Job motivators from the employees and managers' point of view in teaching hospitals affiliated to Qazvin University of Medical Sciences

Abstract Background: Being responsive to employees' needs and recognizing their job motivators is one of the most important tasks of the top managers in any organization. Objective: To determine the most important job motivators from both employees and managers' point of view in teaching hospitals affiliated to Qazvin University of Medical Sciences. Methods: 300 out of 1379 employees and 96 managers of teaching hospitals were evaluated in the period of 2002-2003. A multistage sampling was used to select the employees but no sampling procedure carried out on the managers. The data were collected through a self-report questionnaire. Lindahl's Job Motivators Inventory (1949) was used to determine the most important job motivators. Ten extra questions were added to the employees' questionnaire to measure their job satisfaction as well. These questions covered the same concepts as in the Lindahl's Job Motivators. Findings: The results revealed that parameters such as "adequate salary", "suitable working condition", and "job security" were the first three important job motivators from employees' point of view. Managers however, ranked the most three important job motivators as "adequate salary", "job security", and the "suitable working condition", respectively. The findings also indicated that 4.2% of the employees were satisfied with their job, 30.3% dissatisfied and the rest (65.5%) semi-satisfied. In correlating "job satisfaction" questions with "Lindahl's Job Motivators Inventory" in an item to item fashion, a negative relationship was found between the ranking of "suitable working condition" and "satisfaction with current job condition" item (p<0.05). This implied that, as the satisfaction with working condition decreased, the ranking of the relevant item on Lindahl's Inventory increased. Conclusion: The personnel were highly concerned with the physiological and safety needs according to the Mazlow's hierarchical need model and their superiors were aware of such needs.