Factors responsible for motivation of administrative staff in a national government service delivery department.

Ethical Clearance reference number: 2022 FBMSREC 034

Organizations encounter concerns such as absenteeism, workplace conflicts, unproductive employees, and employees suffering from physical and mental illnesses (Hoel, Cooper and Einarsen, 2020:209-234). These problems are interconnected and are almost certainly caused by a lack of employee motivation. Failure to satisfy employee needs are most likely the cause of conflicts with their employees whereas unfair treatment and bias recognition supposedly cause low morale and conflicts with the employer as well as the fellow employees. These needs include fair pay for all employees, safety and security in their workplace as well as for their jobs, equal treatment of employees and more and they are some of the factors that motivate employees in the workplace. The conflicts in the workplace may give rise to negative work environment, which according to Hoel, Cooper and Einarsen, (2020:209-234) can lead to physical and mental problems, absenteeism, and productivity loss. Low morale has a number of negative consequences, including decreased productivity and mental health issues stated by (Gates, Gillespie and Succop, 2011:59-66).

Depression affects 264 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) worldwide and Business in the Community (2019) found that 39 percent of the 4000 employees polled experienced poor mental health the previous year (2018) as a result of their occupations.

Because of the significant number of employees who are sad as a result of their jobs, many employees feel unmotivated or miserable at work (Chandrasekar K, 2011:1-19). This threatens organizational performance because according to (Shahzadi, Javed, Pirzada, Nasreen and Khanam, 2014:159-166), employee performance is positively influenced by employee motivation and as found by Rongen, Robroek, van Lenthe and Burdorf, (2013:406-415) low motivation gives rise to absenteeism and reduce productivity.

The aforementioned difficulties highlight the necessity for companies, both public and private, to interact with employees to assess their personal needs and how they might be met while attaining corporate objectives.

The researcher has used a mixed method approach to evaluate the association between variables because of the nature of the study. A total number of 100 administrative employees of the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure took take part in the study.