Employee Motivation as a Factor of a Favorable Socio-Psychological Atmosphere in an Organization

Introduction

Employees of an organization represent one of the most important and demanding factors on which the success or failure of any organization depends. Organizational management should realize that employees are not merely tools to carry out a certain task, work, or duty, but they are the source of ideas, impulses, new thoughts, and creativity through which an organization becomes more significant.

The connection of an employee to an organization and their attitude toward it is conditioned by motivation. It is very important how the organization behaves toward employees and what care it provides to them, because only properly motivated employees contribute to creating a positive socio-psychological atmosphere in the organization. An unfavorable climate at the workplace increases job dissatisfaction and does not motivate employees for higher performance, while a favorable atmosphere at work has a positive effect and motivates workers.

Motivation and the socio-psychological atmosphere of an organization in a theoretical framework

Motivation is a concept that represents physiological, biological, economic, psychological, sociological, and many other manifestations. From the root of the word motio - mental drive, passion - we infer that it relates to everything people experience and everything that can be asked with the question “why.” Motivation is one of the important factors that influence the success of a person’s life. For each of us it is important to engage in activities and work that motivate us, that are meaningful to us, and in those areas we are then able to produce above-average performance.

An organization that strives to achieve the fulfillment of its set goals must first ensure a high and stable level of employee performance, which is achieved through proper motivation. It is important that the organization devotes increased attention to motivating employees. Motivating people is setting these people in motion in the direction we want them to move toward achieving a given result. We achieve successful and effective motivation when the employee feels that:

• they contribute to achieving the organization’s goals and attain personal achievements,
• the work is challenging and they master it successfully,
• they are adequately rewarded for the results achieved,
• they self-actualize and find that the work enriches them.

Psychology defines motivation as a set of factors that trigger, sustain, and direct a person’s mental activity so that psychological balance is restored after it has been disrupted. Different motives participate in the process of restoring balance and can be divided into three groups:

• conscious, which a person is aware of and regulates,
• unconscious, which stem from instinctual tendencies, complexes arising from previous negative experiences,
• pathological motives.1

Motivation represents one of the basic attributes of people’s success and effective performance in the work process and makes up a substantial part of management theory and practice as well as psychological sciences. It is studied in two planes, both of which have irreplaceable significance in management.

• The first is the subjective dimension—the so-called internal “driving force” behind each person’s movement in the work and even non-work environment.
• The second is the objective dimension—the ability to motivate other people toward certain activity.

According to current research results on motivation and motivational behavior in work processes, both dimensions should be present in a manager. In practice, it has also been clearly confirmed that a manager who is properly motivated can motivate appropriately and therefore lead their employees motivationally, and conversely, a manager without motivation loses the ability to motivate and motivationally lead people in the work process.2

Motivational programs are a coherent set of specific measures in an organization aimed at directing work behavior and creating and reinforcing positive attitudes among all employees of the organization. They belong to the internal materials of the enterprise, reflect the organization’s personnel and social policy, and are often understood as part of corporate know-how.

Nowadays, the term corporate or organizational culture has become an important part of a manager’s daily life, even though there are companies, organizations, and also managers who do not consider this term important. Corporate culture is a mirror of a company’s identity and is an inseparable part of enterprise management. The bearers of corporate culture are people—employees of the enterprise. It is based on the values, processes, and norms of the organization. In simple terms, corporate culture consists of core values, norms, and general rules that prevail in the organization—that is, what is accepted and considered appropriate and desirable. This includes especially management style and communication, behavior both at and outside work, performance delivered, and the relationship to high-performing managers. Corporate culture is also influenced by the appearance of the workplace, mutual communication within the company, and systems of social benefits for employees.

