The impact of motivation on worker performance: special reference to district and divisional secretariats in Ampara district

Abstract

The notions of motivation and work performance have become a popular driving force behind most successful organizations. In Sri Lanka, the government organizations seek to improve its workers performance fo r severe challenges exist to achieve the overall objectives of the organization so a s to extend adequate motivational incentives to its entire Workers. This study makes a critical analysis of motivation and workers performance of the employees working in District Secretariat and Divisional Secretariats in Ampara District and identifies several motivation incentives that can help boost better performance. This study is an explanatory approach and simple random sampling was done and 244 respondents out of 976 from six secretariats in Ampara District. According to these research findings, there seem to be positive effect of motivation with Work performance. That is, the two variables such as, financial motivation and non financial motivation have positive effect on the work performance of the staff. This investigation clarifies that staff grade officers perform their work better than non staff grade officers. Non staff grade workers feel that they have not been given a good salary and incentives to work with interest. The study further establishes that element such as adequate salary, incentives, retirement benefits, training, loan and high education are important to motivate workers. Further, achievement, recognitions, responsibility, initiative and flexibility were seen to be vital for workers to encourage good performance. Thus, financial and non financial motivations have direct and significant relationship with worker performance among employees in District and Divisional secretariats in Ampara District in Sri Lanka. Accordingly 98% of variance in worker performance was explained by both financial and non financial motivation. Hence, the research finding would be immensely contributing to organizations to modify their motivational schemes with a view to enhancing the work performance in the organization.