KARACHI, Oct 30: There is no concept of motivation in government departments and organizations, and the administrative approach is applied to extract the maximum out of employees, which is the basic reason behind the poor performance of the public sector organizations in Pakistan.

This was stated by noted education consultant and faculty member of Hamdard University, M Afzal Janjua, while speaking at a seminar on “Work Motivation” organized by the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) at its Vicky Zeitlin Media Library here on Thursday.

Mr Janjua defined motivation as the willingness to exert a persistent and high-level of effort towards organizational goals, conditioned by the effort’s ability to satisfy some individual needs.

According to him, recognition and money are the two most important motivations, while recognition of services of any employee has an edge over award of monetary befits. “However, recognition of services or efforts is useless there is some monetary benefits attached to it,” he added.

Citing difference between working atmospheres at government and corporate sector organisations, Mr Janjua said that in the private sector organisations, the management approach was applied and incentives were offered to employees to improve their performance.

He said every motivated person could not be a high performing employee, as high performance needs support and ability and motivation is only one factor.

Defending young people, he maintained that in most cases they are more motivated than those born between 1940 and 1960.

Terming achievement, recognition, work, responsibility, advancement and growth as factors leading to satisfaction, he said company policy, relationship with peers/subordinates, relationship with supervision, work conditions status and security if used in negatively ‘lead to dissatisfaction’.

Arguing that the type of work influences motivation, he said independent contractual workers, contingent workers, minimum or wage-service workers and people required to do highly repetitive work feel no motivation, while the nature of the contract with the employer also affects motivation.

Mr Janjua suggested that man-job matching, continuous training and education, employee-involving programmes, variable and skill-based pay plans, employee recognition programmes and company specific programmes be arranged for better work motivation.—PPI