Employee Perceptions On Motivating Factors In The UAE Government Sector (essay).

Discuss about the Employee Perceptions on Motivating Factors.

This report proposal mainly focuses on the factors that motivate the employees working at the government sector in UAE. Motivation can be defined as the reason for the behavior of the people. There are various factors or elements that can motivate people differently and impact of these factors totally depends upon the personality of the individual.  Motivation is very much essential for the employees to provide the organization with the effective performance. Thus, the management of the organizations needs to implement some of the strategies that help the employees to feel motivated towards their work and achievement of the objectives (Abu Dhabi World Online, 2017). This is because the achievements of the objectives by the employees in turn help the organization to attain its ultimate goals of success. The purpose of conducting research on this topic is to analyze those factors or the motivators that motivate the employees of the government organization in UAE to perform. The government organization has been focused in the report because it is difficult to motivate the government employees. Media and the people have portrayed the image of government employees as overpaid and underworked. It has been determined that most of the people think that the employees in the government organizations do not work. It would be very interesting to research about this topic in order to explore the actual truth of the government organization as well as to know about those factors that can force the employees in the government sector to perform (Aguinis, 2014).

In the private sector companies, it is the responsibility of the management of the company to look after the needs of the employees and to develop the strategies that can help them to be motivated about their work. However, in the government sector, the government of the country and the state is responsible for making such strategies so that government employees can be inspired to perform. One of the initiatives taken by the government is “Happiness mission”. This research also explores the impact on this mission over the motivation of the government employees as well as on their happiness level (Askary, Kukunuru and Pech, 2014).

Every research has been conducted in order to answer the questions associated with the research topic. According to the topic of this research, there are some of the questions that need to be answered at the end of the research. The key research questions are:

• Why government sector employees have been portrayed as overpaid and underworked?
• What are the factors that can motivate them to enhance their performance?
• What is the role of “Happiness mission”?

Literature review

All the above stated questions are clearly linked with the topic of the research. The answer of these questions will provide the clear picture of the government sector organizations and the efficiency of their policies to keep their employees motivated (Blackstone, n.d.). Role of happiness mission is also included in the research questions because it plays a major role in the life of the people in UAE.

It is a fact that managing the employees in private sector companies is very much different from that of the employees in government sector. There can be various reasons for this, such as the environment of the organization as well as the policies. This difference forces the management of both the types of the organization to work differently. In case of the government organizations, it is mandatory for the management or the government to make the policies those results in more engagement of the employees. It has been analyzed by the study that there are many factors that affect the employee engagement of the government sector employees towards their work. Also, these factors restrict the motivation of the employees to work (Cowley and Smith, 2014). The major factor that has been identified is the critics of the government and the government employees. These critics such as media and the politicians criticize the work of the government on the throne. The opposition political parties play a major role in bringing down the image of the government policies and functioning of the public organizations. These types of criticism affect the morale of the employees to work in negative way. This issue can be resolved by encountering the positive aspects of the government organizations and informing the government employees that their work is affecting the public of their country. The higher authorities of the government organization can educate the employees about their power of changing the public opinions that is not there with the private sector employees (Harvard Business Review, 2017). It has been researched out that when the general public have interaction with government servants results in positive outcome, they have positive image of the government organizations and vice versa. This depicts that the performance of the employees is very essential to make the image of the government organizations. The need of hour is to give proper knowledge to the government sector employees about their duties towards public and at the same time public also have to develop trust amongst them for the government organizations that are working for their benefit (Tria and Valotti, 2012).

Happiness Mission in UAE

Another reason that has been identified with regard to poor performance of government employees is the change in leadership or the frequent changes in the leadership. The sudden and frequent changes in the leadership in the public sector organizations result in change in policies of the organization and thus affect the performance of the employees (Ibrahim and Al Falasi, 2014). This is because employees take so much time to understand the policies. One of the most important factors that restrict the motivation of the people is poor goal setting. There is no goal setting criteria for the employees as the government organization has long term goals towards the nation so it is difficult to break those goals into smaller objectives. This results in non-involvement of the employees to achieve the goals as they do not have proper path to follow to achieve the same. It is mandatory for the government organizations to modify their organizational structure and policies in such a way that assist the employees to achieve their targets. The employees should be penalized for not achieving the targets and also should be rewarded if perform efficiently. Both these strategies will motivate the employees to work and give their best in the organization. There is need to develop competition (Ismail and Ahmed, 2015).

