AN EVALUATION OF MOTIVATIONAL POLICIES IN ENHANCING EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE

AN EVALUATION OF MOTIVATIONAL POLICIES IN ENHANCING EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE

CHAPTER ONE

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Hornby (2010) defined an employee as “a person who is paid to work for somebody” (p.480). The International Labour Organization elaborate this definition by stating that employees are people who work for a public or private employer and receive remuneration in wages, salary, commission, tips, piece rate, or pay in kind. It is important to know that an employee is one who under a contract is employed by an employer in either a private or public entity of an organization to work for that particular organization, with a reward at the end of the work, be it a salary, wage etc on daily, weekly or monthly basis

In addition to this view, a Nigerian employee should not only be a salary, wage, etc earner, he/she should be given the liberty that is to have a voice or freedom to contribute in the decision making of the organization and should have the right to quit with genuine reasons and can be feared when he/she breaches the law with strong query before that. Employee motivation Among financial, economic and human resources, the latest are more essential and have the capability to endow a company with competitive edge as compared to others (Rizwan& Ali 2010). Employee performance fundamentally depend on many factors like performance appraisals, employee motivation, employee satisfaction, compensation, training and development, job security, organizational structure and others, but the area of study is focused only on employee motivation as this factor highly influence the performance of employees. Employee motivation is one of the policies of managers to increase effectual job management amongst employees in organizations (Shadare et al, 2009). A motivated employee is responsive of the definite goals and objectives he/she must achieve, therefore he/she directs its effort in that direction. Employee motivation is affected by both personal characteristics as well as workplace environment Organizations benefit from „engaged workers” in a number of ways. Two-way communication helps to shape employees perceptions and aid the company in understanding employee better. Employee satisfaction has positive influence on customer satisfactions in the service industry (Harte, Schmidt, &Hayes, 2002). In addition, for organizations to achieve effective organizational management there must be a free follow of communication between the employers and the employees in the organization. The employee should be carried along in the decision making of the company, it helps to reduce grapevine in work place. It is obvious to know that a satisfied employee works with enthusiasm in other to satisfy customers and achieve the organizational goals, while the reverse is the case to an unmotivated employee.Benefits of Employee Motivation in Nigerian Organizations The importance of employee motivation in Nigerian organizations cannot be over emphasized, because it provides the following benefits: Improves level of efficiency of employees.The level of a subordinate or anemployee does not only depend upon his qualifications and abilities. For getting best of his work performance, the gap between ability and willingness has to be filled which helps in improving the level of performance of subordinates. This will result into increase in productivity, reducing cost of operations, and improvingover  all efficiency in the work place(Adi, 2000).. Puts human resources into action.

AN EVALUATION OF MOTIVATIONAL POLICIES IN ENHANCING EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE