Introduction With multiple economic crises widespread across the globe, many organizations have identified that low employee motivation has become a critical concern that has to be addressed with utmost importance as it tends to bring in undesirable consequences, affecting both individual employees and the company as a whole. This essay will attempt to examine the causes of low motivation among employees and the effect it has on organizations. This paper will then conclude with a discussion of proposed solutions to the issue of low motivation through the application of motivation theories such as Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory and Herzberg Two Factor Theory and how these efforts are able to increase organizational performance in the long run. The Causes Employee motivation is “the willingness to exert high levels of effort toward organizational goals, conditioned by the effort’s ability to satisfy some individual need” (Robbins 1993 as cited by Ramlall, 2004: 53). There are four main drives that directionalize motivation in people and a lack in any of them will affect employees’ motivation directly. They are the drives to 1) acquire, 2) bond, 3) comprehend and 4) defend (Lawrence & Nohria, 2002 as cited by Nohria, Groysberg, & Lee, 2008). 1) The Drive to Acquire It is derived from human’s innate desire of a better life. It ranges from the acquisition of physical goods such as money to intangible experiences such as entertainment and appreciation or promotion at work. 2) The Drive to Bond When employees have a sense of belonging to the organisation, they will feel more motivated. It can also extend to the desire of finding like-minded friendships within the organisation. 3) The Drive to Comprehend It reflects the desire of making purposeful and significant contribution to the organisation. Employees are motivated by challenging jobs that allows them to learn and mature while monotonous and repetitive tasks demoralises them. 4) The Drive to Defend It creates an avenue with clear objectives for people to express their opinions and ideas (Nohria et al., 2008). Achieving this drive will lead to employees feeling secured and confident while not fulfilling it results in the formation of negative feelings like fear and resentment. Each of the four drives is independent from each other and fulfilling one more than the other does not necessary boost motivation. Therefore organisations should strive to fulfil all four drives and not specific few. The Effects In addition, four workplace indicators that is affected by employees’ motivation level have also been identified; they are mainly – 1) Engagement, 2) Satisfaction, 3) Commitment and 4) Intention to quit (Nohria et al., 2002). ‘Engagement’ characterises the amount of energy and effort that employees channel in their jobs. ‘Satisfaction’ is the extent employees are satisfied with how the organisation is concerned with their well-being and professional development. ‘Commitment’ reflects the extent to which employees are involved and engaged in corporate citizenship while the ‘Intention to quit’ will eventually lead to employee turnover. When employees are unmotivated, there will be low level of engagement, low level of commitment, high level of dissatisfaction and strong intention to quit (Uduji, 2009). It is suggested that the success of a business is heavily dependent on the employees’ motivation level as it is one of the primary factors that affect workplace productivity (Kim, 2006). Low motivation is detrimental to an organisation as u