Article review
Bhuvanaiah, Tejaswi, and R. P. Raya. “Mechanism of Improved Performance: Intrinsic Motivation and Employee Engagement.” SCMS Journal of Indian Management 12.4 (2015): 92.
The article by Bhuvanaiah and Raya on the intrinsic motivation as well as employee engagement provides qualitative insights on the subject of the individual’s work engagement. Accordingly, the article focuses on the less studied aspect of employee motivation and which is the intrinsic and psychological aspect. Besides improving the working relations of the employees, the paper highlights the elements of motivation to employees as results from four main engaging initiatives. These initiatives are decision-making authority, allowing or empowering the employees to share ideas openly, developing employee talents, and motivation. The primary focus of the article, therefore, is on the elements of engaging employees for improved performance amidst the changing working environments in the competitive world. The current era is shown to have high competition among the employees on the skills and competencies as aided by the technological advancement. The challenge also emanates from the reason that the employees have equally attractive and better compensation opportunities. Therefore, every organization or employer would have to strive towards developing the most effective mechanisms of realizing highest output from the employees while ensuring the employees are happy. As such, the employers would appreciate that quality performance and output of the employees would be dependent on the psychological fulfillment as against financial supplements.
From the literature reviewed, Bhuvanaiah and Raya assert that employees who would feel involved, empowered, passionate, and committed would be more likely to yield better in work performance. The literature emphasized on the need for employee engagement for harnessing their productivity. In the engagement, research would compare personal engagement and personal disengagement. Employees who are “engaged” feel empowered to give their best while the ‘not-engaged’ employees tend to put less effort in their assignments. The “disengaged” teams are shown to become liabilities to the organizations, as they are unhappy and not productive at all. Nevertheless, as the article points out, the non-engaged employees would transform into engaged when presented with the right psychological environment and related opportunities.
Furthermore, the study establishes the importance of the intrinsic motivation in explaining the level of productivity of an employee. The psychological need satisfaction theory would also highlight the four intrinsic rewards necessary to be accorded to the employees for optimum productivity. These rewards are together with personal growth, choice, competence, and meaningful work. However, the motivational process was shown to have some basic drivers and which are decision-making authority, opportunities for growth/development, empowerment, and fair treatment as well as leadership. The four drivers are associated with particular psychological needs. For instance, according to an employee, the authority to make decisions triggers the feeling of being honored and valued. Growth opportunity triggers the sense of competence as well as personal growth. Leadership would be associated with the sense of purpose while fair treatment would be associated with a sense of being involved. Such psychological feelings have been proved, although research to contribute to improved performance and outcome for employees.
Therefore, the study by Bhuvanaiah and Raya confirms the findings from various other studies regarding the aspect of employee satisfaction and productivity. While the employees would be interested in the financial appreciation, the psychological motivation would be seen as a most crucial aspect in explaining the levels of motivation and productivity. The article would, therefore, confirm that engaged and more motivated employees would lead to higher organizational performance. As such, engagement would be pointed out as an issue of contemporary importance in the modern working relations.
