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INDIVIDUAL REFLECTION PAPER

Introduction
Motivation is what drives people to do something, to work and to take an action. Without
motivation people would accomplish nothing or very little. As we know there are two types of
motivation, but here I will talk about the intrinsic motivation. According to the Deci (1971, p. 105)
intrinsic motivation is defined to be intrinsically motivated to perform an activity when one receives
no apparent reward except the activity itself.
Sometimes people work hard not just because of extrinsic sources of motivation like salary,
bonuses, promotions etc. Nowadays people also talk about doing what they love to do, having a
passion to their work or hobby, doing something meaningful for others that brings benefits to other
people, showing their creativity and having a chance to express themselves – all of these are the
sources of intrinsic motivation. So intrinsic motivation is when the motivation comes from the
pleasure people get from the work itself or from the sense of satisfaction in completing or even
working on a task.
However intrinsic motivation does not mean, that people do not need the money at all, it means
that just external rewards are not enough for them to be motivated.
Research part
I have analysed the Department of economic and finance (hereinafter – Department) of the
company that deals with the educational service. The research was conducted using an online survey
(https://forms.office.com/) where strictly anonymous responses were collected and phone interview
with the head of the Department. The responses were collected, from employees who work in the
Department at different positions. The questionnaire consisted of 10 questions from online survey
and the 1 question was related only to the head of the Department by the phone interview.
Firstly, I want to share with the phone interview which hold with the head of the Department
and question was “How often do new employees come to your department?”
“I have about 8 years of experience at the moment and 2 years of them I have worked as the
head of department. Your question is a big problem for us, as each four month we have new
employee. Some employees of our department fired and some transferred to another. Today I am
trying analysing what is the problem of such high employees’ turnover. I consider that the problem
maybe that employees overworked during the formation budget period and come to work on the
weekend.”
Question 1 was determined that organizational challenge in this Department is high employee
turnover that can be lead to the bad output of the Department, because for each new employee need
in time in order to understand the work process. From the following questions, we will see the reason
of the high employee turnover in this Department.
The second question was proposed to determine what do employees value the most at the work
and it was determined that 47% of the respondents enjoy that they paid relatively fine. While, in
contrast, only (13%) have chosen the answer “I like that I have an opportunity to make decisions by
my own” that tells that people working there do not have an autonomy, hence do not strongly feel the
sense of responsibility as they do not have freedom to make the decisions.
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2.     What do you value the most at your work?

I know this work and I got used to it (20%)

I get paid relatively fine (47%)

I like that I have an opportunity to make a decisions by my own (13%)

I enjoy my work and I feel myself valuable for the company (20%)

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Also 67% of people answered that they like to be perfectly know what to do and what they will
get for it, that’s also tells that employees are more extrinsically motivated than intrinsically
(otherwise most of the people would choose the third answer to the question).

5. Evaluate the level of getting a feedback from the management.

Please rate it on a scale of 1 to 5?

5
4. How carefully your management pays attention to your opinions? 27%
Please rate it on a scale of 1 to 5? 4 13%
3 13%
1 (7%) 2 40%
1 7%
2 (40%)
3,13
3 (13%)
According
4 (13%)
1 (7%)
to the
5 (27%)
2 (40%)
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
3 (13%)
4 (13%)
5 (27%)
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
5 20%
4 20%
3 13%
2 40%
1 7%
3,07
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information above, from the question 4 we can see that (40%) rated the level of how carefully
management pays attention to their opinions as “2”. Also, question 5 asks for the level of getting the
feedback from the management, where also 40% of the respondents rated it as “2”. This information
tells us that management does not keep in touch with the employees and does not tries to take into
account their opinions at least at some level and does not tries to give a feedback to them. We see
that this is problem, as employees need to see how they are doing and specially to find out it from
their management. The key to developing and maintaining a highly motivated staff members is to use
intrinsic motivators.

6.     What do you value the most at your department?

67%
Other (67%)
4
13%
I like that the work has distributed among employees in accordance with the position held (13%)
3
7%
I like to communicate with people within our department (7%)
2
13%
The work I am doing is meaningful and brings benefits to other people (13%)
1
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8

Question 6 asked respondents what they value the most at their department and 67% of them
choose the answer “Other”. Here we can see that the percentage for the answer “I like to
communicate with people within our department” is very low 7% it means people don not satisfied
with the atmosphere in their department, as the working environment, one of the factors of intrinsic
motivation. The poor atmosphere at the company in this Department can be seen in the responses to
the next question as well. When they were asked “what do you feel when you think about your
colleagues and the atmosphere at your department?”

7.     What do you feel when you think about your

colleagues and the atmosphere at your department?
Anger (55%) 55%

Fear and anxiety (9%) 9%

Joy and optimism (45%) 45%

Feel of peacefulness (18%) 18%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

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Although 45% of them feel joy and optimism, 18% feel peacefulness and 9 % fear and anxiety
and 55% of respondents feel anger that proves that most of the people working in the Department
feeling bad about the atmosphere at their work place.

8.     In your opinion, what influences on creating a nice and

warm work environment in the department?

Not to be overloaded with work, so colleagues have a chance to communicate with each other more (33%) 33%

The quantity of corporate events (7%) 7%

Personal qualities of the people and their relationships with each other (60%) 60%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

60% of respondents think that personal qualities of people and their relationships with each
other influence the most on creating a nice and warm environment in the company. 33% of them
believe it if the employee does not to be overloaded with the work, so colleagues have a chance to
communicate with each other more and 7% of them believe it is up to the quantity of corporate
events. So, from these numbers we can conclude that most of the people consider that personal
qualities and relationships with each other influences on working environment.