The government needs to implement such strategies that can help the employees to feel motivated. This can be done by involving them in decision making process and hiring the people that are already motivated with the public sector agenda rather than hiring the people who do not wants to work and earn handsome salaries (Williams, 2005).

In UAE, government has taken initiative to develop motivation among the government employees by implementing the “Happiness mission” programs in the country that aims at developing happy society in the country. Studies revealed that happy people stay healthy, work efficiently and live longer lives. This statement suggests that if the employees at workplace stay happy, they perform effectively. In UAE, a happiness minister has been appointed who is responsible for developing the policies and strategies so that the society and the employees at public and private sector organization remain happy. The vision and mission of this program suggests that UAE wants to be the part of top countries that have happy society (Kearney and Berman, 2009). The government wants to make happiness and positivity as the lifestyle of the people at UAE and also implement it at the government sector organizations. The major objectives of this plan are to harmonize the policies of the government in order to spread happiness and positivity in the society. This plan aims at developing the policies that incentivize the public and the private sector organization so that employees of the organizations feel happy and motivated to work. It not only works at spreading happiness to society but it is about implementing the strategies and the legislation related to happiness at the workplace also. Another concern of the government is to measure the level of happiness in the government entities.

As far as the motivational factors of the employees are considered, it has been analyzed that the employees want work-life-balance as the major factors (Lavigna, 2013). However, analyzing the situation of the government sector, it has been realized that training and development can be considered as the key factor to motivate the employee to work and perform effectively. This is because government sector is filled with old and aged people and thus they do not have any idea about the new and latest technological processes. This in turn restricts them to work effectively if compared to the private sector people who are very much acknowledged with the latest technological systems.

According to the early studies and the analysis, it has been determined that the motivational factors can be identified by assessing the policies and the strategies at the government organizations in UAE. The employees are the best source of information. It is essential to acquire the information from the employees at all the level so that clear picture of the situation at the government organization can be assessed. It is the process that provides the in depth knowledge of the topic. Employees can easily discus their issues and the correct situation at the workplace. The idea of questioning the employees of different level provides the information from every end so that the research can be accurately conducted (Ljungholm, 2014).

The research that would be descriptive in nature because assessing the policies also requires lots of article readings. Exploratory research would also be used so as to explore the ideas to motivate the employees of the government sector and to assess the impact of the factors that restricts the motivation of the employees to perform. Exploratory research can be defined as the research type in which ideas have been explored and the cause and effect relationship has been studied.

As far as the data collection method has been considered, the first method that has been used is questionnaire to the employees. Questionnaire is the set of questions that need to be answered by the associated people. These questions are made in relevancy with the problem or the question of the research. It should be made in such a way that it can cover all the aspect and can clearly analyze to answer the research questions (McFarlane, 2017). This is considered the primary source of information. The secondary source of information is articles and the news published in newspaper or the magazines. The data from these sources can be used to determine the outcomes of the research.

Qualitative approach of research is the best to conduct the research for the above stated topic, this is because motivational factors of the employee performance cannot be measured in quantity but the intensity of the employee satisfaction at the workplace can be assessed. More the satisfaction of the employee at the workplace happier they would be (Mone and London, 2014).

The outcomes of the research are the statements that answer the questions of the research that are framed at the initial phase of the report (Razack and Upadhyay, 2017). Outcomes should be relevant to the topic as well as the questions. After conducting the whole research, it has been analyzed that there are many factors that restrict the motivation of the government employees to perform at the workplace. Some of the factors are the criticism of the ruling party government by the opposition that lowers down the morale of the government employee to work, the change in the leadership at the higher level of the management in the organizations and the untrained staff in the government organizations. It is the need of hour to educate them about their responsibility towards public and to make them realize the importance of their power. After assessing the happiness mission of Abu Dhabi, it has been identified that the goal of this program has great impact on the lifestyle of the pope and the society in UAE. The government has made many initiatives and policies to spread happiness among the people as well as among the employees in private and public sector organization (KhaleejTimes, 2017). This is because happy people work more efficiently than the people who are not happy.

