CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Chapter Overview
This chapter has 3 major parts: part I conclusion, part II recommendations and part III recommendations for future research for government. In the conclusion, highlights are made about the major and serious issues observed in the study. In the second section provides possible solutions and recommendations to government on how it can deal with these problems considering that the problems cannot be overcome just at one time.
Conclusions Based on the Results Based on H1and H2
1. Employees are well satisfied with their jobs but not the employer. This means that intentions to find new employers will remain high in the next 2 years. We can as well postulate that government will face a lot of resignations and/or job.
2. There is high employee commitment among the civil servants. However this commitment is based simply on the cost-assessment made by the employees. That is what they are bound to gain or lose if they stay or exit the civil service. Due to this, intentions to quit the civil service remain high. This kind of commitment is not strong to hold the employees to stay on the job. If they perceive to incur a lot of losses by staying on the job, employees will exit in masses.
3. Employees want to join new jobs but will not be able to move on to new jobs and to new employers if no new job openings are available. Employees may decide to move out because they feel like they are being pushed out of the organisation by the organization itself. This is because the employer’s policies and HR strategies are not in tandem with the needs, values and aspirations of the employees. Often these are organizational factors namely policies, values and management, management support, training and development, terms and conditions of service. These are extrinsic values of the job as they are influenced by outside and environments (government policy, supervision and pay). In essence this shows that most of the
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employees would want nice and descent jobs that would make them proud in terms of values.
Based on H3
1. When employees perceive that their salary and the work they do are comparable; they tend to feel more satisfied than the average workers. The opposite may also be true-low sense of salary in comparison with the work done, true-lowers down satisfaction.
Employees who normally have very low perception of their salary in comparison with work they also tend to develop low motivation for the job and hence their satisfaction is usually lower than the average workers (Judge & Hulin, 1990). This is the case with the civil servants in this study. There are other privileges that bind people to stay on the job.
2. Employees feel committed on their job based on the amount of pay for the work they do. The second reason is that they feel that there is fairness in distribution of the pay for workers on the same position. This is a good development considering that government’s policy is that employees within the same job grade should get the same pay. The difference in pay comes due to tenure-as time goes employees tend to receive salary increments (Malawi Government Public Sector Administration, 2004).
Based on H4
1. There is relative satisfaction with job enrichment/autonomy. These include the challenging nature of the job (tasks & responsibilities); the involvement and treatment by colleagues and supervisor received and; the chance to make autonomous decisions and suggestions at work and have them implemented. These results are promising. Employees get a strong sense of satisfaction for their job as a whole when the job tasks and responsibilities are challenging. Thus, it appears that intrinsic job characteristics play a significant role in boosting job satisfaction.
2. Employees have no intention to leave the employer but may do so if an opportunity opens up because of the involvement and treatment received from colleagues and supervisor. Enjoying good company and a sense of recognition by having more and autonomous responsibilities bring these employees. In better words, the employees
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are committed to stay in the job due to the good involvement and treatment they receive from colleagues and supervisors. However they move to a new job if an opportunity opens up. They do not intend to go on job hunt but simply waits for chance coincidence. This means that employees consider their involvement and treatment by colleagues and supervisors as very important on the work place.
Based on H5
1. Employees feel that they will have a secure future due to the way their job are organised, hence they feel a high sense of satisfaction. In this case it shows that the employees feel more satisfied with the security the jobs accord them. It can therefore be seen that enhancing job security strategies has a positive influence on the satisfaction of the employees.
2. Workers perceive that their jobs are stable and so provide secure future; consequently their satisfaction levels are high. Stable jobs translate into more terminal benefits as time goes the benefits accumulate. This stability is in terms of both the employer and the employee’s job. If the employer is not stable, employees are usually worried of continued existence of the organisation because if the organisations go down, their benefits often go down to the drain with it. Secondly they become jobless, and no continued income. This has a lot of psychological effects on the well-being of the individuals.
3. Employees feel that their jobs get secure when they do well on the job. They are therefore ready to sacrifice what it takes to secure their jobs (their future). This is good in that it works as a vicious circle. The employees try to work hard in order to secure their jobs, when they do well; the government recognises it and are safe. In turn the employees feel satisfied with both the recognition and the security their good actions bring.
4. It is also observed that the employees perceive that their employer hardly fires people in times of hardship. On other hand, other employers fire workers more readily in times of hardship. This knowledge that the employer hardly fires people is very comforting and gives the employees a reason to be committed to their employer.
5. The employer offers other better privileges such that the employees cannot leave the job/employer. This is one reason for the employee’s commitment to this employer.
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This is consistent with the earlier findings about commitment that employee are committed based on conditions that they gain something by staying. Thus they know they will gain other better privileges.
Based on H6
1. Employees would wish to get to the next job because the salaries are low as soon as they land another job or find an opportunity to do so. If the salaries are high they would intend to remain on the same job and with the same employer.
2. There is a general feeling that employees do not receive salaries commensurate with the work they do thereby the wish to find other jobs (employers). They therefore wish to get new jobs in order to have better pecks.
