The process of globalisation has significant effects on countries, organisations, and individuals, encompassing competition and change. Rewards systems for instance are becoming globally competitive. Amid globalisation, the pandemic is changing employee benefits as well. In order to better support the business and the employees, organisations are looking for better ways of motivating employees to perform at their best and one of the strategies is the use of an applicable and appropriate reward system. Reward systems not only determine the attraction and retention of top-performing employees but continuously motivate and can positively impact the performance of employees leading them towards achievement and success.
In my experience of three years as an HR Specialist, the effectiveness of compensation and benefits strategies that make the employees feel motivated and valued has served as my strong motivator to pursue my Master’s degree. However, as globalisation arises and the global pandemic happened, organisations faced challenges and uncertainty about better strategies that can influence employees’ motivation to improve job performance. As I start my journey in taking a master’s degree in industrial psychology, I want to have a significant contribution to the field of research and make recommendations for the improvement of organisations. Thus, I’m thinking about having a study about the impact of rewards on job performance with the mediating role of motivation. I would like to focus on how employees are inspired and motivated by appropriate rewards to give their best performance and increase overall productivity.
Here are the three main objectives and reasons that sparks my interest to take this particular study:
- First, to assess and identify the impact of rewards on employee performance evolution. Thus, organisations can match their employees’ reward systems to their strategies, goals, and values for improving job performance.
- Second, to improve the organisation’s reward strategies, design and scheme to enhance employee motivation that can lead to increasing overall productivity and allow an organisation to achieve higher levels of output.
- Lastly, the outcome of this research can help in giving knowledge and understanding of the influence that rewards may have on employees’ motivation. With the acquired information, the organisation will come up with effective reward strategies in enhancing its growth and competitiveness.
With regard to methodology, I’m thinking of conducting a descriptive survey research design that allows a methodical and well-organised description that is valid, accurate, and reliable. In addition, to show the effectiveness of the results of the study. The population that I chose to participate in the study are employees from selected retail companies in Metro Manila using a stratified sampling technique. The reason for selecting this sector is that their employee performance is directly associated with rewards.
The importance of this study is to know how the rewards greatly affect employee performance with the role of motivation of an employee inside the organisation, and what can be its effect to the human resources management strategy of the company. This research will be useful to: First, the management will help them to know how to satisfy employees by motivating them through an appropriate reward system, improving employee performance, and designing good strategic management. Second, the employees will have knowledge of how can rewards greatly affects motivation and work performance. Third, HR practitioners can use this study as their guide when designing a total reward system for their employees to motivate them and have great work performance. Other than that, future researchers can help them with this study if they wish to focus on this topic and elaborate further for their research purposes.
The limitation of this research proposal is the participants which are only employees in the retail industry. The influence of rewards on job performance may focus as well on other sectors and industries. Secondly, the influence of demographic traits on performance may also be assessed.
As this served as my research proposal, I am exploring for review of related literature that will support this study such as the theoretical framework and methodology. Moreover, I would like to consider the effect of the pandemic and the systematic change it causes on the planning and implementation of total rewards design as we are preparing for the future of work, the new normal.
Edsen Dave G. Del Mundo is a master’s degree student at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.