This section of the report discuses or provide the description about the time scale or the duration required to complete the tasks related to the research. To allocate the time to the tasks it is necessary to breakdown the research work into smaller sections. The report starts with understanding the background of the topic that has been selected to be researched (Rollo, 2009). This requires around 5-6 hours reading out the study materials that provides the idea related to the topic. It is not only the topic that is required to be studied but study of the research format is also mandatory to conduct the research sequentially. Exploration of the information regarding the topic results in generation of some kind of questions and the issues  (The Big Story, 2017). These issues can be framed as the research questions. Research question should be framed in such a way that it clearly defines the issues that the researcher wants to research about. A researcher should give around 3-4 hours in farming the questions that are most relevant to the study and the research topic. Framing the questions helps in providing the outline of the study. Some of the authentic sources need to be studied in order to extract the data and the information related to the research. These sources can be literature reviews. These literature reviews assist in extracting and assessing different aspects of the topic that results in answering the questions and the issues related to the research topic. Reading the literature reviews that are relevant to the topic requires around 40-48 hours  (Tracy, 2013). This is the most crucial part of conducting the research because it provides most of the knowledge about the topic. Reading different literature and linking them together to derive the final conclusion is also a hectic task that requires full concentration and takes around 24 hours to do the same. To access the primary data different data collection method has been used and it also takes time of around a week. So, if the overall time scale is observed, it has been identified that around 10-11 days is required to conduct a research at this level.

References:

Abu Dhabi World Online. (2017). NEWS: Smile! UAE on global mission to find the secret of happiness - Abu Dhabi World. Available at: https://www.adwonline.ae/news-smile-uae-on-global-mission-to-find-the-secret-of-happiness/ Accessed on: 23 Mar. 2017

Aguinis, H. (2014). Performance management. Boston: Pearson Education Limited.

Askary, S., Kukunuru, S. and Pech, R., 2014. An assessment of employee commitment to work among UAE nationals. International Journal of Business Excellence, 7(1), pp.1-15.

Blackstone, W. (n.d.). Commentaries on the laws of England.

Cowley, E. and Smith, S., 2014. Motivation and mission in the public sector: evidence from the World Values Survey. Theory and decision, 76(2), pp.241-263.

Harvard Business Review. (2017). Why Government Workers Are Harder to Motivate. Available at: https://hbr.org/2014/11/why-government-workers-are-harder-to-motivate, Accessed on: 23 Mar. 2017

Ibrahim, M. and Al Falasi, S., 2014. Employee loyalty and engagement in UAE public sector. Employee Relations, 36(5), pp.562-582.

Ibrahim, M.E. and Perez, A.O., 2014. Effects of organizational justice, employee satisfaction, and gender on employees' commitment: evidence from the UAE. International Journal of Business and Management, 9(2), p.45.

Ismail, A.Z. and Ahmed, S., 2015. Employee Perceptions on Reward/Recognition and Motivating Factors: A Comparison between Malaysia and UAE.

Kearney, R. and Berman, E. (2009). Public Sector Performance. New York: Westview Press.

Lavigna, R.J., 2013. Engaging Government Employees: Motivate and Inspire Your People to Achieve Superior Performance. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.

Ljungholm, D.P., 2014. Intrinsic motivation among public sector workers. Geopolitics, History and International Relations, 6(2), p.7.

McFarlane, N. (2017). The UAE's Minister of Happiness talks about her mission - What's On Dubai. What's On Dubai. Available at: https://whatson.ae/dubai/2016/03/the-uaes-minister-of-happiness-talks-about-her-mission/ Accessed on: 23 Mar. 2017.

Mone, E. and London, M. (2014). Employee Engagement Through Effective Performance Management. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.

Razack, S.S.K. and Upadhyay, D., (2017) Employee Perception of Performance Management Systems in the UAE: An Analysis.

KhaleejTimes (2017). UAE 20th 'happiest nation' on global happiness index - Khaleej Times. Khaleejtimes.com. Available at: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/nation/general/uae-20th-happiest-nation-on-global-happiness-index Accessed on: 23 Mar. 2017

Rollo, J. (2009). Performance management. [Salem, NH]: Goal/QPC.

The Big Story. (2017). UAE's Happiness Minister wants to see more positive stories. Available at: https://bigstory.ap.org/article/b4b0fc423aee4b67ab6894ee80f28440/uaes-happiness-minister-wants-see-more-positive-stories Accessed on: 23 Mar. 2017

Tracy, B. (2013). Motivation. New York: AMACOM.

Tria, G. and Valotti, G. (2012). Reforming the public sector. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

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