The Impact of Motivation on Employee Performance: A study of Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education Sagbama, Bayelsa State, Nigeria.

The Impact of Motivation on Employee Performance: A study of Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education Sagbama, Bayelsa State, Nigeria.

Wolo Ebitari, Nimizigha¹, Ali Akpotunimibofa²*

¹Department of Industrial Relations & Personnel Management, Faculty of Social & Management Sciences, University of Africa Toru-orua, Sagbama, Bayelsa State, Nigeria

²Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Social & Management Sciences, University of Africa Toru-orua, Sagbama, Bayelsa State, Nigeria

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2023.70869

Received: 10 July 2023; Revised: 21 July 2023; Accepted: 25 July 2023; Published: 25 August 2023

ABSTRACT

The study investigate the impact of motivation on employee’s performance, precisely using Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State as a case study. Motivation refers to a complexity of forces that inspires a person at work to intensify his desire and willingness to use his potentialities to perform in order to achieve organizational goals or objectives. The study has four objectives, four research questions and four hypotheses. Structured Questionnaire was used as the instrument for the research work. This instrument was tested for reliability and validity of its content. The study used simple random sampling techniques in selecting the respondents. A sample of 92 respondents which included management, non-academic and academic staffs was used for the primary data. Simple percentages, means and the statistical tools were used to analyse the primary data while Chi-Square (X²) was applied to test the hypotheses formulated for the study at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that motivation was the major factor that affected employee performance. Furthermore, the study showed a direct strong and positive relationship between motivation of employees and their performance. This study hereby recommends that the management teams in Isaac Boro College of Education should always carry out a thorough study on the various motivational tools that can appeal and motivate their employees. Such motivational tools can include: involvement of employees in decision making, provision of fringe benefits, payment of bonuses to workers, and promotion of deserved staff to higher positions of authority.

Keywords: Impact, motivation, employees, performance.

INTRODUCTION

Employee Performance fundamentally depends on employee motivation, training and development, performance appraisals, employee satisfaction, compensation, job security, organizational structure among others. It is out of such arguments that the study was informed to examine how motivating employees influence performance of organizations (Hussein & Simba cited in Ochola 2018). Motivation plays an important role in developing and intensifying every stakeholder’s desire to perform efficiently in their respective positions (Kalogiannidis, 2021). When an employee is motivated, it is expected that he or she will perform efficiently in the job, thereby, bringing about high level organizational productivity.

When it comes to motivation, managers take various actions and invest significant amounts of time, energy and money in improving the employees’ labour performance. We believe, however, that some practitioners focus on identifying and satisfying the employees’ needs alone (of physiological, material, social, professional, moral, spiritual, cognitive nature, etc.), ignoring the fact the efficiency and effectiveness of a motivational process are influenced by other constituents of the motivational system, also (Fari, 2021).

Organizations should find out what really motivate employees and take necessary action to ensure employees will be constantly motivated at the workplace (Luedich & Chutikarn, 2020). There is no gainsaying that when both internal and external motivational factors are constantly in place, the morale for work amongst employees will increase. This in turn will increase the level of employee performance geared towards the productivity of the organization in the long run.

Investing on long term training and development programmes can centrally increase level of employee motivation in an organization. In today’s conditions, long-term success and competitive advantage of enterprises depend on giving importance to human because many of the resources owned by enterprises can be imitated, except for human resources. Therefore; it is important to ensure that human resources do their activities voluntarily. In other words, the motivation of individuals to work is an important factor in the success of the enterprise. However, the point to be noted here is that human beings do not act only in line with economic motives and that they have a number of needs as a social being. In addition to this, most of today’s enterprises acknowledge that well-trained staff is a critical success factor for them. As it is understood from this statement, another factor affecting the success of the enterprises is the well-equipped employees. In order to achieve this, the training activities carried out in enterprises are of great importance (Banu, 2019)

Objectives of the Study

The main objective of this study is to investigate the impact of motivation on employee’s performance, precisely using Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State as a case study. The specific objectives are:

1. To determine the effect of promotion as a measure of motivation on productivity of employees.
2. To ascertain the effect of adequate salaries and wages payment as a measure of motivation on creativity of employees.
3. To examine the effect of allowances as a measure of motivation on efficiency of employees performance.
4. To evaluate the effect of good working conditions and environment as a measure of motivation on profitability of employees.
5. To determine the effect of training as a measure of motivation on the performance of employees.

