Work productivity: what factors affect work productivity?: does economic crisis worsens work productivity?

Abstract

The topic of this research is to establish if the employees’ working productivity has been affected by the economic crisis and as it has been affected, I mention the factors that mainly have affected their productivity. I have used employees from two different organisations in order to see if there is a difference between the employees’ working productivity of the Semi Organisation and the employees’ working productivity of the Public organisation. In my research I refer to factors of motivation such as working environment, monetary rewards and social interaction with the employer, in order to establish if motivation was provided before the economic crisis and my data show that the employees’ were performing high levels of working productivity before the occurrence of the economic crisis. Afterwards, taking into account my data I make a comparison on the employees’ level of working performance after the economic crisis, depending on the motivators provided by the employers which establishes lower performance of working productivity. Moreover, I refer to some other factors which can affect the working productivity of the employees which they made their appearance after the economic crisis, such as stress on financial matters, work overload and job security. Some of the authors argue that many employees are worrying of their financial problems because probably have a loan which they are in difficulty to cope with their monthly instalments, and/or because they have more duties/tasks and more working hours with less money paid. So if employees have financial problems or if their rewarded with less money than they actual deserve, their work efficiency will be affected negatively and the employer will be in difficulty to increase his profits. In order for me to be able to establish if the employees’ working productivity has been affected after the economic crisis occurred, I have tested my hypotheses based on the answers the employees’ of the two organisations gave me. Most of my hypotheses were accepted where as a result the economic crisis has definitely affected the employees’ working productivity and therefore the employers must establish new motivators in order to increase their employees’ working performance, because living conditions are changing as they are affected by the economic crisis and thus motivators should be changed as well. I have used T-Test method to test my hypotheses. The conclusion was that after the economic crisis the employees’ working productivity has been affected and we clarify the factors that lead to the affection. However, it is significant to mention that we had some different answers by the employees’ of the two organisations. Hence their working productivity is not affected by the same factors.