ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF MOTIVATION ON EMPLOYEES’ PRODUCTIVITY IN THE MMDAs: A CASE STUDY OF FIVE SELECTED MMDAs IN THE NORTHERN REGION

Abstract

High productivity in the MMDAs cannot be materialized if the current labour force agitation in the past and current government cutting across various labour unions for a common demand of better condition of services such as salaries increment, payment of entailment arrears, transfer grants allowances, undue delay in promoting qualified staff and failure to pay staff tier 2 benefits are not adequately addressed. The research soughtto investigate “The impact of Motivation on Employees Performance in MMDAs in Northern Ghana. A descriptive survey design was used for the study. A sample size of 63 respondents was obtained using purposive sampling Technique. Questionnaires and interviews were used to gather data, and analysis was done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), and content analysis for qualitative aspects. The findings revealed that several factors contribute to MMDAs inability to motivate their workers. These factors are: shortage of resources, organization policy and lack of management willingness among others. The relationships between Job Performance, Incentive-Based Motivation, Recognition and Rewards and Attitude motivation using Spearman’s correlation coefficient show that there was a strong positive correlation between job performance and Incentive-Based Motivation (r = 0.724, p < 0.05). The results revealed that the three elements namely incentive-based motivation, recognition and rewards and attitude motivation explained about 58% of the variance in job performance. Based on the results, the following were recommended: The organization must create motivating reward systems in order to improve the performance of its employees. Both financial and non- financial motivation packages are very important in improving employee and organizational performance. It is proposed that Management of MMDAs should put measures in place to ensure that the working conditions of employees are improved to bring out the best in them. Management of MMDAs must also ensure that factors which mitigate the implementation of motivation are carefully dealt with to open door for their workers to be fully motivated to put in their best at the work place.