The motivational factors that contribute to the performance of Procter & gamble’s employees in Malaysia

Motivation is an inner desire to satisfy an unsatisfied need. From a business perspective, motivation process, employees go from need to motivate to behavior to consequence to satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Managers have come to realize that a motivated and satisfied workforce can contribute powerfully to bottom-line of profits. Motivation is the key performance improvement. There is an old saying you can take a horse but you cannot force it to drink, it will drink only if it’s thirsty- so with people. They will do what they want to do or otherwise motivated to do. Whether it is to excel on the workshop floor or in the ‘ivory tower’ they must be motivated or driven to it, either by themselves or thorough external stimulus.
Performance is considered to be a function of ability and motivation, thus:
• Job performance = (ability) (motivation)
Ability in turn depends on education, experience and training and its improvement is a slow and long process. On the other hand motivation can be improved quickly. There are many and an uninitiated manager may not even know where to start. As a guideline, there are broadly seven strategies for motivation.
• Positive reinforce / high expectations
• Effective discipline and punishment
• Treating people fairly
• Satisfying employees needs
• Setting work related goals
• Restructuring jobs
• Base rewards on job performance
These are the basic strategies, tough the mix in the final ‘recipe’ will vary from workplace situation to situation. Essentially, there is a gap between individuals actual and the manager tries to reduce this gap. Motivation is, in effect, a means to reduce and manipulate this gap. It is inducing others in a specific ways towards goals specifically stated by the motivator. Naturally, these goals as also the motivation system must conform to the corporate policy of the organization. Surprisingly, factors such as pay, benefits and working conditions were given a low rating by both groups. So after all, and contrary to common belief, money is not the prime motivator. (Though this should not be regarded as a signal to reward employees poorly or unfairly). For the purpose of this study, descriptive research was deployed in order to identify factors that contribute to motivation. Judgment and convenience sampling has been utilized with 100 respondents as the sample size. But it is only 90 feedbacks of respondents. Self-administered questionnaire was used as the survey instrument besides interviews as the sources of primary data. Other reliable reserves also served as secondary data.