Employees’ Assessment of Motivation Factors

The focus of this present study was the ranking of factors (assessment of importance) by employees and managers. Studying these factors is of special importance in concluding which of internal and external motivators are mostly evaluated by employees. It recommends to managers where to put emphasis to meet employees’ expectations. Factors that are mostly evaluated by public sector employees involved in the study include: good salaries, employee loyalty, feeling that the job is diverse and interesting; and those factors which are less evaluated include: supervisor’s help with personal issues feeling of being included in organization. Meanwhile, factors that private sector employees evaluate most include: good salaries, feeling of being recognized), job guarantee, and less evaluated are: supervisor’s help with personal issues diverse and interesting job.


Introduction
As the competition among organizations is growing stronger in a global dynamic environment, it is an important task for the HR management to attract and maintain a qualified work force.Motivation is the key here, so, how much are the managers capable of motivating their employees. Employees, who are motivated to work more, are more productive than those, who are not motivated [1]. They also claim that increase of productivity that comes as a result of increase of motivation, reduced the production costs. General motivation consists of two components namely internal motivation and external motivation. The extrinsic motivation arises from external elements such as salary or other benefit packages. However, intrinsic motivation, which derived from the inside of a person and seemingly related to their needs, desires, and goals has established a fact to overweigh the influence of extrinsic motivation [2].
A study was conducted to investigate the financial and nonfinancial factors impacting the employee performance and motivation of a Dubai based semigovernment commercial bank. The respondents ranked working conditions as the most important non-financial incentive [3].
The motivating factors are divided into two main groups: internal motivators and external motivators. Internal motivators include:  [4][5][6][7][8][9]. Their focus was to rank the factors (evaluate their importance) by employees and managers. Studying these factors is of special importance in concluding, which of internal and external motivators are mostly evaluated by employees. The results, drawn from these studies, recommend to managers where to put emphasis to meet employees' expectations. Evaluating the importance of these factors is very important for our paper.
There are a series of studies, conducted in different countries, about how employees evaluate the importance of the 10 motivation factors, which are considered as universal.
Several studies were conducted about the importance of motivation factors for the employees. One of the first studies was the one, conducted in 1946. It asked the involved industrial employees to rank 10 motivation factors, where 1 was ranked the most important factor and 10 the least important. The results of the survey are shown on the first column of Table 1. The most evaluated factor is "feeling of being recognized", and the least evaluated is "work discipline".
Another similar study was conducted in 1995 by [10] with the industrial employees, whose results are shown in the second column of Table 1. The employees ranked the factors "interesting job" and "feeling of being recognized"as the most important, while the factor "supervisor's help with personal issues" was ranked last.
In 1995 [7] conducted a survey on ranking the motivation factors by hospitality employees in USA. The results of this survey are shown on the third column of Table 1, where employees evaluated as the most motivating factors "good salaries" and "job gurantee", and as least motivating factor "supervisor's help with personal issues". In 2005, Catherine R. Johnson conducted a similar survey with restaurant employees in Florida, whose results are shown on column 4 of Table 1. This survey asked the employees to rank 12 motivation factors, where apart from 10 universal factors, were added "monetary reward for a job well done" and "public recognition for a job well done". On the top of the list the employees ranked "employee loyalty" and "good working conditions", whereas in the end they ranked "public recognition for a job well done" and "supervisor's help with personal issues".

EMPLOYEES' ASSESSMENT OF MOTIVATION FACTORS
Abstract: The focus of this present study was the ranking of motivation factors (assessment of importance) by employees and managers. Studying these factors is of special importance in concluding which of internal and external motivators are mostly evaluated by employees.It recommends to managers where to put emphasis to meet employees' expectations. Factors that are mostly evaluated by public sector employees, involved in the study, include: good salaries (10), employee loyalty (9), feeling that the job is diverse and interesting (8); and those factors, which are less evaluated, include: supervistor's help with personal issues (1), feeling of being included in an organization (2). Meanwhile, factors that private sector employees evaluate most include: good salaries (10), f eeling of being recognized (9), job guarantee (8), and less evaluated are: supervistor's help with personal issues (1), diverse and interesing job (2). Keywords: internal motivation, external motivation, employee, salary, job guarantee. Another study on ranking the motivation factors was conducted by [4], whose results are shown on the column 5 of Table 1. Her study ranked as most motivating factors "interesting job" and "good salaries", whereas "supervisor's help with personal issues" is a factor, standing in the end of the list of motivating factors.
The following table shows a summary of the above surveys as related to ranking the motivation factors.
The purpose of this study is to assess the importance of motivation factors (their classification) according to employees and managers in public and private organizations.

