REWARDING AND RECOGNIZING EMPLOYEES: HOW IT-PROFESSIONALS ARE MOTIVATED AND PREFER TO BE REWARDED. THE CASE OF ING BANK TURKEY.

Abstract

This thesis is about rewarding, recognition and motivation which are important themes in everyday business life. Traditionally the aim of rewarding has been to improve employee performance and motivate them to work harder. Nowadays rewarding nonetheless is more and more about job satisfaction and satisfying employee’s needs which has made the whole rewarding more employee-driven than before. It is commonly known that happy and satisfied employees are more productive than dissatisfied employees and that employees want to be more responsible for how and when they do their job, and eventually how they are been rewarded. Rewarding individually however is not possible especially in organizations where there are hundreds or even thousands of employees so finding a way to satisfy most of the employees is crucial and significant for managers and organizations all around the world.

As it was said earlier this thesis is about rewarding and motivation and it includes a research which targets to find out how rewarding is arranged in a company. The aim of the research is to identify the relationship between rewarding and motivation and also to understand how the rewarding is organized in the examined company. The aims are been fulfilled by exploring the literature related to the research topic and by conducting the survey and analyzing the results carefully. The company where the survey was done by anonymous questionnaire survey is ING Bank Turkey’s ITDepartment which locates in Istanbul, Turkey and where almost 400 employees work. ING is a global company that operates in more than 40 countries and the organization’s second biggest IT-department is in Istanbul after the headquarters in the Netherlands which makes the research even more interesting and significant for further use.

In order to make sure that the research will be done correctly and that the right questions will be asked the literature review was carefully done by reading and finding out information related to the research topic. Only after that the survey was formed. This ensured that the survey was comprehensive enough and that the validity of survey was secured. The survey consisted of 10 research questions and was send to respondents’ emails in March 2015. The survey was send to 80 respondents and it was answered as many as 62 making the respondent rate as high as 77%. The survey was answered anonymously which guaranteed that respondents were able to answer sensible questions as honestly as possible. Results of the survey presented accurate situation in the organization and after deeper analyze the recommendations were completed. Recommendations include substantial proposals and development suggestions how the rewarding in ING Bank Turkey’s IT-department should be improved as well as follow-up plan what the company should do next if they wish to motivate and reward their employees better in future.

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The survey showed that the employees of ING Bank Turkey’s IT-department are motivated to their work but dissatisfied with the rewarding methods they use at the company. Most of the respondents felt that the total rewarding is first of all not part of ING Bank Turkey’s strategy and secondly not fair. Respondents nevertheless thought their work is important and that managers give feedback. They also liked the social environment and that managers trust on them. For example 50 employees said that social environment at the company helps them to do their job better and 49 said that they can participate in decision making. However 49 also said that financial rewarding motivates them most which is against the theories since according to them financial rewarding methods are not good when considering motivation since they have only short period effect on motivation, they are expensive and some other motivating methods are simply proven to be better. Still many non-monetary rewarding method proposals came out from the survey and they were taken into deeper consideration in the analyzing part of the thesis.

The survey included one open question where employees were able to write proposals how to develop the currently used rewarding system. 48 of the respondents used this opportunity and many practical development proposals came out from it and those proposals were used in the recommendations part of the thesis. For example increasing social activities and public praising would make the rewarding system better according to respondents. Social events like team lunches, sport events or playful competitions would increase group spirit and effect positively to job performance. Employees also claimed that the rewarding methods are not fair so definitely developing the methods together with the employees and respecting their advice would improve how the rewarding methods are felt and make it fairer. Also complicated bonus calculations and wrongly or unequally given promotions increase the dissatisfaction so managers should carefully determine how, to how and when they are giving extra promotions and bonuses.

Even though the research presented extensively the current situation in the company it is still recommended to conduct a deeper and more specific research in order to get particular answers for developing the rewarding system currently used. Also the survey was not sent to all of the 400 employees so the results cannot be generalized to whole department. Changes in rewarding and motivating methods should always include all of the department’s employees and everyone should have a chance to tell their opinion if a survey is made. For this reason before making any changes in the company further research is advised and this thesis can be a framework for a new survey. Since the thesis will be uploaded to online database it can also be used as a help for future researchers who intent to study rewarding in the aspect of motivation.

This is a master thesis and in addition to make a research it also aimed to gain student’s academic skills and improve research making skills which was succeed during the thesis making process. It was also part of graduation requirements and completing this thesis work graduation was granted. Thesis work helped as well to confirm the researcher’s career path into human resources and management and it will help them in future to conduct a corresponding research and to understand more the complexity of human behavior.