Employee Motivation and Job Satisfaction

Introduction

General and Specific context of the study

Employees are considered as a pillars of the organization. Every business to be successful, it needs dedication and strong commitment of all the people working in an organization (Ibrahim, 2015). It is important for employees to be satisfied and get motivated to their job in order to be able to give their best at the job responsibilities they are being provided. Job satisfaction plays vital role in motivating staff and keeping them enthusiastic, which can result in development of overall performance of an organization (Machado-taylor, meira Sores, Brites Ferriera et.al 2015).

Research problem and justification

Today many organizations focus on increasing their productivity and making lots of profits by producing more products and not prioritizing their employees, but organizations forget that their main source of development are their people. The organization can only progress if their people are happy. According to the survey (Feb 2019) done in among 365 small business of United States,  it has been found that more than 33% of employee loose motivation to work after they has started to work in small business.  The main reason that makes employees dissatisfied are some of the factors, such as Salary/ wages, appreciation, and less opportunities at work. Due to which they are not motivated to work. In small businesses/ firms, where there are less number of people and they are assigned with more work. Although, several research has been done regarding various large organizations, this research paper will only be focused on the problem related to small firms. It has been observed that in such business, more employees are not motivated and satisfied because of the reason that they spend most of their day at work but doesn’t receive much appreciation and reward for the job they do. Therefore, this research will be based on the problem employees are facing in their job, and elaborate the reasons due to which they are not motivated to perform better.

Aims/Objectives

This research paper aims to determine the various factors leading to the employee motivation and job satisfaction in an organization.  It will also discuss about the relationship with these two terms and its role in the overall organization performance.

Research Questions

 According to the research problem identified, the following questions has been developed to be addressed in this research paper:

How different factors influence Employee motivation and Job satisfaction in Small firms?

How employee motivation and Job satisfaction are related to each other?

What are the consequences of having demotivated and unsatisfied employees in an organization?

Literature Review

Employee motivation is defined as a factor, that can encourage an employee to pursue work tasks or goals in better way. It is a driving factor to employees, for them to become more productive and advantageous for the organization. It is also defined as ability to make decision in which employee chooses a preferred outcome and get themselves ready to aquire them (Mensah, Boye, Tawiah, Kwesi, 2016). Motivation is an internal force based on employees needs to drive him/her to achieve a goal.

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The situation of employees showing a progressive attitude in any organization is referred as a job satisfaction. The feeling of an employee about his job and the various other aspects that keeps him happy is Job satisfaction (Hedge & Borman,2012).It can be vary on each and every employees within the same company, where one employee can be satisfied and another can be dissatisfied with the same factors. There can be various factors which lead employees to have positive opinion about their job position and encourage them to perform better. One of the most widely used definitions in organizational research is that which defines job satisfaction as “a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences”.

In general sense we can define both of these term as positively related with each other. In this research, the factors affecting employee motivation and Job satisfaction will be discussed and also their relationship with regard to overall development of organization will be focused.  Some of them can be as follows (Quratul-Ain Manzoor ,2015)

Working environment

Decision making Authority

Appreciation

Salary/Wages

Training and development

Empowerment

Safety and security

Responsibilities

There have been many studies conducted to describe the relationship between employee motivation and job satisfaction and also the factors affecting these two terms. Many of the earlier studied literature focuses on the importance of job satisfaction and motivation as a crucial element which has positive effect on organizational success.

Osabiya and Joseph (2015) mentioned in their article that if the employees are unsatisfied, they produce unsatisfactory results. Therefore, it is important for top management to prioritize their employees and when they are satisfied with the company, they can do their best to achieve company’s goal.

Bin Shmailan(2016) described job satisfaction and work performance are linked with each other. He also mentioned that successful organizations understand the benefits of happy staff, excellent performance and employees being engaged.

Another research was conducted by Tarigan and Ariyani(2015) , where they have pinpointed that job satisfaction and employee turnover is centered on one of the important factor called organizational commitment. The study supports the basic assumption that, when employees are satisfied with their work and feel committed to the organization, they tend not to terminate their employment voluntarily.

Alam (2015) concluded that the employees on the researched organization were not satisfied with their job, as they were not motivated by their employer. The main reasons for demotivation was found to be job insecurity, working load, Social status, lack of retirement benefit and so on.

Similarly David William (2018) has mentioned that training and career development  opportunities plays a significant role in increasing the job satisfaction and also helpful for the retention of employees. This research has also suggested that ensuring social integration within the organization will foster to develop the employee and employer relationship.

Research Design

This research is conducted to describe the relationship between employee motivation and Job satisfaction and its impact on overall performance of the small businesses. The research design will be descriptive in order to recognize the influential factors affecting employee motivation and Job Satisfaction. Both qualitative and quantitative data are to be collected in this research in order to answer the research questions by conducting survey method.

Data

Survey method and sampling description

Data Collection

Primary and secondary sources of data collection will be applied in this research. Primary source can be the employees working in the organization.

Whereas , secondary source will be the various reports, newsletters and journals of the organization.

Population and Sample Size

The main aim of the study is to factors leading to the employee satisfaction and job satisfaction within small businesses. The data will be gathered from small firms specific to   Accounting Firms around Sydney. As it is impossible to conduct survey within all of the firms , this research will only consider 30 accounting firms and will randomly conduct questionnaire survey with 3 staff of each firm. In this way the research will be more specific with the population and its sample size and thus can obtain more precise result.

Conclusion:

Employee motivation and Job satisfaction provides positive effect on the overall performance of the organization. Whether the organization is big or small, it is necessary for the company to understand that their employees should always be looked after and valued. This research will more based on the influential factors that effects on employee motivation and job satisfaction level. It will also analyze the relationship between these two factors and its impact on the organizational performance and its productivity. As there has been various research conducted related to the employee motivation topic on big companies, the issue to be raised in this research will be related to the small accounting firms and their small size of people around Sydney.

References

Manzoor. Q.A(2015). Impact of Employees Motivation on Organizational Effectiveness. Department of Management Sciences, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur . European Journal of Business and Management., 11(5) ,15-20.

Osabiya & Joseph B(2015). The effect of employees’ motivation on organizational performance. Journal of public administration and policy research. Vol. 7(4) ,pp. 62-75.

doi: 10.5897/JPAPR2014.0300

Tarigan V & Ariani D.W (2015), Empirical Study Relations Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, and Turnover Intention, Advances in Management & Applied Economics, vol. 5, no.2, 2015, 21-42

Taylor ,M. Soares ,V, M.  Brites, R.Ferreira J B, Farhangmehr M, Gouveia O R & Marvin Peterson (2016) Academic job satisfaction and motivation: findings from a nationwide study in Portuguese higher education, Studies in Higher Education, 41:3, 541-559, DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2014.942265

Mensah,K. Boye, E.  Tawiah, E. & Kwesi (2016). Employee Motivation and Work Performance: A comparative study of mining companies in Ghana. Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management (JIEM). [ISSN:] 2013-0953 [Volume:] 9 [Year:] 2016 [Issue:] 2 [Pages:] 255-309

https://smallbiztrends.com/2019/02/small-business-motivation-statistics.html

Teik Toe, Teoh & Murhadi, Werner & , Wanglin. (2013). RESEARCH STUDY ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN EMPLOYEE JOB SATISFACTION AND EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION. International Journal of Business Management. 6. 142-166.

William, D.(2018). Job Satisfaction Hits 51% But Small Businesses Must Still Work to Retain Employees. In Small Business Operations