Extrinsic motivation is the term used in the context of the corporate world to reward employees so that workers working in the company work with more zeal and enthusiasm and help the company in achieving its objectives of the company. Extrinsic motivation in simple words refers to a system where employees are rewarded in various ways which include things like salary increments, performance bonuses, incentives, promotions, and so on for doing good work which motivates the employees to keep doing good work as human beings crave for money and appreciation and extrinsic motivation tries to exploit this trait of human beings. In order to get a better idea about this concept, one should look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of extrinsic motivation –
Advantages of Extrinsic Motivation
Helps in Motivating Employees
The first and foremost advantage of extrinsic motivation is that it helps in motivating employees because we all know that human beings do not do work on their own rather they require a push which in the case of companies is given by extrinsic motivation. In simple words, just like in the case of sports a trophy or monetary reward pushes players to give their best in the same way in the case of companies extrinsic motivation push employees to give their best and earn the various rewards or incentives as promised by the company.
Identification of Performers
Another benefit of extrinsic motivation is that indirectly it helps the company in measuring the performance of the employees because those employees who are working hard due to extrinsic motivation are more likely to be future performers as compared to those employees who do not even get motivated by extrinsic motivation are more likely to either be nonperformers or leave the company and hence in a way extrinsic motivation paves the way for the company to identify the future performers and hence groom them to achieve the company goal in a better way.
Extrinsic Motivation is Ideal for Group
In the case of intrinsic motivation, only a few employees are motivated by themselves while the rest of the employees are not interested or motivated hence when it comes to motivating a large group of people extrinsic motivation is the only option because in the case of extrinsic motivation the reward is for everyone working in the company and thus can be a highly effective method of motivating employees. In simple words when it comes to motivating a large group of people then extrinsic motivation is a better option when one compares it with intrinsic motivation.
Disadvantages of Extrinsic Motivation
Extrinsic Motivation is Not a Permanent Solution
The biggest disadvantage of extrinsic motivation is that it is not a permanent solution in the sense that employees will always look toward management in anticipation of rewards and will not work efficiently once the company stops giving rewards. In simple words unlike intrinsic motivation where employees work on their own rather than working in expectation of rewards which results in them needing no motivation to do their work and hence one can say that intrinsic motivation is permanent while extrinsic motivation is temporary.
Becomes a Race
In the case of extrinsic motivation, the idea is to give rewards and all employees strive to achieve their goal to get the reward which in turn leads to a race between the employees to be on top and get the rewards. This, in turn, results in employees not enjoying their work or learning anything new which kills their creativity as well as intrinsic motivation because when it comes to money or rewards then all other things take a backseat, and hence in the long term can be a big problem for the company.
Limited Resources
In the case of extrinsic motivation, there is a limit to which company can give rewards or incentives to employees as the resources available with the company are limited. In simple words, extrinsic motivation is not feasible or practical for all the companies due to limited resources and hence the company will have to find some other way if it wants to motivate its employees in the long run.
As one can see from the above that extrinsic motivation has pros as well as cons and that is the reason why any company thinking of using extrinsic motivation for its employees should carefully read the above points and then only should decide whether it wants to implement this system into the company or not.