3. There is high comparison for salaries among employees. This comparison is about employees’ salaries under the same mother institution-government but in different institutions on the same or similar positions. There is a general trend that the salaries are comparable but the civil servants would still want to move out any time soon into other sectors other than civil service.
Based on H7
1. The job enrichments strategies being employed are not good enough to stop civil servants from moving out. Employees feel that they have challenging jobs and have so much autonomy but they would still move on to new jobs, either in the next 2 years or as soon as they find them. However, some factors were negatively significant at the lowest level (in the first equation and not the last), which means if strategies are enhanced turnover intentions may be reduced in the long run.
Therefore all is not lost for the government.
Based on H8
1. Employees feel that they have safe and secure jobs. This perception is very high however this does not stop them from looking for jobs either in the immediate future, in the far future and anytime they can find it. Even though the jobs seem to provide a secure future, employees would still try their way out from the civil service. This
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is important to note because previous researches show that employees would remain on the job if they feel it is secure or stable. This finding explains in other words that a secure future is not always bright. It may also be that employees understand the unpredictability of life as such they cannot guarantee a bright future simply because it the employer has good job security strategies. This may also explain the notion that if physical needs are not met, it is hard for the employees to feel satisfied for the future. This vindicates Maslow’s theory of needs.
2. We can conclude that there are a lot of dissatisfies or hygiene factors that need to be corrected so that dissatisfaction should be reduced and then the employees can experience the satisfiers or the motivators. Without the motivators employees would not feel dissatisfied but without the hygiene factors being in order, employees will have high tendencies to seek employment where there are fewer dissatisfies.
In a nutshell, government should work hard to enhance satisfaction through salaries.
It should also put structures that would enhance employee commitment at all its 3 different levels: affective, continuance and normative. From the study, employees are committed simply because they are looking for something to gain from the government. If this perceive that they will not gain something, they are more likely to jump from job to job a situation which is worrisome. Some of the structures may be increasing the chance for employees to work in teams to create more affective commitment. Also develop structures that will promote career growth and personal growth. These will boost employee commitment. The bottom line is that government should address the most pertinent issue of salary. This means everything related to salary, in short tangible monitory benefits. Without address the first physical need, there will be continued attrition rates and government will not be able achieve the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS), since civil servants are the government’s tool for spearheading any development.
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Recommendations For the Government
There are a number of issues that the government needs to do in order to mitigate the problems at hand.
1. The government needs to address the issues of salaries as well as other compensation matters in general before the other things are done. This is because if all conditions were equal, most of the employees would have left the civil service as they feel that they are totally dissatisfied. They are still remaining in the service due to: lack of other opportunities, they feel secure and stable on job, they feel their jobs provide a secure future, they enjoy other better privileges, they perceive a strong sense of fairness in salary distribution, they feel satisfied with the treatment from colleagues and supervisors and also, there are no easy way of finding new jobs due to high unemployment rates. If these positives did not exist on the job, most definitely there would be more exists. The other way of thinking about it is what would happen if they stopped considering the other factors as being important in their lives. It is obvious that there would be mass exodus to other sectors or employers.
2. The govt should realign its policies to suit the current global labour market demands and supply chain. With free labour market or liberalisation, more and more employees will look for competitive employers in different aspects. Professional migration (brain drain according to the employer) may increase as employees have the chance to choose who they want to work for. The changes should focus on short term and medium mitigation on turnover and also focus on long term prospects.
3. With Malawi’s fast growing economy due to more international investors and organisations, govt should expect high attrition rates as the knowledge workers will be attracted by these competitive international organisations. This calls for a good overhaul of policies and HR strategies. The more laxity govt enjoys the more it is likely to lose employees to such institutions. Govt should make itself a competing body in the globalised world otherwise there is more doom to be expected. To retain workers, govt ought to provide:
• Highly competitive pay or compensation strategies
• Challenging work
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• Introduce performance incentives/bonuses
• Opportunities to develop in a specialist field
• Management support in decision making.
Bearing in mind that the economy for Malawi is small and donor-dependent, there are many constraints to the government budget. Due to this problem, government may not always be able to offer very attractive salaries to these knowledge workers. It is therefore suggested that the government should consider putting in other fringe benefits to the employees which would compensate the difference in the salary. These may not necessarily have to be monetary, they may be in-kind benefits.
Recommendations for Future Research
• There is need to conduct a good qualitative research with focus groups and semi-structured interviews with selected policy makers and the employees themselves to determine the way forward-policies that will make govt a competitive employer too.
• The government ought to establish the extent to which bundles of HR strategies and specific practices for attracting, motivating and retaining knowledge workers are convergent or divergent with its poachers especially in areas that it is heavily affected (health, judiciary and teaching). In essence the government needs to instate a thorough research on what the market is offering on the same jobs and why its competitors are doing that. This means that the research should find out which areas government is lagging or leading in terms of both monetary and non-monetary compensations and benefits. While doing that the job structures (tasks and responsibilities) should be looked into so that the compensation benefits and packages should commensurate with the employees’ productivity. Employees do not have to be paid for filling the post but for their efficiency and effectiveness.
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