Introduction
Human behavior is thought to arise from certain compulsions, be they internal or external; these forces that drive people to do certain things and to do them in certain ways are called motivation. In human resource management, the ability of a manager to recognize what motivates employees to tap into these impulsions so as to direct their behaviors in order to achieve certain desirable outcomes is very essential. The focus of this paper is on motivation in general and specifically in one organization, the Standard chartered bank.
Rationale for study
To start with, the choice of this topic was informed by the obvious need for organizations to establish if there is evidence supporting the notion that employee motivation translates to high employee retention rates so as to enable a cost benefit analysis of employee motivation programs.
Secondly, this study will facilitate identification of motivation strategies that are most effective in promoting employee motivation at Standard Chartered Bank. Lastly, this study will inform if there is need to implement the current motivation strategies being used by the HR department based on their effectiveness by assessing the current level of motivation and the resultant employee retention rates within Standard chartered bank.
Objectives
1. To determine the efficacy of motivation strategies used by the Standard Chartered Bank’s HR on the organizations employees.
2. To establish if there exists a correlation between the motivation level of the employees and the organization’s employee retention rates.
3. To determine the level of individual motivation among employees at Standard Chartered Bank.
Literature review
List of sources
Beecham, Sarah. et al. “Motivation in Software Engineering: A Systematic Literature Review.” Information and Software Technology 50 (2008): 860–878. Print.
Forno, Arianna. and Merlone, Ugo. “Incentives and individual motivation in supervised work groups.” European Journal of Operational Research 207 (2010): 878–885. Print.
Grant, Adam. et al. “Impact and the Art of Motivation Maintenance: The Effects of Contact with Beneficiaries on Persistence Behavior.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 103 (2007): 53–67. Print.
Leete, Laura. “Wage Equity and Employee Motivation in Nonprofit and For-Profit Organizations.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 43 (2000): 423–446. Print.
Mak, Brenda. and Sockel, Hy. “A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of IS Employee Motivation and Retention.” Information & Management 38 (2001): 265-276.
Forno and Merlone (878) in their study regret the almost complete disregard of individual motivation in the study of organizational economics which clearly shows the timeliness of this particular study.
This source is important as it highlights the importance that motivation has to organizations which is one of the aims of our study since we seeks to identify if there is any relationship between employees motivation and their retention. Additionally, this source also discusses in great detail one model that investigates the cost-benefit of incentive motivations.
Mak and Sockel (266) in their study posit that one of the three major manifestations of employee retention is attrition due to diminished levels of individual staff motivation. This relates directly with our research objective as we intend to determine if retention level is a function of motivation.
Secondly, this source will be important since it has researched on various specific variables of motivation that directly influence retention rates in organization and employed a research design that is very similar to that used in this study.
Similarly Beecham et al (874) in their study found out that attrition made one of the most common outcomes of a de-motivated workforce among others. The relevance of this paper finding to our study is that it will provide us with literature review of factors that also de-motivate employees.
Additionally, because this study has set out to document current knowledge on motivation subject in general, it will provide a valuable literature source for our research study on every aspect of motivation.
Grant et al investigated the impact that employee-beneficiary relationship has on their motivation. Because this study investigates how motivation is influenced among employees in general it will be a valuable resource for our study. Secondly, since the focus of this research study intends to identify how workplace environment impacts on employee motivation, it directly relates with this study.
Finally, in the study by Leete the findings indicate a correlation between wage equity and employee motivation. This is one of very few studies that investigate the extent that wage equity can be used to explain the resulting motivation among employees in an organization, and the findings for this paper has two immediate implications for our research.
One, the result for this study will facilitate the conceptualization of theories for our paper and secondly, the findings will inform the recommendation section for our study especially on the issue of wage equity.
Research design
Because the major objective of this research study is to investigate the efficacy of motivation strategies used by the HR in retaining employees at Standard chartered bank, the most appropriate study design to use would be descriptive research design.
Descriptive design is most appropriate where the objective of the research study is intended to generate answers regarding a particular phenomenon or set of issues and is primarily utilized when answers of what, how and so on are needed (Newman 45). Descriptive research design is also appropriate where the research study intends to investigate a topic that has several issues to address as is currently the case (Newman 45).
Additionally, descriptive research design is best used where subjects are intended to be researched in their natural environment so as not to interfere with the results because of study biases (Newman 45).
In this case the intention is to identify motivation strategies used by HR at Standard chartered bank and how these strategies influence employee retention rates. This phenomenon is best researched in its natural setting of the organizational context so as to arrive at an informed conclusion and identify relevant recommendations; this is the major reason why the descriptive research design is preferred.
Data collection
The proposed methods of data collection should involve three approaches which are questionnaires, desk-based review and assessments. Questionnaires will be used for interviewing employee on various variables of the study, desk-based review will be used in investigating the rate of employee turnover for a given period at the bank while assessment template will be used to establish the efficacy of motivation strategies being used at Standard chartered bank. These data collection methods are the most appropriate since they will facilitate data capture of all the key variables of interest.
Data analysis
Since the data generated from this study will be both qualitative and quantitative in nature, the data analysis method for this research study will consequently also be qualitative and quantitative.
Qualitative data will first be coded and then analyzed using descriptive statistics technique while quantitative data will be analyzed using statistical programs such as SPSS (Silver 88).
Once the data has been organized and analyzed it would now be easy to perform various statistical tests for instance on whether there is positive correlation between the motivation strategies used and employee retention rate at the Standard chartered bank which is one of the objectives for this research study.
Some examples of relevant statistical test for this research will be Pearson Correlation Coefficient which is a measure of linear dependence, referred as correlation between two variables of interest that occurs in a continuous format (Silver 32). As such, both of these forms of data analysis will enable analysis of key variables in order to accept or reject the hypotheses of this study and investigate the study objectives.
Potential problems
As a general rule every research study must incorporate very essential considerations of ethics that must be observed throughout the process. One such ethical issue to consider is referred as confidentiality and privacy. Since this study will require collection of variables that are confidential such as employee own perception of motivation, if employee will consider changing employee, why and so on, it will be necessary to guarantee confidentiality so that the information collected will not be in anyway used against the employees.
In any case confidentiality will also guarantee honest feedback from respondents and therefore prevent several types of study bias. If this issue is not addressed early on it is very likely that respondents answers that are confidential can become public which can have detrimental effect.
To overcome this foreseeable challenge it will be necessary to design the questionnaire forms in such a manner that will not enable identification of the respondent. This is usually done by coding the questionnaires in a manner that guarantee the privacy of respondent feedback that is given in confidence.
Works Cited
Beecham, Sarah. et al. “Motivation in Software Engineering: A Systematic Literature Review.” Information and Software Technology 50 (2008): 860–878. Print.
Forno, Arianna. and Merlone, Ugo. “Incentives and individual motivation in supervised work groups.” European Journal of Operational Research 207 (2010): 878–885. Print.
Grant, Adam. et al. “Impact and the Art of Motivation Maintenance: The Effects of Contact with Beneficiaries on Persistence Behavior.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 103 (2007): 53–67. Print.
Leete, Laura. “Wage Equity and Employee Motivation in Nonprofit and For-Profit Organizations.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 43 (2000): 423–446. Print.
Mak, Brenda. and Sockel, Hy. “A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of IS Employee Motivation and Retention.” Information & Management 38 (2001): 265-276.
Newman, Leon. Social Research Methods. Boston; Allys & Bacons. 1994. Print.
Silver, David. 1993. Interpreting Qualitative Data. London; Sage Publications. 1993. Print.