A study of employees' motivation in a small-sized business to encourage employees to improve their professional skills.

Abstract

Human resources are an essential factor to make an organization become successful. However, it is a common situation for a company to face some human resource problems. Low motivation is one of the common problems that can be happened, and it can lead to some symptoms that obstruct company development. The owner of the subject company is facing the problem that some employees lack wiliness to develop their professional skills, so the author was interested in finding the causes of this problem. To find the factors that demotivate the employees, the author applies Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Situational Leadership theories to study the employees’ motivation. As the company is a small-sized business, the author believes that the qualitative method is the most suitable approach to gain insight. The data is collected by conducting an in-depth interview with10 informants. The analytical framework is developed to organize the data and interpret them systematically. The result shows and concludes that low motivation causes unwillingness to improve their professional skill. Therefore, the recommendations are proposed to solve the issues. The author hopes that the findings and recommendations will be helpful for the company to develop its human resource in the future.