9.     What kind of relationships do you have with the

most of your colleagues?
0%
Confllict (0%) 4
4
53%
Neutral not bad not good (53%) 3
3
40%
Friendly (40%) 2
2
7%
Businees (7%) 1
1
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6

The question above asked the workers what kind of relationships they have with their
colleagues. And 53% said they have a neutral not bad not good relationships, 40% have business
relationships, 7% have friendly relationships and no one have chosen “Conflict”. It is a good, in spite
of the fact that from the previous question the 55% of respondents feel anger to the colleagues.
So those 3 questions above give us some reasons why 67% of people who choose “other” were
not happy with the atmosphere at work. The possible reasons might be:
 Some people’s personal feelings about their colleagues (anger, anxiety etc.);
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 Some people just keep neutral and strict business relationships without making the colleagues
their friends that can also affect on their interpretation of the atmosphere at work.
The recommendations would be to the head of the Department, supervisor should distributed
the responsibilities among employees in accordance with the position held, so the any
misunderstanding between employees disappeared, not only to load the employees but also to
organize activities to strengthen people’s relationships.
The environment where people interact frequently, where people are caring and trust exists
called healthy environment. A healthy environment is very productive and highly energized work
place where people can flourish. It motivates people intrinsically to come to work and to do their
work at high level.

10.     Do you know how the outcomes of your work affect on the
achievements of company’s objectives?

Hard to answer (53%)

No, I don’t know (0%)

Yes, I know (47%)

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

When the respondents were asked if they know how the outcomes of their work affect on the
achievements of the company’s objectives, 53% of them answered that they hard to answer for it.
The reason could be that they don’t see the match of their personal goals with company’s goals,
simply because they do not have a clear vision of company’s objectives. It is very important for the
efficiency of the company that everybody in the company is aware about the mission statement of the
company. In the Strategic Plan of the Company 2030 year the mission is indicated as follow:
“Increase Kazakhstan’s intellectual capacity by integrating the best national and international
practices and significant scientific achievements in the field of school education” It is official goal of
the Company, but it needs to be well-explained and coincide with the operative goals of the
Company. The recommendation here would be to set up a regular meetings run by management team
for all the employees, where the company’s vision would be discussed.

Hackman and Oldham proposed that intrinsically motivating jobs have a meaning and
identified three factors that “add up” to increase the meaning of a job: skill variety, task identity
and task-significance.
Applying these 3 factors it can be concluded that the work itself is interesting and allows
employees develop different skills because employees face challenges every day at their work. Every
time they work on the important issues calculate the financial budget of the different projects, prepare
financial reports, so they should use different approaches, and apply different skills.
Talking about task identity, the company is a big, so many most of the employees know what
the completely work is, however they do not see the whole process as people in their department
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work with financing, people from another department work with the agreements and so on. The
company management hold a meeting once in a month where they discuss what is done and what is
planned to be done, but only directors participate in it, not all the employees. Therefore, the
employees do not have a vision of the whole process of their work even if they understand it.
It is certain that Department is the heart and engine of the company. However, it is hard to talk
about task-significance in this case – if employees do not see the whole process of the work they
probably do not know how much significant it is and how much other people benefit from it.
The recommendation here would be to run the meetings or the workshop on the company’s
activities. Firstly, making sure that each employee understand how valuable is the job he is
particularly doing, and secondly to show him or her (graphically) their work as a piece of the whole
work process so they could have a clear (!) understanding what they are doing. It can be done once in
2 months and keep all the employees aware of what is happening in the company at that particular
moment. Such workshop could improve such sources of meaning as task identity and task-
significance.
Hackman and Oldham also described two more essential features that are necessary for
intrinsic motivation: autonomy and feedback.
According to the survey, in this case it has observed that employees do not have freedom to
make decisions how to do the work. They do their work in a “standard operating procedure”. That
leads to lack of creativity and responsibility too. Nevertheless, the working in Department of
economic and finance one cannot have full autonomy, as the nature of the work itself requires people
to follow some procedures. However the level of autonomy of the employees could be increased a
little, for example by organizing meetings where people will express their ideas in front of all the
employees, may be by conducting a small competition for the best automizing process using the 1C
software program where people could show their creativity and give some fresh ideas to the
management (how financial reports can be easily reported in a few minutes etc.). So people would
feel that they can make a contribution on some decision-making processes.
Moreover, the problem with the low feedback from the management could be solved. It is very
important as if someone will be given a good feedback, it will inspire and motivate him to do more.
But if someone did not do so well and receives bad feedback, they will try their best next time and try
to improve.
Conclusion
In conclusion, today we have discussed the organizational challenge of the Department and
their reasons and found that the reason of high employee turnover in the Department is bad
motivation systems and due to the information that covered in the class, we determined that where
observability is low, teamwork is essential intrinsic motivation can work best. However to be
extrinsically motivated is a good, but to be intrinsically motivated is very important as the people are
highly inspired by what they are doing, love their job and have a fun working environment as it is the
main driving force.
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REFERENCES 
1. Frey, Bruno S.; Jegen, Reto. Journal of Economic Surveys. Dec2001, Vol. 15 Issue 5, p589.
23p. DOI: 10.1111/1467-6419.00150 “Motivation crowding theory”

2. Larrick, Massey, Rottenstreich, 2004, “Organizational Strategy Note on Incentives and

Motivation, Part II.”

3. Online survey
https://forms.office.com/Pages/DesignPage.aspx?origin=OfficeDotCom&lang=ru-
RU#Analysis=true&FormId=PEH-
IatTqUKPI2RyU2PCElOarTt9RqBMq32Oy_5gLe1UREFKT0JTNTZTSUsxSzJQNUNHSEY5TlJW
Ui4u