Employee Motivation: Case Study

4.2 Discussions

Based on the results obtained in the previous section, most employees are either motivated by the work environment or the experience. The assistant manager of Mum Bakery & Cake House stated that his motivation to work is money which corresponds to Self-Determination Theory (SDT)and therefore his self-esteem and self-actualisation needs are not fulfilled in Maslow 's Hierarchy of Needs Theory. Since the manager is only attentive towards his superiors, the owner used recognition and promotion rewards under Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory to motivate him. As the employee 's capability is considered as one of the company’s most useful assets, his dissatisfaction may be considered a threat to the company. In order to retain

The supervisor in Mum’s Bakery believed that if the employees were treated with a friendly and fair treatment, the employees will show a good job performance. For example, one of the most common case happened in Mum’s Bakery where one of the employees are praised by a customer for the cake that the employees baked. This praise make the employees feel appreciated and recognised (Leong & Rashad, 2014). Thus, their job performance increased. Other than using the intrinsic rewards such as praises and verbal encouragement, the supervisor also mentioned that he gives leniency towards his employees such as providing extrinsic rewards which considered to be a positive reinforcement that leads to higher

Hence negative reinforcement occurred due to the removal of not being observed by those of higher position. Based on Lof Bakery’s employees perspective, the supervisor frequently monitored the employees and this made the employees feel disconnected and felt under-pressured. Furthermore, if the production level decreasing, the supervisor gave persistent advices on the employees of the consequences of reduced productivity primarily in terms of hygiene factors. Thus this creates more tension and miscommunication between the employees and the supervisor as the employees need to work more systematically and carefully. The reason for such monitoring are for the employees to be more diligent, avoid repeating mistakes in the future and to keep the quality and quantity of the production consistent. On the opposite side, the supervisor demotivated as they have to warn them too frequently which resulted the time consuming and stressed due to responsibility towards the production quality assurance and have to answer to higher level if the result does not meet the production