Methodology
The sample of this study includes employees from both public and private sectors in Korca Region. The public sector includes education and health services. The private sector includes employees from the production sector (food and garment production industry) and services employees, such as banks in Korca Region. There were a total of 383 employees, involved in the survey from both private and public sectors. The sample, made of 383 employees, is distributed according to sectors as follows: 59.5 % (n=228) of the participants were employees in the public sector and 40.5 % (n=155) in the private sector (Fig. 1).To rank 10 motivation factors (both internal and external) by public and private sectors employees, their average responses were respectively calculated and ranked. 1 was ranked the factor, having the lowest average, and 10 the factor, having the highest one.

Results of the survey and discussion
-Research questions 1: Are there differences in ranking the motivation factors between the present survey and the former surveys?
To rank 10 motivation factors (both internal and external) by public and private sectors employees, their average responses were respectively calculated and ranked. 1 was ranked the factor, having the lowest average, and 10 the factor, having the highest one. Table 2 shows the general ranking of motivation factors, resulting by the responses of all participants in the study. As the table shows, the most highly ranked factors are: good salaries (10), job guarantee (9) and feeling of being recognized (8). On the other hand, the lowest ranked factors are: supervisor's help with personal issues (1) and feeling of being included in an organization (2). External motivators are higher ranked than internal motivators.
All the above survey results are compared to the results, frawn from the survey, conducted in Korca Region. The motivation factors' ranking, made by non-managerial employees in Korca Region, is shown in the last column on Table 3. Other than the previoulsy mentioned surveys, the highest ranked factor here is "10", whereas the lowest ranked is "1". "Good salaries" and "job gurantee" top the list, whereas "supervisor's help with personal issues" takes the last place.

Table 2
General ranking of motivation factors

Motivation factors (Expectations)
Importance* Feeling of being included in an organization 2 Supervisor's help with personal issues 1 Job is diverse and interesting 3 Employee loyalty 7 Employee's personal growth or carrier advancement 6 Feeling of being recognized 8 Job guarantee 9 Good salaries 10 Job discipline 5 Good working conditions 4 Note: * -highest ranking is 10 and lowest ranking is 1 Source: The Author -Research question 2: Are there differences in ranking the motivation factors among public sector employees and private secctor employees?
The results of motivation factor assessment by private and public sectors employees, who were involved in the survey, are shown on Table 4. The highest ranked factors by public sector employees are: good salaries (10), employee loyalty (9), diverse and interesting job (8); the lowest ranked factors are: supervisor's help with personal issues (1), feeling of being included in an organization (2).
Meanwhile, the private sector employees' highest ranking is as follows: good salaries (10), feeling of being recognized (9), job guarantee (8), and the lowest ranking: supervisor's help with personal issues (1) and job is diverse and interesting (2).

Discussion
Employees in the study assessed the external motivators as the most important factors. Salaries and and job guarantee top the list; this classfication is associated with the economic situation, stress and uncertainty of employees about their jobs.
When the classification is based on the employment sector (public, private) it can be noticed, that the salaries top the list for both sectors, whereas the job guarantee is mostly appreciated in the private sector (8) and less in the public sector (6). Feeling of being recognized takes the precedence in the private sector (9) These results could be put in practice by the HR managers for motivating the employees based on their expectations.
In upcoming studies, we recommend that other demographic factors are considered, such as: gender, age, education level, incomes, factors that we think affect the employees' motivation and their job expectations.

Conclusions
No motivation factor remains "the most important" since the environment is continuously changing. The economic situation and job related stress (safety and gurantee) direct more of employees' attention to external motivators than internal ones. Factors that are higher ranked by public sector employees, involved in the survey, are: good salaries (10), employee loyalty (9), diverse and interesting job (8); and lower ranked factors are:supervisor's help with personal issues(1) and feeling of being included in an organization (2). Factors that are higher ranked by private sector employees are good salaries (10), feeling of being recognized (9), job gurantee (8), and lower ranked are: supervisor's help with personal issues (1) and diverse and interesting job (2).