yahoo.com)