Employee benefits for motivation and productivity of work

Employee benefits are essential for the development of corporate industrial relations. According to Herzberg’s two-factor theory (motivation and hygiene), an employee benefit programme is a necessary and sufficient working condition. The hygiene factor will affect employees’ work motivation and thus productivity.

In the stimulus-response behaviour, employees’ work-motivation, seen as the response, can be analysed from absence rate, leave rate, quit rate, get-to-work speed and so on. Productivity can be analysed from quality and quantity of products. The quality indices include faults and returns. The quantity indices include completion time and the production hygiene factor. This depends on the individual properties of the employee, who is the medium essential for management, and stimulates employees to enhance their work and productivity.

In addition, everyone works in expectation of some rewards (both spiritual and material), and welfare is one of them. In other words, the degree of reward influences the quality and quantity of work, and in turn productivity. Hence it is important to explore how to give the stimulus (welfare) in order to promote work motivation and productivity.

To understand the impact of employee benefit on employees’ work motivation and productivity, questionnaires were sent to corporations which had undertaken employee benefit programmes. Results reflected on a variety of assumptions.

Implementation of employee benefit programmes affects employees’ performance. Employee benefit programmes have greater impact on work-motivation than on productivity. Monetary benefit programmes are most highly valued by both executives and workers. There is a cognitive gap between management and worker on the importance of employee benefit programmes. Private-corporation employees have greater employee benefit demands than their public corporation counterparts. Female and male employees have different benefit demands. Single employees perceive more employee benefit impact on job performance than married ones. Employees with different education levels perceive different employee benefit impact. Employees with different positions perceive different employee benefit impacts. Employee benefit programmes have greater influence on job performance of younger employees.