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Remuneration is the sole motivating factor in today’s workplace. Discuss.

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Motivation to work is closely tied up with why people work. People work for a number of reasons such as to earn monetary rewards, gain satisfaction from accomplishment, maintain social status, remain engaged in a worthwhile pursuit instead of sitting idle, become involved or associated with something, and so on. While every person's reason to work might be slightly different from others, it usually consists of a few, if not all, among the ones discussed above. Therefore, remuneration is not the only source of motivation in today's workplace. In fact, the motivation factors have increased along with the increase in people's motive to work and are getting increasingly complex to understand.

People in the past probably worked only for remuneration. Their main purpose was to fulfill their limited rudimentary needs with the money they earned. Their approach to life was simple as compared to ours. However, the scenario has changed a lot. With the evolution of computers and internet technology, we have entered into the age of knowledge. Now we have realized that our aim to work is not just to make money but to prosper our overall career and our social status. Today's employers are more aware about the need to treat their employees with due respect to their individuality and their individual needs.

Moreover, in today's workplace there is a separate human resource department (HR Department), to analyze and address the motivating factors of the employees, so as to boost up their work performance. The motivation factors are characterized as intrinsic and extrinsic and are recognized and rewarded accordingly. Intrinsic sources of motivation include, the love towards work, the sense of accomplishment, the satisfaction gained from helping others, the feeling of worthiness, and so on. The workforce driven by these factors are praised for their work, and are given intrinsic rewards like autonomy in work, respect, recognition, etc. Fredrick Herzberg, the popular theorist in intrinsic motivation, concluded that the people's performance is boosted more by intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic sources of motivation include promotion, remuneration, bonus, pension, allowances, physical facilities (like apartments and cars), incentives, pleasant work environment, and the like. These factors are necessary factors for people to work. Administering them appropriately, such as timely pay, increase in pay on a regular basis such as yearly, and so on can also motivate people to improve their work performance. Some financial rewards, sales commission for instance, are directly tied up with performance level to boost performance of employees. Employees are motivated to perform their best in order to earn the most.

These are not the only factors that affect motivation. There are other factors that influence people's attitude towards work. For example, the personal relationships and family conditions often affect the workplace performance. How to motivate employees in such instances are also the concerns of today's human resource managers. Probably, a counselling session needs to be administered and delivered to help the employees get over with their personal issues and get them motivated back in their work.

Similarly, the motivation factors change with the age and/or the stage of career. One might find compensation and initial socialization sessions to be highly motivating while commencing their career. However, these factors will soon stop motivating them and they will seek other sources of motivation as they progress through their career. Similarly, the person in his late career might find the social status and prestige as the only real source of motivation because by then, she is already financially secure. Self-actualization, as the American psychologist Abraham Maslow postulated, might be their motivation source by that time.

Because highly motivated workforce is a precious asset of any business organization, employees are treated more fairly and humanely than ever in today's workplace. It is acceptable now, that people's sources of motivation vary, from person to person, and from one stage of career to another. For some intrinsic motivation are strong while for others only the extrinsic motivation counts. Irrespective of these differences, the workplace of today's organization is highly diverse and flexible enough to cater to the specific needs of its employees. In my opinion, remuneration is not the major motivator, but a necessary factor that compliments other motivating factors.


  1. hi sir badly need advice..moral really down...i used to get above 40 in my essays but now its deplorable..i am getting 30to a max of 35 yuh plz give mi some tips to write good essays..

    1. First of all, you need to calm down. I can see you using the chat acronyms, which is not appropriate in academic setting. Keep your essays away from that by making a habit of writing in fully formal English language.

      Also focus on your mistakes, which could be spelling errors, off-topic or irrelevant explanations, errors with the structure of your essay, or anything, and avoid them right from now.

      The rest is simple. Browse over materials over the internet for getting specific help. Read a lot. Write a lot. Try your best to improve yourself.

      Don't stress to use GREAT vocabularies. Don't stress over to include SUPERIOR content (examples, facts, statistics, reasoning, etc). Don't try to write the best essay (avoid being purist and perfectionist)! Follow one rule: keep everything simple and to the point (specific). Period!

  2. Hello sir

    i am from mauritius doing GP 8009. can you please predict questions for this year

  3. Hey,
    I am really demotivated with my GP grades. I got straight As in my internal exams in GP but I got an E in CIE. Give me a suggestion so I can keep up my grade even in CIE

    1. Which college did you study in?

    2. Dude!!!! at least u got straight As in your internal exams I got E and even F in my internal exams I don't what I'm gonna so at my CIE exams this May/June.


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