Experiencing a state of high or low morale is not unusual in our daily lives, due to known or unknown reasons. An American survey tried to study the cause of these cases to know why women, in particular, are prone to low morale moods. The outcome was as follows:

a\ Women suffer form low morale in middle age and single women are more likely to experience such a state than married women living with family members.

b\ as health disorders contribute to such a state, specialists are offering certain advices to boost morale by 99%, including:

*.         Optimism, confidence in outward appearance, trying to win respect, taking care of our health, regular exercise and confidence in managing our lives as we get older.

*.         Having a spouse, sincere friend or relatives or any form of social life to dispel loneliness. God-fearing and exemplary married life is also an important piece of advice.

*.         Useful utilization of spare time to dispel boredom, remembering positive experiences and recalling happy childhood memories.

*.         Avoiding tensions and stress.

The survey found out that the strength of administrative management lies in the staff rather than in the systems, procedures, assets or resources. The project that is capable of raising staff’s morale will be more capable of enhancing its competitive posture, facing and enhancing performance.

Guidance is primarily concerned with management of human conduct and promotion of elective cooperation among staff, realizing their own and the organization’s objectives. Boosting the morale of the working team is the most vital element in the guidance job supervised by the leader. In fact, it is the basic pillar of effective guidance in addition to the importance of contacts and leadership. The leader is responsible for incessantly encouraging efficiency and effectiveness, ensuring that the objectives of the workers and the project are inseparable.

Morale:

a.         Morale is defined by some as the working team’s ability to work with patience and persistence to achieve a joint objective.

b.         Moral is the opposite of material; we have defended our moral rights. He gave morale support to the project. A morale person is a group or entity considered by law as a real person with rights and obligations and sanctioned to deal with others, gain rights and use them.

According to this definition, morale is concerned with the following five elements:

.         Team members’ confidence in objectives.

.         Team members’ confidence in leadership.

.         Team members’ confidence in one another.

.         Team’s organizational efficiency.

5.         Groups’ sentimental, psychological and mental state.

In most cases it is difficult to achieve a high rate in the five elements combined, and this is not mandatory for boosting morale. Also, a low rate in one of them does not necessarily lower the overall morale.

c.          Morale and personnel’s requirements:

On top of the material reward for meeting basic requirements such as food and residence, the personnel’s other needs include:

1.         Provision of leisure time.

2.         Freedom to express opinion and show ability and talent.

3.         Promotion of skills.

4.         Recognition as part of the social community.

5.         Respecting their efforts and ideas.

Job description and morale boosting:

The job has numerous descriptions and if observed they will greatly boost morale, including:

a\ skills variety: the diversity of activities and skills needed to perform the job. The employee does not like a one-function job such as filling a customer’s form. Therefore, the job that requires many skills (contacts, computer, analysis …etc) contributes to morale boosting.

b\ job identity: the job should contribute to the completion of a specific part of the work.

c\ job significance:

The employee or team member should discharge his work assignment as part of the organization’s entire work, as well as its impact on customers and beneficiaries.

d\ autonomy:

The job should include a degree of authorization to take decisions to achieve objectives, leading to creativity and self-satisfaction.

-           Feed back: discharging job assignments should be linked to obtaining information about efficiency and good performance.

Based on the above, the leadership should interfere to boost morale in many ways, such as work rotation, broadening of assignments and job enrichment.

This is achieved by pooling assignments, creating work units according to nature of work, forging strong relations with customers, vertical enrichment of leadership’s assignments or opening feedback channels.

Personnel motivation:

Performance is linked to certain elements, such as ability, knowledge and willingness, i.e. the individual should be able to perform the job, well aware of that and willing to do it. The leadership’s role is confined to provision of training and incentives.

a\ definition of motivation:

Motivation is defined as enhancing the desire to do one’s best to achieve the institution’s goals in tandem with satisfying certain requirements of the individual.

This means that motivation is a process basically related to the following three elements: exerting efforts, objectives and individual’s requirement.

b\ individual’s motivation theories:

The numerous theories for understanding workers’ motivation could be divided into needs theory, objectives theory, support theory and individuals’ expectations theory. Maslow has divided the needs theory into five levels: safety, affiliation, respect and satisfaction.

Maslow believes that the individual satisfies a certain level before moving to satisfy a higher level. His theory was well received and supported by numerous studies, but practical application revealed the need for some modifications to understand the behavior of the individual in various situations such as satisfying more than one level at the same time or in the case of failure to satisfy a certain level of needs.

