Volatility of workload on employee performance and significance of motivation: IT sector

The average job in the IT industry is unskilled and is often not considered destination employment, but takes on a transient quality that accommodates the needs of the individual and will leave an employer to fill the same position again and again. Determining the reasons and factors why workers work has been the quest of industrial psychologists and management experts for years. It is generally agreed upon that if an employer can identify the reasons a worker is productive, reports to work on time, and remains with the company, the employer might then be able to apply these motivational factors unilaterally to the entire workforce. Applying this knowledge and fashioning the employment atmosphere to better accommodate the motivational factors of the employee, the employer becomes a more desirable employment destination, retaining employees longer, and increasing productivity and service at the same time. The wide range of, often conflicting, studies and theories in this area has led to a situation where no single model has been able to capture all the complexities of the internal and external influences on human motivation and performance. Models have broadly fallen into one of two categories: cognitive, focusing on the individual’s thought processes and social-cognitive, focusing on the influences from social and contextual variables.