Research Hypotheses

Consistent with the statement of problem, the research objectives and the Research questions, the following hypotheses are formulated for the study

H₀₁:     Promotion as a measure of motivation does not significantly affect productivity of employee’s.

H₀₂:    Adequate salaries and wages payment as a measure of motivation do not significantly affect creativity of employee’s.

H₀₃:    Allowances as a measure of motivation does not significantly affect efficiency of employee’s performance. .

H₀₄:   Good working conditions and environment as a measure of motivation does not significantly affect profitability of employees.

H5:    Higher the level of employees’ training the high the performance level of the employees

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

The Concept of Motivation

A motivated workforce is a holy grail that every organization aspires to have, but only a few experience its advantages today. These advantages provided by a motivated workforce are pretty well tracked. Organizations that have a high employee engagement rate are more resilient and able to weather uncertainty Anand (2022). Motivation as a meaningful construct is a central pillar at the workplace. Thus, motivating employees adequately is a challenge as it has what it takes to define employee satisfaction at the workplace (Joseph, 2021).  Human motivation is complicated. A person’s motivation is a complex set of emotions, including excitement, joy, desire, passion, and hope. And those emotions are derived from a set of skills and traits, including resilience, optimism, self-confidence, and ambition. When motivation flags, those emotions and traits are not gone, but they get covered up or substituted. Emotions like fear, anger, anxiety, sadness, even a sense of futility and self-doubt crowd out motivating factors. Your job is to find out what might be at the root of an employee’s lost motivation and help them make the necessary choices to rediscover theirs over time (Ron 2022). Generally, motivation has been defined as an internal or external state that drives and directs behaviour towards a specific goal (Asiedu, 2017). Armstrong defines motivation as a goal-oriented behaviour. This means that people are motivated when a specific course of action will lead them to achieve the objective. This can be a professional promotion, salary increase, etc. (Armstrong 2007, p. 211, cited in Łukasik, 2017).

The Concept of Employee’s Performance

Employee Performance is defined as the result of work achieved by person in carrying out a given task based on ability and experience at work (Hasibuan in Putra and Lo 2020). Employees are the bedrock of every business and to be successful as a business requires the commitment and sacrifice of employees. Every organisation drives it success and profitability on the quality work performance of its employees. Employee performance is the work of quality and quantity that achieved by an employee in carrying out their duties in accordance with the responsibilities which given to him (Mangkunegara cited in Hamid and Riyanto, 2020).

Organizational performance refers to evaluating an employee’s behaviour towards particular work or assignments in an organization. Performance evaluation is associated with establishing how best or poorly an individual executed or accomplished a specific task or job (Kalogiannidis, 2021).

Conceptual Framework

The diagram below shows a framework of how internal and external motivating factors impact employee performance that further leads to the attainment of organizational goal (organizational productivity).

Source: Created by authors

METHODOLOGY

The survey research design was used for this study.  Survey involves a single observation of the sample population, with observations being descriptively presented (Anderson, Sweeney and Williams, 2011).  This design entails survey by the use of questionnaire administration, to elicit primary data from useful responses from respondents. This study therefore made use of the survey design. The study employs both primary and secondary data to achieve its aims. The primary data will be obtained from questionnaires. The plan, structure and strategy of investigation are conceived so as to obtain answers to research problems. It ensures that the required data are collected and they are accurate. However, the primary data used in this study is obtained from staff of the Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education, Sagbama, Bayelsa State. Secondary data is information collected by others for purposes, which can be different than those of the researcher. It is a synthesis of published and unpublished documents related to the research and it is of highly important, as it comprises the logical framework of the research.

