Evaluating the Motivational Factors of Employee-consultants in the Nigerian Construction Industry

The management of people at work is an integral part of the management process. The aim of this research is to evaluate the motivational factors of employee consultants in the Nigerian construction industry, with a view to improve motivational practices which leads to growth and sustenance of the Nigerian construction industry. The objectives of this research are the factors of motivation that influences the performance of employee-consultants, the practices of management of consulting and construction firms in the motivation of employee-consultants, the impact of motivation in developed and fast growing consulting/construction firms and the challenges to management motivation and demotivational factors of employee-consultants in Nigerian construction industry. The research work focused on employee-consultants as the key players in the construction industry. A sample size of 108 construction/consultancy, and 150 employee-consultants firms were randomly selected to answer the two set of questionnaires. From the research findings, the ranking of motivational factors reveals the first six factors as outlined in order of their significance from the research: Job security (0.9), salary (0.89), working condition (0.87), reward (0.84), Training and development (0.83) and Leadership respectively (0.82). The absence of the necessary support needed to carry out work was identified to be the most significant demotivational factor from the employee-consultant, while the management of construction/consulting firm has to deal with the Amount of

Fee paid (workers‘ wages) as their major hindrance to motivation. The survey concluded that majority of employee-consultants were generally dissatisfied with the level of motivation in their organizations. The Research recommends that new incentive schemes, such as flexible working hours, subsidies can be engaged. The area for further research should focus on the implementation strategy of motivational factors.

Managers  in    an  organization  accomplish  tasks  through  other  people,  they  oversee the activities of the organization and are responsible for reaching goals. (Robbins, 2005) The key components of a manager‘s work involve leadership, negotiation role, decision making, and communication. Managers have formal authority over the organizational units which are divided into interpersonal, informational and decision role categories.

Managers‘ work has a lot of varieties and the interaction with personnel is considered to be the core of management (Thomas, 2002).

What defined construction work in the past rare not the same today as work has become more dynamic, the employer-employee relationship is less hierarchical and more transactional. Oyewobi et al., (2011) identified that the Nigerian construction industry‘s contribution to GDP between 1980 and 2007 had dropped due to poor performance and low productivity. Similarly, Idrus and Sodangi (2007) asserted that the Nigerian construction industry produces nearly 70% of the nation‘s fixed capital formation yet its performance within the economy has been, and continues to be, very poor. This also can be attributed to the movement of Employees away from long-term employment relationships and long-term rewards and the effort are focused on short-term rewards. (Eisner, 2005) The workplace has also undergone radical changes and organizations are becoming more heterogeneous which involves a lot of key players including consultants, the workforce is also becoming more diverse and Managers need to recognize that people.