Immaterial and Material Rewarding in Motivating Employees: Observations in a Public Agency

Abstract

Rewarding is an essential part of human resource management. Its central goal is to motivate and encourage personnel. Rewarding has effects on the whole of individual’s work well-being. The difference and variety of personnel constitutes challenges to rewarding in today’s world. The experiences of most motivational rewards are being affected for example by person’s age, gender and earlier experiences.

The aim of this thesis was to research what is rewarding and what kind of rewards there exist in today’s working life. I was especially interested in the role of rewarding in public sector and its motivation potential. Furthermore, I wanted to consider the age and gender differences, and if there are needs of development in some field.

The theoretical framework of the study consists of two human relations school classics, namely McGregor’s X- and Y-theory and Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory. These theories cover motivation and the factors which direct it, incentives and rewards, particularly in working life. I also used two more practical models, job characteristics model and job design model. These are putting the theories into practise in order to increase motivation, satisfaction and work well-being.

As a research method I used quantitative survey-research. The results are based on internet-inquiry which I conducted in a Finnish public sector organisation. In the analysis I used comparisons under some questions. According to the research results both the employees of various ages and the different genders considered as the most motivational rewards nice work atmosphere, pay, interesting work, possibilities to affect contents of own work, flexible working hours, and praise and recognition.

Young employees emphasised in their answers ascending on a career, flexibility in work arrangements and nice work atmosphere. Whereas older employees emphasised as motivators interesting work and job contents, job security, further education possibilities and nice work atmosphere. The meaning of pay was also quite big and it maintained its rank among all age groups.

When ageing and when thinking about coping longer in working life as the most important rewards were experienced nice work atmosphere, interesting work, flexible working hours, possibilities to affect contents of own work and achievements in own work. Immaterial rewarding has clearly a strong influence on enjoying at work and encouraging to continue longer in working life. The meaning of immaterial rewarding also strengthens and is being emphasised over the working years and within ageing.

There came up some important development needs and wishes among the respondents. Praise and recognition, development discussions, further education opportunities, payment issues and overall communication were the things which would need attention and improvement. Also the factors of job design, especially job rotation, and job enlargement and enrichment, caught attention. In general the respondents would like to have more and better communication and recognition, opportunities to learn and deepen own know-how, and flexibility and creativity in work arrangements.