The population of this study comprise all the staff of Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education, Sagbama, Bayelsa State. The population size of the study comprised of one hundred and twenty (120) staffs selected from all the staffs of institution. The sample size of ninety two (92) was taken from the 120 staff of all Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education, Sagbama, Bayelsa State. The sample size was calculated using 95% confidence interval of Taro Yeman formula.

Data Analysis (Bio-Data Presentation)

Gender Distribution of Respondents

The researcher is interested to know gender distribution of the respondents. This is group as the gender is either male or female. The result is given below in table 4.1.

Table 4.1: Gender Distribution of Respondents

Source: Authors Survey Data 2023, SPSS output version 23.0)

Table 4.1 above show data on sex distribution of respondents. From the data, 65 representing 70.7% of the respondents are male while 25 representing about 29.3% are females. The data indicates that majority of the staffs in Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area interviewed were male.

Age Distribution of Respondents

The researcher wishes to know the age distribution of the respondents in the selected higher institution in Bayelsa State. This is categorize into four groups. The result is given below in table.

Table 4.2: Showing Age Distribution of Respondents

Source: Authors Data 2023, (SPSS output version 23.0)

The above data shows the age distribution of the respondents. The results in Table 4.2 revealed that larger proportion of the respondents are within the age of 30-39 and 40-49 years with a frequency of 34 representing 37% and 31 representing 33.7% of the total respondents. The table further revealed that 14 respondents representing about 15.2% are between 20-29 years. While 13 of the respondents representing about 14.1% are between the age of 50 years and above. Therefore, we draw a conclusion that most of the workers in Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area between 30 to 49 years of age.

Marital Status Distribution of Respondents

The researcher further wishes to know the marital status of the respondents in the selected institution in Sagbama Local Government Area. This is categorize into three groups. The result is given below in table 4.3.

Table 4.3: Showing marital status of Respondents

Source: Authors Data 2023, (SPSS output version 23.0)

The above data shows the marital status of the respondents. The results in Table 4.3 revealed that greater proportion of the respondents are married which represent about 59.8 percent of the total respondents. The table further revealed that 30 respondents representing about 32.6 percent are single. While 7 of the respondents representing about 7.6% are either divorced, widow or widower. Therefore, we draw a conclusion that most of the workers in the selected higher institution are married.

Educational Status of Respondents

The researcher wishes to know educational distribution of the respondents. This is group into four categories. The result is given below in table 4.4.

Table 4.4: Showing Educational Status of Respondents

Source: Authors Data 2023, (SPSS output version 23.0)

Table 4.4 shows information on educational status of respondents. From the information, 17 respondents representing 18.5% have first SSCE certificate, 49 respondents representing 53.3% have OND/NCE, 14 respondents representing 15.2% have HND/BSc, while 12 respondents representing 13.0% have post graduate degree of either master or PhD or equivalent. Therefore we conclude that greater proportion of the respondents in the said institution have higher degree or equivalent.

Years of Work Experience

The researcher intended to know the number of years work by the respondents in the selected institution in the study area. This is categorize into four groups. The result is given below in table 4.5.

Table 4.5: Showing work experience of Respondents

Source: Authors Data 2023, (SPSS output version 23.0)

Table 4.5 shows that greater proportion of the respondents have work for between 1 to 5 years in the said institutions which is accounting for 33 respondent representing 35.9 percent. While 6-10 years were 20 representing 21.7 percent. From the table, 23 respondents representing 25.0 percent have worked for 11-20 years. Finally, 16 respondents representing 17.4 percent have worked for 20 years and above. Therefore, we conclude that most of the staff have worked for between 1-5 years in the institution.

Staff Category of Respondents

The researcher wants to know if the staff is junior or senior staff in the study area. This is categorize into two groups, namely: senior and junior staff. The result is given below in table 4.6.

Table 4.6: Staff Category of Respondents

Source: Authors Data 2023, (SPSS output version 23.0)

Table 4.6 above revealed that 62 respondents representing 67.4% in the said higher institution are junior staffs, while 30 of the respondents representing 32.6% of the staff’s senior level. Therefore, we conclude that majority of the staff’s works in Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State are junior staffs.

