EFFECTS OF MOTIVATION ON EMPLOYEES’ PERFORMANCE (CASE STUDY OF SELECTED SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES IN NIGERIA)

Abstract

The following study is a self-conducted research on the effects of motivation on employees’ performance in small and medium scale enterprises in Nigeria. In the Introductory chapter I discussed that Employees are the core of any organization. Employee cooperation cannot be substituted with anything else for any organization to function smoothly and without disruption. It is of utmost significance that an organization's staff not only have a good relationship with top management, but also keep a healthy and professional connection with their coworkers. TheReseach was evaluated using techniques of descriptive statistical analysis. The findings acquired show that if staff are positively motivated, it increases both their effectiveness and efficiency to achieve organizational objectives. A sample of people was chosen and interviewed with a self-administered questionnaire this was done to get the primary data, my sample size is one hundred and twenty. The analysis was carried out using (SPSS) Statistical Package for social sciences The results of this research shows that there is a relationship between motivation and employees performance in the sampled SME in Lagos, and there is a relationship between motivation and labor turnover in Small and medium scale enterprises. There is a significant relationship between motivation and employee performance because Table 4.8 shows that X2cal (254.240) is greater than X2tab (34.27) at 5% level of significance (X2tab = 34.37, v=16 H1 =0.05). Hence the alternate hypothesis is accepted while the null hypothesis is rejected. The study revealed that the management of Small and medium scale enterprises partially used motivational goal-setting to motivate their employees. According to Herzberg, the factors that trigger job satisfaction differ from those that cause work discontent. Thus, if the company attempts to cope with the variables that generate work discontent, such as wages, they can bring about peace but will not automatically motivate employees (Robbins, 2000). This means that “if you want people to do a good job, give them a good job to do,” rather than simply trying to deal with de-motivating factors.