Culture and its aspects are perceived most clearly by a new employee because people who have worked in an enterprise for some time often no longer even realize what kind of culture they have or even whether a culture exists in the organization at all. They do not consider that other workplaces may apply different behavior of employees or management. After some time, behavioral norms become habit, while a newly hired employee does not know how to behave, how to dress, how to act with colleagues, or how to address superiors. In some companies, it is standard to behave carefully and without any expression of either negative or positive emotions. In contrast, there are companies that encourage informal relationships, which is expressed, for example, by addressing fellow employees informally regardless of position or job role.3

In professional literature, we encounter various definitions of corporate (organizational, company) culture. Some of these are selected and presented below:

• Organizational culture or corporate culture represents a system of values, norms, convictions, and attitudes that have not always been explicitly formulated but determine how to behave, how to deal with people, and how to perform work. Values concern what we believe in, while norms are the unwritten rules of behavior.4
• Under the term corporate culture we understand a system of shared values and norms that has developed in the enterprise and has significant influence on employees, whether on their thinking, conduct, or behavior. Externally, it appears as a form of social interaction, in habits, customs, clothing, or the material equipment of the workplace.5
• In general, organizational culture in contemporary terms can be understood as:
• a complex of basic assumptions, values, attitudes, and behavioral norms shared within the organization,
• which are expressed in the thinking, feeling, and behavior of members of the organization and in material and immaterial artifacts,
• corporate culture arises in solving issues of internal integration and external adaptation and is a product of organizational history.6
• Corporate culture represents a broad field; this term has been used in connection with enterprise performance, managerial behavior, organizational change, structure, and strategy.7
• Common behavioral patterns become a model for new employees.8

The term organizational culture affects the success of every community, and understanding the full content of organizational culture is a very complex process. Organizational culture has many functions that contribute to the success of the organization, such as minimizing conflicts, facilitating coordination and control, ensuring desired behavior and discipline based on selected norms and standards. It has a major impact on work ethic, employee behavior, motivates people, and gives employees a sense that they are an important part of the organization. It strengthens adaptation, satisfaction, and employee performance at the workplace; when organizational culture is strong, the organization gains a competitive advantage.

We can divide corporate culture into subjective and objective:

• Subjective corporate culture comprises the organization’s own history, its leaders, its own approaches to problems and management of activities, its entrenched managerial styles, and its corporate atmosphere. It forms the basis of managerial culture and from this derives the differences between organizational cultures of individual companies, even when they may seem identical at first glance.9
• Objective corporate culture is usually associated with the physical environment in the enterprise—the building and its design, signage, location, layout, size of individual spaces, color, furniture, comfort, reception areas, employee clothing and behavior, and even the company vehicle fleet. The listed aspects reflect the organization’s preferred values to a greater or lesser degree.10

Each organization is characterized by its unique organizational culture, but that does not yet mean that each of them influences employee activity and behavior. Although organizational culture cannot be measured or calculated in any exact way, we cannot underestimate it, because values, norms, attitudes, and employees’ behavior instilled in people can help the organization hold together in difficult situations.

If corporate culture is associated with organizational success, it is most often assumed that a strong corporate culture exists—one in which all managers of the organization prefer a number of shared, relatively consistent values and behavioral rules accepted by the majority of employees, which results in simplification of their management. Strong corporate culture is characterized by several advantages:

• employees’ sense of belonging and identification with the organization increases,
• there is a clear guide for employee behavior,
• decision-making, implementation of plans and projects is faster,
• participation in internal governance of the organization increases,
• communication improves, conflict situations are reduced,
• demands for control decrease,
• efficiency of activities, stability, and reliability of the organization increase.11

Strong corporate cultures influence employees far more than weak cultures, because strong corporate culture has core values strongly rooted, shared by most employees in the enterprise, and declared by the enterprise itself.

The relationship between motivation and organizational culture

In the modern era, increasing attention is paid to organizational culture because organizational culture plays a significant role in employee motivation, the organization’s image, and also in the ability to solve simple and complex problems and respond to constantly changing external conditions.

Motivation is the basis of employee behavior and conduct at work. Through motivation, it is possible to influence a person’s identification with their work, profession, organization, and its culture. On the other side, however, organizational culture is a significant motivating tool. Organizations characterized by a strong corporate culture and that are clearly represented externally have an advantage when recruiting new employees, as well as in employee adaptation within the organization. This advantage is most strongly expressed when, among the symbols of organizational culture, emphasis is placed on valuing the human factor.12

In her book, author Lukášová states that a major source of employee motivation can be organizational culture, where people in the organization need not be motivated only by internal drives, but also by considering their work meaningful, feeling part of the organization, and identifying with its goals and mission. Organizational culture can therefore be a very strong motivational potential.13

Organizational socio-psychological atmosphere

An organization becomes successful when it can compete in a market where competition is increasingly strong. Human capital helps the organization reach such goals, and human capital must be properly motivated. Employees who must achieve maximum work performance for attaining organizational goals must have appropriate working conditions for their work. Working conditions include not only technical and material equipment, but also workplace relationships, communication, organizational behavior toward its employees, opportunities for education and professional growth, workload and stress levels, methods of employee evaluation, and others.