Test of Hypotheses

The chi-square statistic is used to determine the independence of the dependent and the independent variables. The chi-square statistic was used to test the hypotheses earlier stated. The 0.05 significance level is adopted as criterion for the probability of either accepting the null hypotheses at (p>0.05) or rejecting the null hypotheses at (p<0.05).

H₀₁:        Promotion as a measure of motivation does not significantly affect productivity of employee’s.

Table 4.7: Chi-Square Result for promotion and performance of employees

Table 4.11 shows the chi square result on the independence between employee’s performance and promotion in Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State. The Pearson Chi Square value = 102.797^a with assymptotic significance of 0.007 which is less than 0.05. This means that the null hypothesis earlier stated is hereby rejected. Therefore, we conclude by accepting the alternative hypothesis which state that there is a significant relationship between promotion and performance of employees in Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.

H₀₂:    Adequate salaries and wages payment as a measure of motivation do not significantly affect creativity of employees.

Table 4.8: Chi-Square Result on the relationship between salaries and wages payment and creativity of employee’s.

Table 4.11 show the chi square result on the independence between salaries and wages payment and creativity of employee’s in Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State. The Pearson Chi Square value= 66.629^a with assymptotic significance of 0.053 which is less than or equal to 0.05. This means that the null hypothesis two earlier stated in chapter one is hereby rejected. Therefore, we conclude that there is a significant relationship between salary and wage payment and creativity of employee’s in Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.

DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

This section presented the findings of the study by giving brief explanations on the figures presented. The findings have been presented in the form of figures and tables. Frequency analysis has been used to give percentages, descriptive analysis has been used to give the means and standard deviations, and chi square test has also been used for analysis. The study confirmed that all the two hypotheses (H₁ and H₂) predicted in the study. The results show that there is no significant relationship between motivation and employee’s performance in Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State. Likewise there is a significant relationship between promotion and performance of employees in Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.  However, the next chapter of the study focused on discussion of the findings of the study and summary and conclusion and recommendations and suggestions for further studies.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

Conclusion

From the summary of findings, it can be inferred that the type of motivation will stimulate employees to perform very well and must be such that it will meet an employee’s desired needs and expectations. Furthermore, motivation must be such that it will enhance an employee’s promotion level and position, i.e. positive change.

Furthermore, the results obtained from the data analysed showed that employees‟ motivation has significant relationship with performance. In order words, the more motivated workers are, the better their performance in the workplace. It is then obvious from the analysis that employees‟ motivational activities are one key way to maintain improved performance in every organization. Therefore, it is clear that workers performance of any sort is a major function of incentive obtain from the organization and thereby improve and increase productivity.

Based on the findings of this study, it can be easily inferred that workers‟ reward package matters a lot and should be a matter of importance to management and managers. Therefore, this study is equally a call to managements to put in place an appropriate incentive plan suitable for workers‟ desire and productivity. Following the outcomes of this research work on motivation and employees performance in Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.

RECOMMENDATIONS

From the study, the following are the recommendations as established by the researcher;

1. Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro College of Education in Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State should also come up with uniform salaries of their staff because some employees were poor pay and while others were highly paid. The results and findings indicated that Human Resource Management Department should come up with an effective performance measurement system that rewards hard workers and penalizes ineffective workers.
2. It is important to develop such an atmosphere where employees are well satisfied with their jobs and cooperative with each other. In this way employees will be in position to utilize their full potential in their jobs.
3. The research study strongly suggests that there should be continuous training programmes to better equip members of staff. This will further increase the level of motivation among employees of the organization.
4. It is recommended to management of the institution to motivate the employees with what they need most and this will transform into a higher level of performance on part of the employees. This can be based on the concept of expectancy which stipulates that motivation will be high when people know what they have to do to get reward, expect that they will be able to get their reward and expect that the reward will be worthwhile
5. Good and conducive environment should be provided because, it helps in motivating employees. The environment should be safe, healthy and free of any danger.
6. It is therefore, imperative for banks to be able to identify superior performance and reward them. When someone does a good job, it is important to recognize such an achievement with a reward.

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