Motivation and Productivity: What Nexus?

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 Various studies have established the correlates between staff motivation and productivity in an organization. According to Bob (1997), to accomplish organizational objectives, the management must not only create a favorable environment in which the employees must work but motivate workers to greater productivity. An unmotivated worker becomes a liability to the organizational setting (Akintoye, 2000). Motivation is therefore very important to management, for it is a reflection of management efficiency and workers’ effectiveness. Ubeku (2004) viewed motivation of workers through wages and salaries as directly consequential to the productive level of the employees. Ogunsaju (2006) defined motivation as something that manager needs to do to get the worker respond to certain expected ways. Robbins (2000) defined motivation as the process that account for an individual’s intensity, direction and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.

            To Wayne (1998) motivation is a psychological forces within a person that determine the direction of a person’s behavior in an organization, a person’s level of effort and level of persistence. Armstrong (2012) conceived of motivation as the force that energizes, directs, and sustains behavior, it is concerned with the strength and direction of behavior, and the factors that influence people to behave in certain ways. What could be deduced from the above is that motivation has a very high tendency of affecting the productivity of the workers such that a well motivated worker would exhibit productive work behavior while ill-motivated employees are likely to portray counter-productive behavior (Ojokuku, 2013). According to Wayne (1998), organizational success is dependent upon members being motivated to use their full talents and abilities, and directed to perform well in the right areas. A closer observation of the reviewed literatures in this sub-section would reveal that many of the available researches on motivation and productivity are generally theoretical and not much of the researches are empirically based. Moreso, it could also be seen from the foregoing that many of the earlier researches on motivation and employees’ productivity focused more on Western societies.

4.0      Methods

            This study is a survey research. Bichi (2004) believed that survey research is the best means of collecting information from a representative sample, to describe the situation as they exist. This study investigated if motivational incentives available in CNSSL have significant effect on certain productive elements of the employees. The choice of a communication work setting is as a result of the fact that the communication industry in Nigeria is largely owned by private organizations and that employees of these organizations are sometimes denied of certain motivational packages which could have some significant effect on the productive level of the employees. In this study, two motivational incentives, (which stand as independent variables) and two productive behaviors (which stand as dependent variables) were considered for empirical testing in the research. Hence, the two motivational packages to be considered are salary attractiveness and conception of work environment, while productive elements to be examined are some of the organization’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI) such as task fulfillment which will be measured by the rate at which call targets were met and the zeal of the employee to support the organization in achieving its goals. In order to achieve this, the researcher asked the respondents questions about the variables.

            Data used in the study were obtained through primary source, the study is quantitative, and questionnaire was adopted as the instrument of data collection for the study. Questionnaire used for the study was structured into three (3) sections. The first section was used to retrieve socio-demographic attributes of the respondents; the second section was used to elicit information on the existing motivational packages while the third was used to retrieve information regarding the productive tendencies of the respondents.

            The population of the study consists of 634 employees who work in the MTN call centre otherwise referred to as CNSSL in Oke-Odo area of Ilorin, Kwara state. These are majorly employees who are employed to pick calls to respond to MTN customers’ queries. The sample for this study consists of 25 per cent of the 634 employees which amount to one hundred and fifty nine employees of the centre who were selected through simple random sampling technique. This sampling technique was utilized because of the homogenous characteristics of the respondents in relations to the variables under study.

            However, of the 159 questionnaires distributed, only 144 returned the questionnaire and just 130 of the returned questionnaire were found to be valid for analysis in this research work.  For the purpose of analysis, descriptive and inferential statistics were employed; frequency distribution and percentage were used for descriptive analysis of data collected while, chi-square was used as inferential statistical tools for the study. Chi-square was used to ascertain if significant relationship exist between the independent and dependent variables of the study.

References

Bob N. (1997). “1001 ways to energize employees” New York: Workman Publishing

Cole, G.A (2002). Management: Theory and practice. London: TJ International

Fayol H. (1949). General and industrial management, trans. C. Storrs, Pitman.

Forrester, J.W. (1993). “Low productivity: it is a problem or merely a symptom?” Handbook       for productivity measurement and improvement, Cambridge: Productivity Press,     

French, L.N. (2003). The personnel management process New York: Houghton Co.

Hofstede G. (1980).` “Culture consequences: International differences” Work and             organization.   (2) 4: 106-138.

Hofstede G. (1991). “Culture and organization” Software of the Mind. London:             Harper and      Brothers.        

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