Organizational socio-psychological atmosphere represents relationships among employees, the attractiveness of the workforce, the status and authority of members, communication within groups, conflict situations, and their resolution. People at the workplace are integrated into a specific work team that carries out assigned tasks and satisfies the needs of its members. Team results depend on each member’s effort, mutual cooperation, activity, initiative, understanding, cohesion, and the overall quality of interpersonal relationships.14

In her book Psychologie pro ekonomy a manažéry, Pauknerová describes social atmosphere as a set of mutual relationships among workers. Relationships among employees affect not only the climate at the workplace, but also the performance of the individual or the entire team. Social climate or atmosphere is formed in the process of working together, in social interaction among co-workers, in their demands, needs, or expectations. Because of its emotionally conditioned content it is sometimes also called psychological climate.15

Václav Cejthamr and Jiří Dědina describe organizational climate as something that is very difficult to define but clearly perceived and connected to morale, relationships, sense of belonging, and awareness of organizational value. Organizational climate is a relatively stable feature of the internal environment that:

• employees perceive,
• influences their behavior,
• can be described by characteristic features of the organization.16

Socio-psychological climate is to a large extent influenced by organizational leadership, and this influence is determined by the properties and behavior of its members, technologies, and the organization’s relationships with the environment. Leadership shapes these elements in a way that enables the organization to fulfill the social roles assigned to it.17 Executive and managerial activities are deliberately shaped for the successful progress of the production process, and the results of this process in turn influence them again. Such influence can vary in intensity and effectiveness among organizations, but the dependence of the production process on social climate is indisputable.18

Characteristic features of a “healthy” atmosphere

Social or psychological atmosphere is characterized by relationships between people and the organization and is also shaped by the reciprocal interaction of goals, formal structure, management processes, styles, and people’s behavior. Among the features of a “healthy” socio-psychological atmosphere we include:

• integration of personal and organizational goals,
• an organizational structure corresponding to real requirements,
• opportunities for employees to participate in decision-making,
• fair and equal conditions for employees,
• mutual trust and recognition,
• open discussion of problems,
• a management style appropriate to work situations,
• respect for human needs, individual differences, and personal characteristics,
• a common reward system based on positive motivation,
• attention to the quality of working conditions and meaningful job content,
• equal opportunity for personal development and career advancement,
• identification with the organization and loyalty.19

Methods for analyzing employee motivation and organizational socio-psychological atmosphere

When analyzing social climate, we can use methods that are divided into direct and indirect indicators: Indirect indicators, which fulfill a regulatory function in activities related to employee leadership, include:

• conflict situations,
• disciplinary problems,
• work absence,
• low productivity,
• other indicators pointing to the character of social climate.

Direct indicators confirm social climate on the basis of surveys. Qualitative criteria determine the weight of individual characteristics of social climate—level of work motivation, authority of managers, employee information, identification with organizational goals, trust in leadership. Social climate characteristics express the complexity of fundamental social relationships in the organization, e.g., relationship to the team, to work, to the superior, and to education, among others.20

The social atmosphere of an organization is about feelings, emotional state, and the disposition of employees and the organization as a whole. Under this concept, we can imagine not only positive and negative relations among employees but also values, norms, standards, and goals accepted by the organization.

Conclusion

Corporate or organizational culture represents a sum of values recognized by employees, especially in the area of mutual relationships and relationships with the environment. It is an expression of a value-oriented corporate policy that deliberately promotes rules, attitudes, opinions, and behavior patterns. It represents the typical behavior, thinking, and conduct of organizational members, forms a unity of common value assumptions, norms, and patterns of action, and manifests outwardly as a form of social interaction among co-workers and between collaborating organizations, as well as in jointly sustained habits, customs, rules, and material arrangements. A culture built on solid moral foundations is a prerequisite for a positive internal corporate environment.21

Author: PhDr.Eva Dirgová PhD.

Literature:

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