Clayton Alderfer wrote the ERG theory, modifying the individual’s humanitarian needs concept. He divided the humanitarian needs into three groups: existence (humanitarian needs and satisfaction), relatedness (affiliation, relations and social status, recognition and respect) and growth (self-satisfaction). This theory showed that the individual could strive to satisfy more than one level at the same time, but the attention given to various needs differs from one person to another. It also argued  that in case of failure to satisfy a higher level of needs the individual would be tempted to achieve increased satisfaction of a lower level of need.

Meanwhile, McGregor wrote the (X theory) and the (Y theory), saying that leaders are divided in X and Y types according to their dealing with individuals, based on certain hypothesis: the X type believes that individuals dislike work and try to avoid it. Therefore, they need to be supervised, guided, warned and punished to perform work. He also believes that they avoid responsibility; lack ambition and that they only look for safety in accepting a job, mainly material safety.

On the contrary, type Y believes that individuals view work as a natural necessity and that they practice auto-supervision if convinced of the job. It also suggests that the individual could be taught and trained to accept and live up to responsibility. Moreover, development and creativity are sought by all people rather than being restricted to the leader or manager alone.

McGregor is of the opinion that type Y is a majority and that their motivation should be shared responsibility, increased assignments, challenging objectives and enhanced relationships.

Meanwhile, Hertzberg authored the (motivation’s elements and the health elements theory). He divided the elements guiding the individual’s conduct in work into two main categories: motivation element and the healthy element. He determined the motivation factors as the desire to achieve, recognition and respect, the challenging nature of the job, the magnitude of responsibility, progress and development and finally growth. He said the availability of these elements leads to job satisfaction while their lacking leads to dissatisfaction.

Health elements causing job displeasure include salary, work environment, supervision relations, administrative environment and organization’s policies.

Hertzberg believes that discontent is not the opposite of satisfaction, pleasure is the opposite of displeasure and satisfaction is the opposite of dissatisfaction. Different factors control each of these moods.

Meanwhile, McCelland has divided individuals into three categories according to needs: willingness to succeed, tendency to attain influence and power and tendency to achieve affiliation.

For individuals willing to succeed satisfaction lies in achievement rather than the expected return. They strive to excel and live up to responsibility, shunning easy assignments as well as extremely tough ones because most likely they will not cause satisfaction. They are ready to accept success or failure only if based on their efforts.

In general, they prefer average or above average risks as well as instant feedback jobs with high responsibilities.

Individuals striving to achieve influence prefer risk-free jobs ensuring authority and control. They tend to seek prestige and wield influence on others rather tan being keen on good performance.

Persons seeking affiliation, look for jobs ensuring a degree of social relations acceptability. They could be encouraged by enhanced social activities and public relations jobs.

Jean Broadwater wrote the objectives theory, determining that the individual is guided by his objectives. It is not enough to urge him to do his best and the goals must be specifically determined. He believes that ambitious specific goals rather than easy unspecified goals provide the motivation. Moreover the feedback also is an added incentive. Factors of more effective goals are commitment and self-efficiency.

Supporters of the reinforcement theory believe that it motivates the individual and that subsequent measures to a certain human conduct affect the likelihood of repeating the same conduct and the standard of performance in the subsequent occasions. He expects a feedback from others upon completing a certain job. If the reaction is positive, he tends to repeat the same performance or doing it even better. If negative, he may decline the job.

The expectation theory says that the individual’s conduct spawns the following chain of relations:

1.         The individual exerts an effort expecting it to enhance performance.

2.         If performance is enhanced, the individual expects appreciation.

3.         If appreciated, he expects that to realize personal and practical objectives.

Consequently, the forging of these relations contributes toward motivating workers, while any termination may cause frustration and low morale.

Practical bases of motivation:

Having reviewed the various motivation theories, they could be summed up as follows:

a-         Know the individual differences (needs, objectives, motives).

b-         Use for each individual an incentive suitable to his needs, objectives and motives.

c-         Verify the justice of the administrative system and the incentives system.

d-         Accurately determine objectives.

e-         Show keenness to enhance individual’s confidence in the objective, leadership and in one another.

f-          Provide opportunity for free expression of views, talents and abilities.

g-         Keenness on feedback.

h-         Reinforce healthy factors to forestall dissatisfaction and enhance the elements of satisfaction.

i-          Allow the individuals to share in relevant decisions.

j-          Give attention to job’s nature as a motivation basis. Ensure diversity and importance of skills as well as a degree of autonomy in execution.

k-         Ensure co-relationship between effort, performance, appreciation and objectives of both the individual and the organization.

l-          Achievement should be linked to material and moral appreciation.

Colonel/ Sultan Bin Musa Al-Harbi