The influence of employee motivation on job performance: a study of a few Superspar stores in Durban central.

Abstract

Organizations use motivation on their personnel so that they may be able to achieve high productivity. Every organization would want to motivate its employees and this motivation may be financial or non-financial. Management have to know and also understand what motivates its employees in the organization in order for them to achieve the desired performance. Good motivation in the organization pushes the employee to want to perform and show his/her full potential in the work performance. This study addresses the extent to which employee motivation can influence job productivity in the retail sector. This study’s objectives were to determine how motivation influences job performance, establish which motivational measures are currently in place and how effective are these and to establish ways to improve the performance of workers within the Superspars in Durban, Berea. The study’s literature review covered the factors affecting employee motivation, employee performance, and theories of motivation which included Herzberg Two factor model and Maslow Hierarchy of needs just to mention a few. The model of employee motivation and employee performance used to guide the study was by Zameer, Ali, Nisar and Amir (2014). The study follows a descriptive and an explanatory research approach. The primary data was collected from employees of Avonmore Superspar and Glenwood Superspar using survey questionnaires. The study used a quantitative approach with self-administered questionnaires with a Likert 5 point scale. The questionnaire was handed over to 143 participants and a nonprobability sampling method was used to fulfil the required objectives. The data that were acquired were run on SPSS to enable the analysis. Descriptive and Inferential statistics were used in the analysis of the data. According to the findings employees may be influenced by factors such as compensation, incentives, environment and training. The employers may use job security on the employees as a way to increase job performance. In addition communication within the various departments in the organization was found to be a motivational factor as employees felt to be part of the organization. The findings were used to make various recommendations for the management to use when formulating training, compensation and operative strategies so as to motivate employees in the retail business. The intuitions were used as recommendations for future studies.