Motivating Employees (Cambridge IGCSE 0450)
Motivated employees work harder, stay longer and serve customers better. For Cambridge IGCSE 0450 you need Taylor, Maslow and Herzberg, plus the financial and non-financial methods businesses use to put those theories into practice.
Why motivation matters and Taylor's approach
Motivation is the reason why employees want to work hard and work effectively. Well-motivated workers produce more output per hour, make fewer mistakes, take less time off and are less likely to leave, so recruitment and training costs fall. Poor motivation shows up as lateness, absenteeism, careless work and high labour turnover.
F. W. Taylor, writing over a century ago, assumed workers are mainly motivated by money, the so-called economic man view. He studied jobs scientifically to find the quickest method, set output targets and paid workers by results using piece rates, an amount per unit produced. Taylor's ideas raised productivity in factories, but they treat people like machines: quality may suffer as workers rush, and the theory ignores workers who value security, friendship or interesting work more than extra pay. Later theorists responded to exactly this weakness.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Maslow arranged human needs into five levels, usually drawn as a pyramid. Employees seek to satisfy each level in turn, and a satisfied need no longer motivates.
- Physiological needs: food, water, rest; met at work by a wage high enough to live on.
- Safety needs: job security, safe working conditions, a pension.
- Social needs: friendship and belonging; met through teamwork and social events.
- Esteem needs: recognition and status; met through praise, promotion and job titles.
- Self-actualisation: reaching full potential through challenging, creative work.
The lesson for managers is to identify which level each employee has reached. Offering a bonus to someone whose pay already covers their needs may achieve little, while giving them responsibility for a project could achieve a lot. Critics note that people do not always move up the levels in a fixed order.
Herzberg and methods of motivation
Herzberg separated job factors into two groups. Hygiene factors, such as pay, working conditions, company rules and relationships with supervisors, do not motivate by themselves, but their absence causes dissatisfaction. Motivators, such as achievement, recognition, responsibility, interesting work and personal growth, genuinely drive people to work well.
Businesses apply these ideas through financial methods: wages, salaries, bonuses, commission for sales staff, profit sharing and fringe benefits such as a company car or health insurance. Non-financial methods include job enrichment, adding more challenging tasks and decision-making power, job rotation, moving workers between tasks to reduce boredom, teamworking, training and praise. Herzberg would say fair pay stops complaints while enrichment creates real motivation, which is why many firms, including manufacturers such as Toyota, combine decent wages with team responsibility for quality.
Key terms
Practice questions
Identify two signs that employees in a business may be poorly motivated. [2 marks]
Model answer guidance: Acceptable answers include high absenteeism, frequent lateness, high labour turnover, low productivity and an increase in careless mistakes or wastage. Any two of these earn the marks. Each sign should be a short phrase, not an explanation.
Explain one advantage and one disadvantage to a clothing factory of paying workers piece rates. [4 marks]
Model answer guidance: An advantage is that pay is linked directly to output, so workers have a clear incentive to produce more garments per shift, raising productivity. A disadvantage is that workers may rush and sacrifice quality, leading to faulty garments, returns and damage to the brand. The factory would need quality checks, which add cost.
Explain how a business could use Maslow's hierarchy to improve the motivation of its employees. [6 marks]
Model answer guidance: The business should first identify which level of need each group of employees has not yet satisfied. If pay barely covers living costs, a wage rise targets physiological needs; if workers fear redundancy, permanent contracts target safety needs. For employees whose lower needs are met, praise, promotion opportunities and challenging projects target esteem and self-actualisation, because a satisfied need no longer motivates.
A call centre suffers from high labour turnover. Consider two methods it could use to improve motivation and justify which is better. [8 marks]
Model answer guidance: It could raise basic pay, which addresses a hygiene factor and reduces the pull of better-paying rivals, but Herzberg suggests pay alone will not create positive commitment to the job. Alternatively it could use job enrichment, giving staff responsibility for resolving whole customer cases rather than reading scripts, which provides achievement and recognition. Enrichment is probably the better long-term choice because it tackles the boredom that drives call-centre staff away, though pay must still be competitive or workers will leave anyway.
Do you think financial rewards are the best way for a supermarket to motivate its employees? Justify your answer. [12 marks]
Model answer guidance: Financial rewards such as bonuses and profit sharing are effective for lower-paid supermarket staff because their physiological and safety needs depend on income, and Taylor's view supports a clear pay-for-effort link. However, hygiene theory warns that once pay is seen as fair it stops motivating, while boredom on checkouts remains, so non-financial methods such as job rotation, teamworking and recognition schemes may achieve more at little cost. A justified conclusion might state that a mix works best: competitive pay to prevent dissatisfaction plus non-financial motivators to build commitment. The strongest answers apply the argument to supermarket jobs specifically rather than employees in general.
Examiner tips
- Name the theorist and use their exact vocabulary: hygiene factors and motivators for Herzberg, levels of needs for Maslow, economic man and piece rates for Taylor.
- A satisfied need no longer motivates is a powerful analysis line: use it to explain why a pay rise may not work for well-paid staff.
- Always match the motivation method to the type of worker in the question: commission suits sales staff, job rotation suits repetitive production work.
In The Business School simulation your students make these exact decisions in a live market against rival firms — every choice mapped to the specification. Free teacher demo, no installs, students join with a PIN.